Page 16 of A Duke Makes a Deal
“E-excuse me?”
“I believe I am owed a debt, Miss Woodvine.”
“What do you mean?”
But Silas would not explain. That nagging sense of desire he had had since last night reemerged, stronger now that it had been embroiled by her own words. A single kiss could not hurt anyone and hehadbeen cheated out of his winnings after all.
When she didn’t move away, Silas pulled his head back and watched her round grey-green eyes. She seemed both worried and curious as she stared at him. As much as Silas knew it was a poor idea, he gathered her into his arms as he pressed his mouth to her.
Electricity seemed to snap between them from the moment their lips touched. Silas felt as if he had been starved for far too long and a feast had been laid before him, overwhelming him with bounty. His hands roamed over her body, dipping and feeling the soft flare of her hip, the curve of her waist, the weight of her breast.
He had been a man in the desert without water, suddenly plunged in a springtime pool. His hands gripped her tightly, pressing with a power he could barely restrain until he heard a soft whimper escape her lips.
He stopped abruptly, releasing her as if he had just touched the sun. What had come over him? He curled his hands into fists as he turned back to look at her.
Miss Woodvine stood, looking slightly disheveled, her mouth red and swollen from his kisses. Her hand crossed her torso and gently pressed against her belly. Shame and desire slammed into him. But what was oddest was what hedidn’tfeel. The constant thread of anxiety that haunted him night and day seemed to have temporarily left his body…though the longer he stared at her, the more he felt its return.
“Your grace—”
“Good day Miss Woodvine,” he said stiffly, and left without another word.
Chapter Five
Clara watched ina daze as the duke left the receiving parlor without so much as a backwards glance. She had been rather shocked by her own boldness when she hadn’t stepped away from him or pushed his hand to the side when he’d touched a strand of her hair, but Clara’s bizarre desire to feel the duke’s hands on her body had stopped her from retreating from his advance. And then there had been that kiss.
That. Kiss.
Clara’s hand came up from her midriff to her throat. Never in her life had she been kissed with such possession. Dilworth had kissed her once or twice when they had been able to steal a moment away from her mother’s chaperonage, but those had always been gentle, placid kisses. Clara had found them pleasant enough, but she had never felt the complete, untethered yearning she had when the duke had held her.
Every inch of her skin seemed to tingle with warning. The duke was a dangerous man, one who had run off his own wife with depravities that were rumored to be too scandalous to be mentioned in print. If that kiss was any indication, Clara knew the rumors about him must be true. She tried to focus on the audacity of his actions, while also trying to ignore the heat that had pooled low in her belly.
Men like Combe were never deprived of anything. He had probably spent a lifetime indulging in all sorts of wickedpleasures and Clara felt a pang of shame at having been his latest indulgence. She had no doubt that he considered any woman—herself included—to be nothing more than just another conquest. Even though her ideas of propriety were less rigid than those of the ton—life in the country having supplied her with a healthy bit of knowledge about where babies came from—she still felt discomfited by the idea that the duke felt so entitled that he would claim her lips like that as if they were his for the taking, whenever he pleased.
She was even more uncomfortable with the fact that she had liked it.
No doubt the duke thought kissing her was some sort of game. It was a brazen thing to have done. And then to act as though that kiss was compensation for the duke’s lost winnings. It was downright insulting and if Clara hadn’t been so intrigued, she might have said so.
Combe had been surprisingly gentle as well as intense. From the stories Clara had heard, the duke was a wicked man, yet Clara couldn’t quite see the dissolute figure from the gossip pages in the man she had just kissed. Despite his reputation, he hardly seemed like the type of man to force any woman to do something she didn’t want. He had refused to claim his winnings from his bet with Dilworth after all and even though he had kissed her, she was sure he would have stopped if she had protested.
Whyhadn’tshe protested? That was a question she couldn’t seem to answer. She didn’t like the duke, or at least, she knew that she shouldn’t—even if she did find him remarkably attractive, in a dangerous sort of way. While she always believed that a person’s character was the most important thing, Clara couldn’t deny that the duke’s striking, dark features, formidable size, and underlying arrogance made her body react in ways that she would rather not say.
Clara touched her hair absentmindedly, wondering if her gentle frizz had been to the duke’s dislike and if he found her as attractive as she found him. Probably not. She wished her hair would either be tightly curled or smooth, unhappy that it should settle in between. The ashy blonde coloring was decidedly not in fashion at the moment and she was aware that her appearance was rather underwhelming.
Clara was a bit of a beauty conundrum. Not a single one of her attributes could be considered attractive on their own, but she had been put together in a way that all the unassuming features complimented each other. She always believed of herself as pleasantly plain and she supposed everyone saw her as she saw herself. Was that how the duke saw her? She found herself wishing she could view herself through his eyes. Maybe then she would understand why he had kissed her—and why, immediately afterward, he had rushed away.
She stood for a moment, staring at the doorway the duke had practically run out of, wishing she could make sense of the whole encounter…but then she shook her head, unwilling to stand around to try and decipher it. She was to meet Bettina Moppet in the park this morning along the Serpentine and she would not be late.
Just then her mother entered the parlor, her brow creased with concern.
“Dear, Trevor just came out to inform me that the Duke of Combe was here?” her mother asked, smiling gently at the ridiculous idea that the duke had been there. “I told him he must be imagining things again, but he insisted.”
“Yes, the duke was here. He just left,” Clara said, as she straightened the cuff of her sleeve at the wrist. “He came to see Papa.”
“Whatever for?”
“To invest with him, I am sure,” she lied. She hadn’t told her parents what had happened the previous evening, deciding that neither needed to know what had happened. “Shall we go?”
“In a moment dear,” her mother said, coming up to her. “Do you mean the duke spoke to you about investments?”
