Page 38 of A Duke Makes a Deal
She smiled.
“You may if you’d like, I won’t tell,” she teased. She turned her finger around so that she could see her old injury. “I was very little and I would not stop crying until I received three kisses, one from each person in our household. Papa, Mama, and my great Aunt Laney.”
Silas stared at her with a strange fascination. It seemed every time she opened her mouth, a jewel of a story would fall out and he found himself eager to collect all of them. A tiny smile pulled at the corner of her mouth, almost as if she were thinking about something amusing.
“What?” he asked, his voice rough.
Her eyes flickered up.
“It’s a silly custom. A kiss can’t take any sort of pain away.”
“Can’t it?” he asked.
The look in her eye was one of daring, but Silas couldn’t understand until the next moment, when she brought his hand to her lips and pressed her soft mouth to the red, raw skin. She stayed there only a moment, but it was an image Silas would always remember.
“See?” she said, her cheeks covered in a blush. “It doesn’t work.”
Perhaps it hadn’t taken the sting of his burn away, but it had elicited another feeling elsewhere on his body that distracted him from everything else. As he stared at her, he wondered if he might explore the feeling.
“Clara,” he said, his tone low.
“Yes?”
“If I did try and claim my winnings from that bet with Dilworth,” he said slowly. “What would you do?”
She watched him with wide eyes.
“You mean, collect my dowry?”
“No,” he said as his hand came up to her face. What was possessing him to do this? It seemed entirely mad…and yet, he didn’t want to stop. “I mean, if I wanted to claim you as my prize. Would you consent?”
She didn’t move, but her eyes widened with surprise.
“As what? Your mistress? Your wife?” The corner of her mouth pulled up in a sarcastic half smile. She shook her head. “Does it matter? There is hardly a difference.”
“There is a difference,” he said, his thumb following the edge of her jaw. “One would make you a duchess.”
“I wish you wouldn’t jest, Silas,” she said, seemingly holding her breath as she gazed at him. “It’s not a very sporting thing to joke about.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Then you’re going mad,” she countered. “We’ve hardly known each other a month.”
“It’s been five weeks, technically.”
“Don’t you think that’s a short amount of time to decide whether to spend the rest of your life with someone?”
“No longer than you knew Dilworth.”
Her mouth opened to argue as her eyes flashed with challenge, but no words came. Then, she let out a defeated laugh and nodded.
“I suppose that’s true.”
“Besides, as I’m the only one who has experienced a marriage with a long courtship, I can confirm that the amount of time two individuals have known one another hardly matters if their characters don’t blend well together.”
“And our characters do?”
“I believe so.”
