Page 33 of Her Duke at Midnight
“Not one I expected to hear. From you of all men.”
He stood and had his trousers buttoned in the time it took Cecily to pick up her gown. She found his shirt just below the folds of velvet and tossed the rumpled garment to him.
“Believe me, it’s not a question I thought I’d be putting to anyone for a good long time.” He approached and turned her body gently so that her back was to him. Patiently and with a light touch, he worked the hooks at the back of her dress. “What I feel for you…” He reached around to slide his fingers under her chin, and Cecily looked back at him. “It’s nothing I’ve ever felt before.”
He took her mouth, hungrily, expertly, and Cecily twisted to go into his arms. When their tongues danced against each other, she wanted nothing more than to pull the clothes from her body again and make love with him on the sofa once more.
A knock on the door stunned them both.
“Bloody damned house party,” Adam grumbled. “If we were married, we could tear each other’s clothes off as often as we liked.”
Cecily laughed and buried her face in the folds of his unbuttoned shirt to muffle the sound.
“Cecily, open the door.”
“Oh, it’s only Fiona.” Cecily felt enormous relief to know it was her friend and not someone like Whitlock or, heaven forbid, Lady Derwent on the other side of the door.
But her relief was short-lived. Fiona began pounding harder. “Open this door, or I shall ask a servant to fetch me a key.”
Cecily crossed the room, glancing back at Adam to make sure he’d buttoned his shirt. He had already donned his suit coat as well. Even with the new creases in his clothing, he looked elegant again. Cecily patted at her loose hair.
“My haircomb.”
Adam immediately searched the carpet and found the bejeweled piece, sliding it into his pocket.
Cecily nodded at him and opened the door to find Fiona in a state she’d never seen her in before—flushed skin, wide eyes, her lips trembling.
“Please allow me to speak to my friend alone.” Fiona spoke the words with her gaze fixed on Adam, her voice low but insistent.
Adam glanced from Cecily to Fiona, then nodded. “Of course.”
He said nothing as he left the room, but he did offer Cecily one searing glance before he departed.
When she’d closed the door behind him, Fiona stunned her by bursting into tears.
Cecily went to her immediately. “My dear, are you all right?”
Only after Fiona had dabbed at her face with her handkerchief did Cecily realize her friend was more than sad. She was angry.
“I know you have had a hard time of it,” she began, then paused as if catching her breath. “But there is adventurousness and then there is recklessness. Tonight, you’ve been reckless with your reputation, and I fear for you, my dear.”
Anger from anyone put Cecily on edge, but Fiona’s was nothing like Archibald’s. She understood her friend’s emotions only indicated how much she cared.
She urged Fiona toward one of the chairs near the fire. When she sat, Cecily took the one across from her.
“I care for him, Fiona.” She was afraid to speak of love. Indeed, she wasn’t sure she understood love at all. She’d never had much from her father, and certainly never any from her husband. Her mother, whom she remembered in faded snippets, she’d lost when she was seven, but Cecily recalled her as tender and kind. In the past few years, her aunt and Fiona had been the only people to remind her what it was to be cared about, to be thought of.
“You barely know him, my dear Cecily.”
“Exactly.” What she felt for Adam was so new, so fresh and fragile, she was afraid to name it. They’d known each other for less than a handful of days, and yet it felt as if she’d known him much longer. She didn’t dare admit that to Fiona. It made no sense to her either.
“And now you’re entangled with him, potentially for the rest of your lives.” Fiona was clear-eyed now, very much her practical, logical self. “He should marry you, Cecily. If he truly cared for your reputation, he would.”
Something must have showed on her face—shock or surprise that Fiona had immediately broached the very topic they’d been discussing.
“Has he asked you?”
“I’m not a debutante anymore, Fiona. No man should be forced to marry me to salvage my reputation.” Cecily wished for Adam’s suit coat to wrap herself in again. She was suddenly chilled. Marriage wasn’t anything she’d wanted to contemplate for a very long time. During her final months of mourning, she’d imagined traveling, studying astronomy at university, or perhaps donating her time and energy to charitable causes. The topic of marriage inevitably brought her own disastrous experience with Archibald to mind, so she’d pushed the thought away.
