Dukes By the Dozen

“Too far. And far too inconvenient,” he returned. “I find I’m a duke, and I ought to be able to persuade a bishop to write me a special license. We can be married tomorrow morning.”

“Beech, you can’t be serious.” She gaped at him. “And anyway, tomorrow it’s going to snow.” She turned to the darkened window. “See, it has already begun to fall.”

Now that he had made up his mind, he would allow no obstacles to block his path. “Snow or no snow, I mean what I say. I always mean what I say.”

But she was unsure—of him, surely, and probably of herself. “Beech. We dare not.”

“Why not?” He set himself to convince her. “Where is the girl who never refused a dare? Where is my old friend, the girl who went first, jumping off the old bridge into the Avon that summer afternoon?”

“That girl was thirteen and a monstrous hoyden.”

“Nothing about you was monstrous. You were magnificent—daring and bold and everything I admired.”

“That was a long time ago.” Her low voice was full of emotion he could not quite fathom. “We aren’t children now. We can’t jump off bridges or go rushing out into the snow.”

“Why not? What are you afraid of?”

“Afraid it will make everything worse,” she whispered.

“How? I thought you were about to be banished to the hinterlands? How much worse could it be?”

That put the wind back in her sails—the color rose in her cheeks. “You have a point.”

“Don’t go to the maiden auntie,” he pled. “Come away with me into the dark and snow and make me happy—as happy as I promise to make you. Please.” He wanted it so badly he ached.

He ached for her affection. He ached for her simple kind touch.

So, to convince her he meant every word, he kissed her. But what began in persuasion, soon became something more, something hungrier and more assertive. A hunger they shared—her lips, her lovely, plush, bow-shaped lips—pressed into his again and again as if she could not get enough of kissing him.

Marcus had never thought of himself as an impulsive man—his youthful brashness had been thoroughly trained out of him by the Royal Navy. But the feel of her delicately boned fingers combing through his beard fired more than his imagination—he felt the heat and promise of her touch like a brand.

So, he angled her mouth for a deeper kiss.

She met him without hesitation. Her tongue stroked and licked at him, kindling the fire between them with each blissful touch. She folded herself into his embrace and everything within him, every nerve, every fiber of his being, was reaching out to her with heat and urgency. He left her lips to kiss his way down her neck, to taste the sweet slide of her skin while she angled her head in response, granting him tacit access while her hands raked through his old-fashioned queue, pulling away the carefully wrapped ribbon.

“Lord, Beech. Even your hair smells divine.”

She smelled of velvet and winter irises, chilly and fresh, and he wanted to gather her in like a bouquet.

But it was she who gathered him, her hands at his coat, parting the buttons and pushing it wide across his chest. Her palm sliding through the narrow slit at the throat of his shirt beneath his stock to lie flat against his skin. Her mouth at his nape, putting her lips and teeth to the sensitive tendon at the side of his neck until he was bowing his head to let her have her way with him.

Until he felt her explore the line of his shoulder, and curve down around his shoulder to his upper arm. Or rather what was left of it.

“No.” His voice was a fog of strangled desperation—and the relief when she ceased her exploration was so profound it nearly unmanned him. Nearly. Because there was some noise above, at the top of the stair that started them into flight. “Come.”

They plummeted toward the bottom of the stair, hand in hand in a breathless race, like the children they once had been.

“Left here,” she directed, navigating the narrow turnings. “And then left again for the door that leads to the stable path.”

In the darkness of the passage Marcus paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Ready?” If she went with him now, she would be doing more than crossing a threshold.

She drew in a deep breath before she nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

He pushed open the door to the cold night air and held fast to her hand as they flew across the bitterly cold cobbled courtyard of the stable block. The night wind lashed at them, sending Pease Porridge’s velvet skirts and plain petticoats whipping against her legs, making him regret he had not thought to retrieve his heavy sea cloak from the footmen—she was like to perish in so insubstantial a gown.

But there were his carriage and coachmen in the yard, already putting the blanketed horses back into harness, mindful that he had instructed them that he would be no longer than an hour and a half at the ball.