It was…

Hungry, carnal, scorching. All take…and take…and take.

Slickness poured like warm honey between her legs. Lust consumed her.

Their anxious, desperate hands sought skin and found none. Until she reached for the duke’s exposed smalls. Hip muscles clenched underhand. She scraped her fingernails along that hip.

He answered with a guttural growl against her mouth.

What delicious power. It was shocking. Wonderful. She wanted more.

She flattened her hand against him, seeking bare skin.

The duke broke their kiss. He staggered backward and grabbed the mantle with both hands. His head hung low.

“You can’t do that.”

Heels scraping backward, she put some distance between them. She was dazed, checking her surroundings. “Do what?”

“Touch me like that. It was—” His mouth pulled a grim line.

She was certain he forbade himself from finishing. She had no such compunction. “It was what? Overwhelming? Annihilating yet elevating at the same time?”

His laugh was low and lusty, the kind a woman heard from the corners of midnight gardens and dark alleys. “You have a talent for words, Mrs. Chatham.” He pushed off the mantle. “I can only say mine were of a baser nature.”

She wished to hear them, but this thing between them was too potent. Another kiss and they’d set the room on fire. Or find their way to his bed.

Whatever modesty his waistcoat afforded him was long gone. His breeches were shamelessly tented, and a rakish side-smile changed his visage. “Do we repeat this? Your rubbing oil of amber on my leg, my soaking it, then more…rubbing?”

She set her knuckles on kiss-swollen lips, stifling a giggle. Oh, he was awful, grinning at her.

“I like this game of ours, this patient and physic,” he said.

“Your Grace!” She was properly scandalized. “Please. Soak your leg.”

He eased his damaged limb into the butter churn. Water sloshed over the sides as he gave a playful, “I feel better already.”

Hair falling about her face, she swiped the jar and scissors off the floor, no small feat with her corset and heavy velvet gown. “Must I remind you that you have a ball to attend?”

“It will be a pleasure as long as you’re there.”

“Don’t waste your dances on me.” She looked crossly at the butter churn, the bloom of the kiss fading. He would dance other women. Not her. Never her.

“Why shouldn’t I dance with you?”

Her skin was terribly hot and the room felt over-bright. “This is only one soak and one application of the oil. There’s no telling how long this will last.”

“We can walk in the garden and steal a kiss.”

“Not with me, you won’t.”

“You’re pretty when your irritable. Your eyes darken and your move with such interesting precision.”

“Don’t flirt with me.”

“I’m not. I’m simply complimenting my healer. You’ve done a better job this hour than England’s best physicians. My leg feels good.”

He stood there, hale and hearty, leg in the churn, dressed in day finery, arms crossed over his chest, absurdly appealing. He’d trusted her, appreciated her, and that pushed past the protective, thorny parts of her heart. The kiss helped too, adding a new, dangerous dimension.

She set the jar and scissors on the mantle. “I’m glad to hear it.”

They were at impasse, surrounded by a sensual web of their own making. Air was thick with ardor and unsated wants and confusion. Gaiety from the house party’s outdoor entertainments broke into the silent room. Did she need another reminder why this interlude never should’ve happened?

New voices glided up from the stairs.

“Simms,” she said, suddenly stricken. “I must leave.”

“Stay.” The duke reach for her wrist which she yanked back. “You’re in my sitting room.”

“With your breeches cut in half,” she cried. “Look at me! He’ll know what we did.”

The kiss was a clarion call to how deep and wide passions ran between her and the Duke of Richland. No long smolder for them. They were fireworks, burning fast and bright.

It’d be best for all if the household assumed that she’d instructed His Grace on how to administer the oil and that he soaked his injured leg alone. It’d be best for all if she disappeared and lost herself in her gardening. What a lonely prospect.

Gripping handfuls of skirts, she headed for the door.

“Mrs. Chatham. Wait.”

She whirled around with a hushing finger to her lips. “Shhhh.”

By the volume of the valet’s voice, she’d guess he was at the foot of the stairs. Leaving unnoticed was still a possibility. Fortune favored her this day.

The duke smiled his pirate smile and shifted his stance, splashing more water onto the floor. “I haven’t properly thanked you. I will when we dance tonight.”

“We shall not,” she whisper-hissed.

“Then how shall I thank you?” he asked, a tad louder.

She glared at him with all the disapproval a thoroughly kissed woman could muster. “You are incorrigible. If you want to thank me, write a letter.”

Everyone else did. Cold, polite letters. With that lonely prospect on her heart, she sped off to the sanctity of her room, velvet skirts swaying furiously.




CHAPTER 5




EVERY FASHIONABLE PERSON IN KENT, and the next district over, was crammed in his ballroom. Chandeliers blazed with brilliant, piercing light. Sherry, wine, and champagne sparkled in glasses because the dowager had spared no expense. Men and women danced a minuet, their lines so long he couldn’t see who was at the far end.

Ebullient laughter spilled from open doorways and washed over him. It was a pleasant thing for a man to watch his home filled with splendor. It’d be more enjoyable to share the night with a companionable woman. One given to spicy kisses and saucy quips. Yet, Mrs. Chatham was nowhere to be found.

“A fine night,” George said, tipping his head at the ballroom.

“It is.”

Lady Jacintha, the daughter of the Earl of Kendal, stepped out of the ballroom onto the back terrace. She flicked open a bronze fan, the silk flaring wide. The fan could be preening bird feathers. Three tittering young ladies clustered in the half-light around the earl’s daughter. Lady Jacintha smiled coyly at him over the rim of her fan.

His name had somehow landed on her dance card.

Between that mistake and the invisible Mrs. Chatham, his joy was quickly evaporating.

His brother rested a hip on the stone balustrade. “Your leg. Is it better from your medicinal treatment?”

“I’m well.”

“And apparently only capable of monosyllabic answers.”

He gave George a cross look which bounced off him.

Fire flickered from decorative brass bowls all around them. Enough light for well-bred ladies to feel safe; dim enough to invite a stolen kiss. Moths danced around the flames, dipping close and diving back. Rather like what went on with his elusive neighbor. There’d been missed opportunities in the past, chances to test courtship’s waters. He’d been set on his work. She with her…oh, he didn’t know how she’d filled her days, but he wanted to.

George tapped a flawless shoe on flagstone. “Everyone’s abuzz about which dance cards will bear the privilege of your name.”

“You said that an hour ago.” He scanned the ballroom again.

The room was a crush of panniered-skirts and frizzed hair. The square, ratted style was all the rage. Mrs. Chatham had blessedly not given into that fashion, which made him grateful for her genteel, countrified life. He liked her pretty blond locks, but the woman who bore them was nowhere to be found.

George chuckled and smoothed his jabot. “She’s not coming.”

“She?”

“Mrs. Chatham. The woman you’ve been searching for all night like a bloodhound.”

“Why do you say that?”

George’s gaze raked him from head to toe. “Your sudden change of fashion gives you away. Men who don’t dress well sing a different tune when they want to catch a woman’s eye.”

His brother had him there.

He’d surprised Simms and called for the new black, superfine cutaway coat his tailor had delivered before the house party. An onyx silk waistcoat, ending at his waist (unlike the outdated one he’d worn today) added to the ensemble. Ink-black breeches covered his legs. Severe. Dramatic. He stood out in a crowd adorned in confectionary colors.

The same crowd with the power to crush unassuming widows.

Once the languor of their afternoon kiss had diminished, he’d been careful not to mention Mrs. Chatham to Simms. Protective even. He didn’t want to sully her reputation.

His mind was already set when it came to his neighbor. He was going to marry her though he hadn’t mentioned it to a soul. A minimum courtship was in order, then he’d ask her.

After today’s kiss, how could she say no?

George scrutinized him, humming thoughtfully. “Perhaps your torn breeches gave you away? Or the hair pins abandoned on your floor?”

He cursed under his breath.

George produced two wire hair pins and passed them discreetly over. “Your secret is safe with me. Simms was too busy fussing over your shoe buckles to notice me picking them up.”

“It’s not what you think,” he said, stuffing the pins into his coat pocket.

“There’s the rub. It doesn’t matter what I think.” George’s arm flung wide at the ball. “It doesn’t matter what they think. What matters is you. Your happiness.”

His happiness. A gift rarely bestowed on people of privilege. They enjoyed wealth and comfort, a fair trade for duty. But this sudden advice on happiness piqued him.

Was his brother encouraging a dalliance? George was highly attuned to who was duchess material and who wasn’t. London’s finer doors would never open for Mrs. Chatham, a widow from Kent. They would for a duchess. It didn’t matter. He liked her exactly as she was.