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BOOK: The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke
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He
was
almost asleep when Heath’s wife Julia tiptoed in with an older maidservant to place a fresh poultice on his scalp. And after that, with the warm herbal unguent dripping down his neck, he could not sleep at all. Disgruntled, he flung off the covers, found flint and tinder to light a candle, and noticed the leather-bound lady’s journal on the chest of drawers opposite the bed.

“Well, well,” he muttered. “All I need is a lacy nightcap and pair of dentures and I could pass as my own grandmother.”

He opened the book, yawning, and settled back into bed to read. He could have told the old saw-bones Scot that it would take an entire bottle of laudanum to knock out a man of Adrian’s size. Not that he’d needed a sedative, anyway. There was nothing wrong with his head but a deep bruise. He’d suffered worse.

He started to read. It was a handwritten journal penned in tidy, feminine script, the subject being—

He blinked. The words jumped about the page before he could see them properly. Ah.

Winter 1815

The gypsy fortune-teller at the ball tonight predicted I would meet my true love within the year. Of course, she wasn’t a genuine Romany. It was only Miranda Forester dressed in disguise again, and I doubt she could predict my next dance, let alone whom I shall love.

But
I
predict that it is dear Emma who shall be wed ere the year’s end—I have seen the way she dotes on Grayson’s baby and remember how once she dreamed of her own children—

The dressing room door that led to the bedchamber opened. By damn, if it was Heath acting mother hen again, and he caught Adrian reading a young girl’s love secrets, he would never hear the end of it. He leapt up from the bed, sending the rosette-embroidered coverlet flying in the air.

With only a moment to spare he vaulted over a footstool and wedged the journal between the other books piled upon the chest of drawers. Then, schooling his face into an expression of startled innocence, he faced the figure who hesitated on the threshold behind him. For an instant neither said a word. He merely savored the unfamiliar thrill that chased down his spine.

It was her. At last. He gazed into her eyes, waiting in anticipation. His little caretaker, in a high-buttoned blue-gray dressing gown, but with her hair cascading about her shoulders in an apricot gold cloud like a heavenly halo.

Or was it two haloes? he wondered. Suddenly it appeared that his angel of mercy had sprouted another head. Another face. Yet even though his vision was blurred, there was no mistaking the concerned frown on her fine-boned face.

Nor the warm familiarity of her voice, the cultured notes penetrating into the deepest recesses of his pounding skull. “Lord Wolverton, what folly is this?” she asked in exasperation. “What were you doing? You may
not
walk about in your condition.”

“I was”—he glanced guiltily at the journal that protruded from the stack of ill-heaped books where he’d stuck it—“searching for the chamberpot.”

“We certainly do not keep it upon the bureau.” She marched into the room, her finger pointing at the four-poster. “Get back into bed so that I may summon a footman to assist you in your private needs.”

Well,
that
was an embarrassment. “I can help myself,” he said, then swayed forward several feet, whereby he was forced to grab the bedpost to steady himself.

“You most assuredly cannot.” She hurried to his side, offering her shoulder for support. “You’re flapping about like a wounded butterfly.”

“A butterfly?” he asked, snorting.

“And with a candle lit,” she scolded him. “In your condition. Do you wish to set the house on fire?”

She guided him to the side of the bed, a humiliation he endured only because it gave him another chance to be closer to her. He did, however, refuse to sit at her urging. He was a fully grown man, not a bloody butterfly. He had not personally answered to anyone in years. He had no intention of allowing this bit of silk and satin, even if she was a Boscastle, to give him orders.

“I don’t want to get into bed again.”

“Get into that bed,” she said.

“I shall do so only when and if I please.”

Emma steeled her spine. She knew what he was about. Charming when he chose, belligerent when he didn’t get his own way. To think he would represent the aristocracy as a peer of the realm, for no matter what the circumstances of his return, he was by law a duke’s firstborn and would inherit.

“Physical and emotional strain will not heal your head wound,” she said briskly. “Get under those covers right now.”

He stood his ground, smiling at her in challenge. The woman thought to master him? “Did you hear what
I
just said?” he asked her.

“It is difficult not to when you are growling in my face,” she replied evenly.

He reclined suddenly on the bed. Not because this deceptively demure-looking gentlewoman so ordered him, but because he was overcome by an unexpected wave of dizziness.

“Growling?” He frowned darkly at her. “I’m barely talking above a whisper. If I really wanted to growl, I could bring down the walls.”

“I have no doubt of that.” She snapped the coverlet over his shoulders, apparently not intimidated by his assertion. “But what would you prove by such an ill-mannered display? You’d only end up making your head ache all the more. It’s not me you’ll punish but yourself.”

He wasn’t sure how it happened, but suddenly he found himself tucked back into bed, with Emma standing at his side, looking uncharitably satisfied and all the more irresistible for what she’d accomplished. The most puzzling, if not humiliating, part of the situation was that he half enjoyed how she fussed over him. It wasn’t the usual attention he drew from a woman, but it pleased him, nonetheless. Naturally, it also led his mind to consider what other pleasures she might offer to console him.

“Why do you and your brother insist on waking me up every hour?” he asked, studying her closely.

“The physician instructed us to keep watch over you.”

“Why?” he asked in a surly voice, curious to see whether he could unnerve her. The few ladies he’d encountered in London who weren’t afraid to associate with him seemed intrigued by his past, not to mention his inheritance.

Emma was a more difficult one to decipher. “We’re checking you for confusion,” she replied. “Changes in temperament and so on.”

He grunted. “Really. And how the devil would you know, may I ask?”

She plumped the pillows up behind his shoulders. He’d be spoon-fed next and taken out in a chair to the garden. “How would I know what?”

“Whether my temperament has changed or not.” He burrowed his shoulders deeper into the pillows, forcing her to work harder to arrange them. He didn’t fool her, either. She gave him a quick, cross look before she leaned against his chest to finish. He drew a breath and felt his damned cock growing hard at her nearness. He’d not had sex with a woman, let alone found one attractive, for so long, he’d begun to wonder if something was wrong with him. Emma Boscastle, bless her, quite pleasantly disabused him of that disturbing concern.

She forced her voice into a patient tone even though she was clenching her teeth. “For one thing, you seemed quite reasonable today before your foolhardy act of bravery. I expect you’re regretting the impulse now.”

“On the contrary. I only wish I’d hit the other man before he got away.”

“You shouldn’t work yourself into a state.”

“I shall work myself into whatever state I feel like, and you’re not going to stop me.”

Her pretty mouth firmed. “The physician said you would be restrained if you did not rest.”

“It would take more than that bearded bag of oats to keep me down.”

“I do have brothers,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

That gave him pause.

But not for long. He was not a man to dwell upon his obstacles, only their overcoming.

“Have you ever restrained a man before?” he asked, dubiously eyeing her slight figure.

“Yes. Those brothers I just mentioned.”

“Recently?”

“Don’t be silly. They are all grown men, even if they don’t always act it.” Her gaze met his. He glimpsed a spirit quite ruthless indeed beneath her ladylike appearance. “Your famly is still in England?” she asked unexpectedly.

He thought of the journal entry he had just read. She had wanted a family of her own, it said. “Yes.”

She waited. “Well, is there anyone I should contact about your condition?”

“I have come closer to death’s door than a dozen men,” he said dryly. “The incident today does not merit alarm.”

“Your family might not agree.”

“I have a brother and sister in Berkshire,” he offered with a thin smile.

She waited again, aware he had deliberately evaded a complete answer. What little gossip she knew of him was that he had been estranged some years ago from his father, the Duke of Scarfield, who had mistakenly believed Adrian to be the result of his young wife’s adulterous love affair. Now, apparently, the duke had admitted he misjudged his late wife and had asked his son to come home.

Adrian’s return after an adventurous stint as an officer for the East India Company and other private irregular armies had been assumed by Society to be a sign of reconciliation.

His manner hinted otherwise.

“I think I should leave you to rest, my lord.”

“No.” His voice was imperious, but his eyes darkened as if to reveal a vulnerability.

She shook her head in bemusement. “You did get the sense knocked out of you today.”

He stared at her.

He had never before wanted to undress a woman more than he wanted to undress Emma Boscastle. Strip her naked from her graceful white neck to small feet. Give her a genuine reason to bemoan his lack of manners.

“If you think I’m lying abed for two days, then you have another thing coming,” he added.

“Gentlemen seldom suffer their indispositions with good humor.”

“Do I have to suffer alone?” he asked in a low, sensual voice.

“Would you like Devon and Drake to sleep beside you?” She stared back at him with a straight face. “I’m sure it could be arranged if you don’t wish to be alone.”

His mouth curled into a beguiling grin. “I had another arrangement in mind. Kiss me before you go.”

“For heaven’s sake!”

“You’re tempted. I can tell.”

She lowered her face to his. “And you’re delirious. At least that is the excuse I am using for your behavior.”

He regardly her calmly. “I’m a very accepting man, Emma.”

She drew her breath at his astounding confidence. “Then accept this—you are staying in bed. Alone.”

“A shame.”

Their gazes locked a silent battle of wills until Emma realized how absurd it was to allow him to unnerve her. He had been born with a duke’s arrogance whether, as rumor went, he accepted the responsibility of his title or not. Well, Emma was the eldest daughter of a no-less-arrogant marquess. If she could hold her own with the Boscastles, she would remain steady on her feet before their friend.

One also had to make allowances for his head injury. Perhaps it would help to think of Lord Wolverton as one of her charges, a person of unrealized potential who needed but a rigorous polishing to shine.

“Now,” she said, sternly but not unkindly, “I want you to stay under these covers and have a nice rest. Everything will look better in the morning.”

“No, it won’t.”

She sighed. “Then it won’t.”

“What if I should require your assistance during the night?”

“It seems quite unlikely. There is, however, a bell on the nightstand for you to summon help.”

He reached up and caught her under the elbows. “Now what are you doing?” she asked indignantly.

“Summoning your help.”

He drew her down to lie beside him on the bed, testing the very limits of her patience. For a mortifying interval she found herself too overwhelmed by the unexpected intimacy of his hard, lithe-muscled body against hers to do anything but breathe. “What are you doing?” she asked again.

His mouth pressed against her ear.

“I thought you were going to fall,” he said in an undertone, shifting his steely frame to settle her onto the side of the bed.

“Yes. Right from the pot into the fire.”

His eyes glittered at her in the candlelight. From fever? From pain? Or from something that she’d do best not to identify?

“Lord Wolverton,” she said with a sigh. “You are making this difficult.”

“That man was wrong today,” he said quietly.

Her heart beat in fierce reaction against her ribs. The emotion in his eyes disarmed her. With the exception of her brothers, the men she knew rarely revealed themselves with such candor. “I don’t know what you’re taking about. I don’t think I
want
to know. That blow on the head—”

“You aren’t cold at all.” His knowing gaze flickered over her. “There are secret fires inside you, Emma.”

She blushed at this foolishness. “Don’t be—”

“—honest?” He leaned forward to capture her face in his hands. “Kiss me once and I shall prove it. Humor me if nothing else.”

Chapter Four

Secret fires, indeed. A kiss to humor him. That horrible insult today. It was more than enough for a day. Yet as his calloused thumbs sculpted her cheekbones, then traced the shape of her jaw, the flames to which he alluded rose steadily inside her. Her body burned. Her nipples contracted, and a pleasing vulnerability pervaded her limbs.

“Warm,” he said, lowering his hard, unsmiling face to hers. “And warmer still. If you turned to ice when he tried to touch you, then the fault is in him, not you.”

How did he know? How could he dare? She dropped her gaze, held her breath, and waited. Aching in shame, in surprise, in hungry anticipation. At any moment this would end. She would tear herself from this beautiful temptation. It surprised her how Sir William’s cutting remark had hurt her. She did not wish to be thought of as cold, and yet she knew it was often how she appeared.

But secret fires—oh, why did women enjoy such flattery? Why did something in her respond to this man?

“You look even more like an angel with your hair let down,” he mused. “I couldn’t take my eyes off you at the wedding.”

She swallowed, her throat aching. “I look…untidy now.”

“You made me—” He hesitated.

“I made you what?” she whispered.

“You made me laugh today,” he said quietly.

“I did what?” she asked, her voice startled.

“I meant that you put me at ease and I enjoyed your company.”

His answer soothed as well as surprised her.

“I was merely being polite.”

“You stole three comfits from a wedding cake,” he reminded her, smiling.

“Don’t you dare tell my family. I’m…I’m the good one.”

“Are you?”

His strong fingers sifted through the pale hair that framed her face. The gentle seduction of this simple act mesmerized her. She was not a woman easily, if ever, tempted by the sensual. She would allow this novel pleasure to continue for only a moment more. Yet how good his touch felt, how it lowered her guard.

“There’s even fire in your hair,” he said, his breath warming her lips. “It’s like gold silk. And deep inside, I’ve always been attracted to fire. Are you a dangerous woman, Emma Boscastle?” he asked lazily.

“Lord Wolverton,” she said with a sigh. Wolf.

“Stay with me awhile,” he said, his gaze holding hers.

“I can’t. We both know that.”

“Only a few moments more. I detest this inactivity. I detest being alone. That’s all I ask.”

He reached behind him and snuffed out the candle between his thumb and forefinger. Emma breathed in the pleasingly mingled scent of his cologne and the tang of smoke that wafted toward the bed.

Terrifying. Thrilling. The ordinary act of extinguishing a candle, performed as if he had done so a hundred times in a similar scenario. But so effective. Shadows engulfed them. She sensed him relax, his powerful muscles untensing. Felt his masculine hands close around her waist. Her breath hitched. Pure male. Mystery, strength, and temptation. He was afraid of being alone.

The sudden darkness lowered inhibitions. How many times had Emma warned others to sidestep shadows, and the men who dwelled, beckoned therein? She hovered now, on the verge herself. And if her principles were being put to the test?

“You were married,” he said quietly. His hand idly stroked her arm, his fingers possessive, knowing.

His firm lips teased hers, captured her sigh. “Yes.”

Slowly he brought his other hand up her side to the silken undercurve of her breast. She quivered, went still, prepared to resist. The hollow between her thighs began to throb. “How long has it been?” he whispered in a gentle voice.

“Are you asking me—”

“Yes.”

She arched her neck, afraid her nerves would shatter. No one else in the world had ever asked, would have dared to ask a question that intimate of her. She did not understand why his curiosity was not offensive. It seemed natural. Again she blamed the dark of the night, his indisposition.

“My husband died almost five years ago,” she answered against the warm hollow of his neck.

His other arm tightened around her waist in a possessive male gesture that sent a shiver of longing through the depths of her body.

“Five years,” he murmured. “And no one’s touched you since? How can that be?”

“Please,” she whispered, swallowed dryly. The heat in her belly intensified until it hurt. How his voice enticed her.

“It must be your choice,” he mused. “Other men have tried, haven’t they? That dandyprat today.”

She couldn’t answer, could barely breathe. And he understood. He told her as much with a touch that moved over her trembling skin, half consolation, half warrior’s conquest. No one else had presumed as much until today. Panic and desire mingled deep inside her.

The worst part of what he’d said was that the absence of love, of passion, in her life had seemed bearable until now. Oh, she’d suffered the lack, but a lady would not acknowledge it.

Not even to herself if she were strong.

Certainly not to a practiced stranger who was subtly awakening all the parts of her that ached so deeply to be caressed. All the parts that a decent woman should pretend did not exist.

Dear God. Oh, God. She swallowed a sob. Adrian barely had to stroke her shoulders, her breasts, and the curve of her hip, and her body quivered, answered to his mastery. In disbelief she became aware of the wonderful tension of her inner muscles, an overwhelming sense of surrender that she had known only a few times in her marriage to Stuart. It was as if a wave of sensation had gathered deep inside her.

How dare this mercenary…this man, how dare he make her feel, force her to acknowledge her sexual desires when she had succeeded in ignoring them for so long.

For years she had struggled to master her emotions. She’d deceived those dearest to her until at last she had managed to deceive even herself. She had been born one of the wicked, passionate Boscastles. And while she’d scolded her boisterous siblings, she had at times envied their ability to enjoy their lives, to fall deeply, irrevocably in love. She’d had a chance. She had loved a quiet man and lost him. She’d begun to believe that passion, that true love, would never be part of her life.

She suppressed a whimper. Restrained the instinct to writhe. Instead, she lifted her hand to her mouth as if to stifle another sob.

How dare he commit that valiant act today and then, only hours later, completely undo her?

“Emma,” he whispered, “do you wish me to stop?”

She stared up into his luminous hazel eyes and saw not the guile of a practiced rake, but the unadulterated desire of a man who did not bother to hide what he felt. It devastated her.

“I want you to kiss me,” he urged. “Just once.”

“Just once,” she whispered, her voice skeptical, unsteady. “Have two more dangerous words ever been uttered by man or devil?”

He paused, gazing deeply into her eyes. “‘I do?’”

“Oh!” She began to pull away. “Lie down.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Adrian, please. You’re a dangerous man.”

He frowned. “I’m not dangerous to you.”

“You
are.

“Why? Because I’ve sold my sword?”

“That’s a good start,” she replied.

“I would never hurt you.”

“Not on purpose.”

He drew her tightly into his arms, ignoring her whispered protests. Her body tingled and burned with the forbidden pleasure of being held to the heat of his hard-muscled male body. His gaze hooded, he stroked his long fingers down her shoulders to her sides, stealing sinful little touches here and there until, by the time his hand slipped under the hem of her gown to her knee, she was shaking, utterly prepared for his seduction. And yet unprepared.

His mouth captured hers in such a subtle assault that it did not seem natural to refuse. Her lips parted in expectation. A sweet pain pierced her, quickened the pulses that beat through the depths of her body.

She tilted her head, answering his dominance. Whereas before the candlelight had gentled the hard contours of his handsome face, the darkness stripped away all illusions of refinement. He
was
a dangerous man. One who had turned his back on Society. One who mesmerized her for reasons beyond her understanding.

He had sold his services to other lands. She wondered why. Surely a duke’s heir did not need a fortune. Was it danger that he, like so many other young gentlemen, had sought? Perhaps he’d been running away. Had he done something he regretted in his past? She supposed it was more important to ask why he had come back.

Her brothers trusted him. And she—

She acknowledged his allure. It drew her, not merely the danger of him, but his openness. Few men recognized her spirit of fun. She did not often allow it to show. She felt the fire inside her now, too, steadily rising.

His lips brushed her wet, swollen mouth again. His hands sought her most vulnerable places. Her back arched. Her body begged for something she was ashamed to admit. He was a conqueror by choice. A moan rose in her throat.

He heard, his instincts sharp. His eyes glinted down at her in the dark. He knew. Scarcely had she released another breath than his hot mouth skimmed her breasts to suckle her nipple through the thin silk.

She shivered, aroused, her body weightless. Emma Boscastle letting a man she had only just met nuzzle her breasts, suckle at her so indecently. Pleasure lanced like sunlight through her senses, her confusion.

“Lord Wolverton,” she said, unable to subdue another shiver, “this cannot be good for your health.”

His tongue encircled her nipple, a slow tease of sensation that intensified her breathless pleasure. “Believe me, it is.”

“What about your injury?” she asked, her muscles tightening.

He raised his head and kissed her wetly on the mouth. She moaned again. “What injury?” he asked, managing to sound guileless and wicked at once. “You have a beautiful body, Emma Boscastle, and a keen mind. I kept looking at you today during the wedding.”

“Because of my mind or my body?” she whispered wryly, wondering why his confession should scandalize her when what he was doing was far worse. Her nipples stiffened impudently against his mouth. She was practically offering herself, her breasts at least, to his advances.

“Both,” he answered with a fleeting smile. “You appealed to me. That is all I know.”

“You desired me…at the wedding?”

“Yes,” he said, hesitating only slightly. “Does that offend you?”

“In front of witnesses?” Her voice was almost inaudible. The clamoring in her body drowned out everything else, the measure of her breath, the deep ticking of her pulses.

He was taking soft, sensual bites of her breasts, and she seemed unable to discourage him. Thick warm fluid lubricated the folds of her sex. She could only imagine what it would feel like for his agile swordsman’s hand to touch her there, to penetrate her aching recesses.

“It’s too much,” she said in a raw voice, her spine bowing.

“I have to be honest,” he murmured, “it’s not enough for me.”

She swallowed. “There is such a thing as being too honest. Certain thoughts shouldn’t be expressed.”

He appeared to ponder this, but obviously at no great concern, for his attention soon returned to kissing her throat and nibbling tenderly at her breasts again. “I disagree,” he said in a low disarming voice. “We are both of us past the age of indecision—and both of us have made love before.”

“Certainly not with each other.”

“Isn’t that what makes this all the more tempting?” he challenged quietly.

Tempting.

“I’m a widow,” she whispered. “That part of my life is over.”

“You’re a woman, Emma. That won’t ever change.”

She felt a bittersweet little twist of acknowledgment, of longing. “It has.”

“I do not remember ever being this attracted to a woman before,” he said thickly.

His hand drifted from her hip to the hollow between her thighs. She bit back a sob. His touch, or lack of it, was torture. Her cleft pulsed in silent need. She dared not move.

She glanced down, realizing her legs were bare, and her gown was bunched around her hips. How different they were. How carelessly this man sinned while she diligently pounded sin with her bare fists back into the gutter where it belonged.

In fact, she could imagine her students’ exclamations of wicked glee if they could see her now. Emma Boscastle in bed with a dashing aristocrat, having merrily abandoned all the principles that not only the academy represented but those she had made personal sacrifices to uphold.

“I am at your mercy, madam,” he said unexpectedly into the lengthening silence.

She gazed up at his beautiful face with cynical resolve. “At my mercy?” she asked faintly.

“I think I’ve lost my senses,” he whispered, his voice penitent.

“Well, you certainly won’t find them under my gown.”

He laughed and slid his large arms around her waist. “Emma, oh, Emma. I’m dying of desire for you. Why do you have to be a Boscastle?”

“I’ve asked myself that same question on many occasions.”

He slid his hand up her belly to her neck and undid the buttons of her gown. Her soft white breasts swelled, the pink rims peeping above the silk.

BOOK: The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke
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