Page 8 of A Scottish Bride for the Duke
“Perfectly pleasant, thank ye.” Her gaze darted around the room, taking in the footmen along the wall and the butler calmly serving them both. “Your staff are very kind.”
He experienced a brief rise of irritation that he tamped. “Yes, I am pleased with their service.” He held his glass out for Johnson to pour his wine; he would be needing plenty of it. “The storm is one of the worst I have seen in quite some time.”
Her eyes flashed as though she was remembering the way he had almost forced her out into it, but she merely said, “Indeed.”
“You must have traveled for some time to reach London.”
“Yes, Your Grace. Over a week.”
“Then you must be tired.”
Her brows pinched in suspicion. “A little.”
“What brought you on such a journey? And alone?”
“I was not alone. I brought my maid, and a footman left with me maither’s carriage to return home. When I came here, I was certain that your maither would receive me.”
“My point still remains.”
She raised her chin in a gesture he was beginning to find familiar. “The letter to the duchess will explain everything.”
“If the matter was urgent enough, I wonder why your mother did not apply to me instead of my mother.” He leaned in. “What are you really after, Lady Isobel? I find it hard to believe that you came here merely to see my mother.”
Her nostrils flared. Anger bloomed in her eyes like fireworks, and he briefly reflected that she had never looked so beautiful as when she was angry.
“I apologize for me directness, but ye are being rude, Your Grace,” she said, taking a bite of her meal and rendering him temporarily speechless. “I appreciate that ye are displeased thatI came here, but I provided ye proof of my intentions, and I came here with the thought that I would find the duchess here. If she were here, this conversation would not be happening. Ye are being unwelcoming, sir.”
Adrian placed his knife on the table with a precisethunk. “In a position like mine, caution is necessary and trust is a luxury. One I do not afford to strangers.”
“Well, I suppose that explains why ye are here alone,” she snapped.
He sat back, once again shocked out of speech. Her fingers curled around her fork as though she was imagining plunging it into his skin. The wild burst of her anger had shocked him, and the violence simmering under his skin acted both as red before a bull, and an aphrodisiac.
She watched him with hooded eyes as he rose from his seat, planting his hands on the table and leaning across it to where she sat.
“You must think a lot of yourself,” he murmured, and she raised her gaze to meet his. There was no fear in her eyes but wariness and intrigue, and he paused long enough to lick his lips before continuing. “Speaking to me as you did.”
“Am I to think it a mistake?”
Thunder rolled through the room, and that full mouth of hers pinned into a hard, flat line. He did not ease up. Charm had failed—perhaps he could intimidate her into giving him the answers he sought.
This was not the average simpering miss he had encountered in drawing rooms—she was a feral child of the moors, with flashing eyes and a stubborn chin, determined not to be afraid of him.
The challenge struck him as delicious.
“Yes,” he murmured, his voice low, almost lost to the storm. “You are very much to think it a mistake. You are wholly in my power, and I am a duke. Who are you? What isyourpower here?”
“I am a guest of yers, and the daughter of yer maither’s friend.” She didn’t flinch from him.
“Then I recommend you hold your tongue.”
“Or what?” she breathed, curiosity mingling with the outrage in her eyes. “What will yer punishment be?”
For an instant, he saw the way she might look splayed before him, taking his punishment the way he wanted her to. Whimpering in pain and pleasure, just like the way she looked at him now with curiosity and dislike.
If he took her as a lover—which he had no intention of doing—then she would prove a challenge. Dominating her would be no easy feat, and yet her submission would taste all the sweeter for her defiance.
“What will I do?” He toyed with the words, tasting them on his tongue, and a faint blush touched her cheeks, although he would have bet money that she didn’t know why she had blushed. “Why, Lady Isobel, I would make you beg.”
