Page 12 of A Duke's Christmas Carol
“So you say,” he remarked.
“Well, itisthe truth, so yes, I do say,” she muttered, her patience waning. “Now, if I may have my stocking back, I shall be out of your?—”
She lunged for the flimsy drape of fabric, underestimating the vast height of the duke as he moved the garment out of herreach. Knocked off balance, her tiptoed feet tried to adjust, but they were still too cold, not quite responding to the wishes of her brain.
Her ankle wobbled and she felt herself falling. Apparently, here in the north, she had become the clumsiest woman in existence, determined to sprain every limb before she departed.
In a blur, the duke’s arm caught her about the waist and pulled her inward, holding her tight to his chest. It left Valerie breathless, the smooth motion reminding her of those shameless dances that the French enjoyed—dances she had only heard about in books and gossip but had never seen for herself. Waltzes and suchlike. Or was that the Austrians? She could not recall, too flustered to think of where to put her hands, much less who had invented such dances.
“Those feet seem compelled to get you into trouble,” the duke said, his voice so resonant that Valerie felt the vibrations shudder from him to her. “You ought to be more careful.”
Breathing hard, she peered up at him, her hands coming to rest on that broad, muscular chest. As her palm settled above his heart, however, his grip on her waist tightened like a warning, a rebuke.
She quickly moved that hand to his arm instead, wondering why he did not want her to feel his heartbeat.
“I am not usually so clumsy,” she told him, her voice sounding strange to her ears: thick and strained.
“Thieves rarely are,” he replied. “But seductresses—they will try any trick. Falling across a gentleman’s path is the oldest trick of all.”
Her anger flared afresh. “That isnotwhat I am doing! I had no intention of crossing paths with you, which is why I only insisted on being alone when I was out in the gardens. I assumed there was no risk of meeting you there.”
He rode through the snow for you…her mind whispered traitorously.
She shook away the thought like a wasp at a summer picnic. “Whatever you think I am, Your Grace, I am not that. I am just someone trying to get to Scotland.”
“Scotland?” He frowned. “Whatever for?”
“That is none of your concern,” she mumbled, her cheeks growing hot beneath the curious gaze of his blue eyes. “But now, because of this storm, I shall be terribly delayed. Indeed, I would have left at first light, just as I said I would, were it not for the fact that there is snow up to my thighs.”
His eyes flashed with something, a hunger that halted her breath altogether. This time, when his grip on her tightened, it did not feel like a warning but of something… possessive.
“And your wrist,” he growled.
The thumb and little finger of his other hand curved around that injured joint, while the rest of his fingers slid over the back of her hand. Her palm opened instinctively, her arm moving without resistance as he raised it to get a better look.
She gasped as if she were in front of the fire again, as the duke bent his head and grazed his lips against the bare skin below the edge of her kid gloves. A shiver tingled all the way down her arm and into her chest, scorching her lungs until breath was no longer an unconsciously done thing.
Indeed, her mind was just catching up to the sensation, when his lips suddenly left the sensitive skin of her wrist… and crushed against her mouth instead. He pulled her tighter to him as his lips caught her mouth, his kiss hungry and startling and thrilling and bewildering. Her thoughts became a storm, as dizzying as the snowfall of last night, her heart beating so fiercely that she feared it might crack a rib from the inside.
She gasped against his mouth, and he kissed her harder, as if he meant to steal the breath from her. Not realizing he had already done so the moment he had pressed his lips to hers.
About to muster the courage to kiss him back, swept along by the hunger, the need that radiated into her and began to burn within her, she gasped again when he suddenly broke away. He did not push her backward, but the abrupt stop felt like he had; the absence of that heated press of his mouth to hers a winding blow indeed.
Instead,hetook a step away, his eyes glinting as he said, “If you enter my study—or, indeed, any of my private rooms—again, there will be punishment far worse than any kiss.”
She stared at him as her heart tried to explode and her lungs were locked in a flustered dispute about how to breathe again, her skin flushed with such heat that she wondered if they had moved too close to the fire. His words, paired with that intense gleam in his eyes, should have terrified her, so why was she only furious that he had stopped before she had been able to kiss him back? Why had she… liked what he had clearly intended to be a penalty?
Saxby did say this castle was cursed. Perhaps, it has afflicted me already, cursing me with madness.
“Get out,” the duke said, as he dropped the stocking into her hand.
Certain that to be in his proximity would just muddy her mind further, she hurried from his side. Pausing to retrieve her shoes and her other stocking, she did not attempt to put them on. Instead, she walked right out of the room, barefoot, as her breath sawed in and out.
I must never cross paths with him again,she vowed, while her lips still tingled with the graze of her very first kiss.
CHAPTER SIX
“These French women, they are so refreshing! Not once did Mademoiselle Clemenceau ask to be my duchess, though she rather liked calling out ‘Your Grace’ in that irresistible accent of hers,” Richard Harte, the Duke of Delamere, said with a sly grin and a wink. “You ought to spend six months in France, Adrian; it would do you the world of good.”
