An Inconvenient Duke

by Anna Harrington

  Dani bit her lip as Harriett left the room. No doubt she’d have the kitchens in a flurry in a matter of minutes, heating the milk for the chocolate and water for the bath. She didn’t want any of it, yet she didn’t stop her simply because doing all that would make her aunt feel better.

  She set the music box back on the mantel and closed the sprung lid, then began to pick up the pieces of the mechanism that had been scattered across the rug. When she found the little brass key, she slipped it into the small keyhole in the back with a prayer that Harriett was correct and that they could have the music box repaired.

  “No more,” she whispered as she traced her fingertip over the twisted hinges and the lid that folded, skewed, over the bent plate. “Nothing more is going to break, not if I can help it.”

  Snatching up her wrap, she paused only to grab the iron key from the drawer in her dressing table before hurrying downstairs and through the house to the front door.

  Harriett followed her into the entry hall, clearly alarmed at her behavior. “Danielle! Where are you going?”

  “I have an errand to run.” She wrapped the shawl around her shoulders. “I’ll be back before the bathwater cools.”

  She raced out the door and down the front steps, the key to the armory clutched tightly in her hand.

  Twenty-Four

  Marcus dropped his shoulder and slammed an underhanded punch into the sawdust-filled bag. When it went flying into the air, he pivoted on his left foot and kicked a second bag. Then a third and a fourth—each bag hanging from the beams in a circle around him swung randomly and jangled on its chains. He spun and ducked as he kicked or punched each bag randomly, whichever one moved closest to him first, to send it swinging away and the next one arcing toward him. A group fight.

  He welcomed it.

  Sweat stung his eyes, trickled down his bare back, and soaked through his breeches, and his arms and legs burned from exertion. But even that wasn’t enough to keep his mind off Hartsham and the torture he wanted to subject the man to for daring to harm the women Marcus loved.

  Or his own torture at having lost Danielle.

  With a vicious kick, he sent the nearest bag high into the air.

  Christ! Why didn’t she understand the danger she kept exposing herself to, or how the thought of her being harmed was enough to put him into his own grave? He wanted to marry her, wanted a life with her—wanted to claim the sense of purpose and the best qualities of himself that she brought out in him. But he couldn’t serve properly in Parliament, focus his attentions on running the dukedom, or be a good father and husband if he was constantly worried that she’d be harmed.

  Frustration over her rejection and helplessness to save her from herself churned inside him. Not even being here in the armory, working himself to exhaustion, helped ease the burning pain or lighten the black hollow in his chest.

  When he stopped to catch his wind and dropped his aching arms to his sides, a tingle of awareness prickled at his nape. He reached a hand out to the last bag that still moved on its chain and stilled it.

  Not looking over his shoulder, he called out, “Hasn’t anyone told you that it’s dangerous to sneak up on a man when he’s surrounded by weapons?”

  “Hasn’t anyone told you that it’s dangerous to cross a woman?”

  He grimaced as he turned to face Danielle.

  She stood in the doorway, leaning a shoulder casually against the doorframe, her bonnet dangling from her hand by its ties. But there was nothing at all casual about the intensity that radiated from her or the anger that simmered beneath her alluring surface.

  Leveling a hard look at him, she shoved herself away from the door and came slowly toward him. Damn himself that his gaze dropped to watch the angry sway of her hips. He knew she was a fury, ready to launch the second battle in the war that had sprung up between them, but he couldn’t stop the tantalizing spark of desire she flared inside him. One made even sharper by the heat in her flashing eyes.

  She stopped in front of him, and the two of them stared at each other for a long moment. Two opponents sizing up the other before a fight.

  As an excuse for why he let his eyes drift heatedly over her, he asked, “How is your hand?”

  “Cut.” She did the same, trailing over his chest and abdomen, all the way down to his bare feet before moving just as deliberately back up his body. When her gaze moved over his crotch, his cock jumped. Her eyes darted up to his. Although he saw the hitch of her breath, he didn’t dare let himself believe that the flush of her cheeks was anything more than ongoing anger with him. “Yours?”

  “Bruised.” He untied the knots that held the long strips of cloth in place over his knuckles.

  “Then maybe you should stop fighting.”

  He paused as he unwrapped the cloths. Her underlying meaning pierced more than the chastising tone of her voice. “Then maybe people should stop attacking me.” And the ones I love.

  Her mouth tightened, and the urge to kiss her until it turned supple and yielding seized him. If he did, then she really would grab up one of the weapons and use it on him.

  She stepped past him to the bags. “So this is how you spend your time.” She tilted back her head to glance up the length of chain toward the beams high above. “Pummeling innocent bags of sawdust and grain.” She arched a brow but didn’t dare to slide him a glance, not even when she placed her bonnet on the top of the bag, where it had been fashioned to look like a man’s head. “Maybe I should try punching this. Maybe then I’d think I could control the people who trust me.”

  Before he could bite out a reply to that to tell her how very wrong she was, she drew her hand into a tight little fist and smacked it knuckles first into the bag, which didn’t move. Not even to wiggle on its chain.

  When she drew back a second time, preparing to punch the bag with all her might, he grabbed her hand by the wrist and stopped her before she could wound her good hand. “No.”

  She spun around to face him, her breathing coming fast and shallow in her anger. So fast that the top swells of her breasts rose and fell rapidly at the lace neckline of her yellow muslin dress. Her lips were slightly parted, and a surprised gasp fell from them when he pulled her fingers open and placed a kiss to her palm.

  “Never punch with your thumb inside your fist. You’ll break it when the punch lands.” He refolded her fingers into a fist, her thumb curled over the outside, and jerked a nod toward the bag. “Go ahead, if you think hitting it will help.”

  She clenched both her fist and her jaw. “Or I could punch you.”

  “Go ahead,” he repeated solemnly, “if you think it will help.”

  With a glare, she yanked her hand free and stepped away from him.

  “I won’t surrender, Marcus.” Her angry voice reverberated through the room, echoing off the walls and metal weaponry. “Not to you, not to anyone.”

  “Thank God for that.” He slid a heated glance over her and appreciatively arched a brow as he murmured, “Only a damn fool wants a submissive woman.”

  Her cheeks flushed, although by the way her eyes flared at his audacity, he couldn’t have said whether from desire or anger. “It was wrong of you to couple your proposal with shutting down Nightingale.”

  He bit back a reminder that he hadn’t asked for that at all. She’d swallowed enough of her pride to seek him out, and he wasn’t in a hurry to drive her away. Dear God, how much he’d missed her!

  Her chin raised slightly. “But I am willing to forgive you for it.” Her mouth twisted in consternation. “And love you regardless.”

  Hope sparked inside him. He took a step toward her, only for her to retreat.

  “But the next vanishing that Nightingale does will—”

  “Hell no,” he bit out. Her words came like an unexpected punch.

  She coolly arched a brow.

  “You’re still pla
nning on putting yourself into danger, even now. Even when you know how desperate a man Hartsham is.” He bit back a curse that would have curled her toes. Knowing better than to reach for her, he raked frustrated fingers through his hair. “You won’t stop until you’re dead, will you?”

  “You’re a hypocrite,” she chastised. “You don’t want me to work with Nightingale because you think it’s too dangerous, yet you’re chasing after Hartsham.”

  “I can hold my own against Hartsham.”

  “Is that what this place is for? All of this, to arrest one man?” She waved her hand at the armory around her and the weapons that covered the walls. “Look at this place! This isn’t for going after an earl who couldn’t win at fisticuffs if his life depended upon it. All these weapons, impenetrable walls—for heaven’s sake, there’s a spiked portcullis over the main door!” She jabbed an angry finger at the floor. “This place is for waging war.”

  “Yes, it is.” He strode toward her, closing the distance between them.

  But this time, she stood her ground. The anger pumped inside her so intensely that she visibly shook with it, and with something else that he could see boiling up inside her that was just as intense, just as hot.

  “So that you can continue to take on the world, so you can continue to fight,” she bit out the indictment. “You’re so eager to strip from my life the purpose that Nightingale gives it, yet you’ll go to lengths like this to find some kind of meaning for your own.”

  “Yes, damn it!” he snapped, so fiercely that it echoed through the building. “I want purpose in my life. But not at the cost of the ones I love.”

  She pushed her hand against his shoulder as he leaned into her, now so close that he could feel the heat of her front on his bare chest. He could smell the lavender scent of her that engulfed his senses, sent his head swirling, and had his cock stiffening. Just one more step and his hips would be pressed to hers, her yielding body molded against his hardness.

  “You think that just because you’re a powerful general and a duke that you can do whatever you please, whenever you want—the rest of the world be damned.” Her voice emerged as a throaty rasp, one that spiraled like liquid fire through him all the way down to his bare feet. “But you can’t. Not with me.”

  Every muscle in his body tensed in aching desire to claim the defiant fire inside her.

  “This isn’t the army, Marcus.” Her eyes blazed as she shoved again at his shoulder.

  A rising need pulsated low in his gut. The same need he now felt radiating from her.

  “And I am not your enemy.”

  “Is this the only reason you came here, Danielle?” he drawled, audaciously lowering his mouth close to hers. “To yell at me?”

  “No. I’m here to negotiate terms of surrender.”

  “But you said you’d never surrender.”

  “Not me.” Each word tickled sweetly over his lips. “You.”

  He gave a short laugh. “I’ve never surrendered in my life.”

  “Then it’s time you learned how.”

  When she pushed against his shoulder again, he reluctantly stepped back. The strips of cloth still dangled half-undone from his palms and wrists as he crossed his arms over his chest and fixed a look on her that had terrified new recruits but barely gave her pause before she mimicked his posture, crossed her own arms, and stared boldly back.

  “I will marry you if you agree to meet certain conditions,” she announced.

  He would have laughed at her impudence if the subject weren’t so very important. “And what would those be?”

  “That once Hartsham is arrested, you agree to support me in the next war.”

  He didn’t like these terms, not wanting Danielle putting herself into the fray at all. But he was willing to hear her out. “What war?”

  “The one that Nightingale will wage in Parliament and in the courts against all those who abuse women. We’ll do it openly, too, right out in the streets, for all to see and hear.”

  His pulse stuttered. She was changing the focus of the network, just as he’d asked. But both of them would pay a price for this. He in Parliament and she in her heart at giving up directly helping women in need. Yet he took hope in her concession and tossed out his own condition. “No more vanishings.”

  “One more.”

  “No more.” A position on which he would never budge.

  “One more,” she repeated pointedly, clearly brooking no argument on this. “And then they will stop.”

  Her bright intensity had seeped into him, burning low in his gut, and he stalked toward her, steering her backward and into the shadows falling along the edge of the room where the afternoon sunlight didn’t reach. “Who?”

  “The woman you’ve arranged for Hartsham to deliver to you.”

  He stopped in midstep at that and scoured her with a look to judge if she was serious. Her spine remained ramrod straight, but she couldn’t stop the flush in her cheeks from spreading down her neck to her breasts from the heat of his stare or how her breath now came in small pants.

  “Once she cooperates and tells you what she knows about Hartsham and the brothel, her life will be in danger. She won’t have anyone to protect her from Hartsham if he’s somehow exonerated in the Lords. Or if anyone else from the brothel decides to take revenge against her and make an example of what happens to prostitutes who turn against the house manager. Including Scepter, if it turns out that they’re involved.”

  The same way they did with John Porter, cutting out his tongue and pinning it to the wall as a reminder of what happens to those who talk about them.

  “She won’t be safe as long as she remains in England,” Danielle continued. “I want to use Nightingale’s network to take her out of the country to America and change her identity, to give her a fresh start somewhere she’ll be safe. It’s the least we can do for her.”

  He closed the remaining distance between them with a single step. “But she might be just as guilty in all this as Hartsham. She might be willingly giving him information for her own gain.”

  “Then consider it exile.” Resilience and strength shone in her eyes. “After that, the vanishings will stop, and Nightingale’s network closes down.”

  He cupped her face between his hands, even as the ends of the half-removed cloth strips still dangled around his forearms and tickled at the top swells of her breasts. “And our future together begins.”

  Her lips parted, trembling slightly at the enormity of what she was agreeing to. “Yes.”

  His mouth came down possessively against hers, sealing their negotiations with a blistering kiss.

  For a single beat, she stood frozen within his embrace, her lips unmoving beneath his and her hand still against his shoulder. Then her mouth eagerly responded to his, and the hand on his shoulder that had been pushing him away now pulled him close in an aching need. She pressed herself against him, and the inarticulate noises that came from her throat weren’t moans of pleasure or soft mewlings—they were fierce, frustrated sounds of need and desire, swelling up from deep inside her and matching his own yearning.

  Her hands lost their purchase on his sweat-slickened shoulders, so her fingertips sank into the hard muscles of his back to maintain her fierce hold on him. When she thrust her hips forward against his, a throbbing ache consumed him. He pushed her backward and pinned her between his body and the wall.

  With both hands planted against the bricks on either side of her, his hips pressing into hers to hold her in place, he kissed her relentlessly, hot and openmouthed, until she had to tear her lips away to pant for air. Even then he didn’t lift his mouth from her, lowering his head to lick and suck at her throat while her pulse pounded deliciously against his lips. With a groan, he sank his teeth into her neck.

  She cried out at the sensation of pleasure-pain that shot through her. Her hand at his shoulder slipp
ed up to grab his hair and yanked his head back, curving his neck toward her as her mouth darted to bite at his throat the same way he’d done to hers. The bite shot all the way down to the tip of his cock, and he sucked in a mouthful of air through clenched teeth.

  Regaining control of the kiss, he grabbed her wrists and pinned both of her arms over her head with one hand. Her back arched against the wall, and her bosom was thrust up temptingly toward him.

  “Sweet Lucifer,” he murmured, brushing his free hand down her front. “What you do to me, Danielle.” He cupped her breast against his palm. “How you drive me mad.”

  “And you with me…you frustrating man,” she panted out when he began to massage her through the layers of her clothing, hard enough to pucker her nipples into little points.

  “Good. Because if this is frustration, then I want nothing more than to frustrate you for the rest of our lives.”

  To punctuate that promise, he swept a finger beneath her bodice between her skin and chemise and teased at her nipple.

  He grinned in triumph when a mewl of mounting desire fell from her lips. “I want to spend every day with you, arguing and making up. Just like this.”

  He shoved his hand inside her dress and captured her breast, rubbing her nipple hard against his palm. The whimper on her lips dissolved into an aching moan of need.

  “I won’t stop helping those women,” she rasped out obstinately, even as she arched her back to push herself against his hand. She shook with need and yearning, and her hips pressed into his, unwittingly caressing his hardening cock through their clothes. “Even if it means sacrificing everything.”

  Her words slapped him, stunning him just long enough for her to slip her hands from his grasp. But instead of pulling away, she wrapped her arms around his neck and tugged him down to her, to give him a scorching kiss that had her eagerly rising up onto tiptoes to meet his hungry mouth.

  “Then we’re even,” he ground out hoarsely against her lips, his voice little more than a husky scratch. “Because I plan on doing the same for you, love.”