Rules to Catch a Devilish Duke

Rules to Catch a Devilish Duke Page 18

by Suzanne Enoch

  So now someone was trying to spy on her? Scowling, Sophia rushed forward, grabbed the door handle, and yanked the door open.

  Adam Baswich stood there, his expression for once easy to decipher. Her abrupt appearance had plainly stunned him.

  Sophia opened her mouth to demand an explanation for his presence. Before she could do more than draw a breath, though, he clamped a hand over her mouth and barged into the room.

  He swung the door closed, half carrying her into the middle of the room. Once she had her feet back under her, she pushed away from him. “What do you think you’re doing?” she snapped, yanking the sagging sleeve of her night rail back onto her shoulder. “You think I’m a fool, remember?”

  “Keep your voice down,” he warned in a low tone. “You said you twisted your ankle. I was assisting you into the room.”

  “Well, assist yourself out of the room.”

  Adam narrowed his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere until you come to your senses.”

  Now, wasn’t that just like a man? Putting her hands on her hips, Sophia glowered at him. “I’m not the one sneaking into people’s bedchambers.”

  “I thought you might not be alone, with the way Burroughs kept looking at you all evening.”

  That stopped her for a moment, considering she’d been thinking the same thing about Adam and Lady Caroline. “Oh, please. He’s a rake and a braggart.”

  “Someone impressed you sometime or other. You weren’t a virgin when we met.”

  Momentarily ignoring the hypocrisy of that statement, she stalked to the hearth, digging an iron poker into the fire to stir up the dying flames and brighten the room a little. “Actually, I was, when we first met. But that was nearly two years ago. And they were interesting men, not people so enamored of the sound of their own voices that your own conversation doesn’t even signify.”

  He closed the distance she’d put between them. “‘They’? How many were there?”

  “You answer that question, and I will.”

  After a moment spent glaring at her, he walked over to look out her window. “I’m not here to discuss your string of lovers.”

  It didn’t seem likely that two previous lovers equaled a string, but she set aside the poker and straightened. “Ah, yes. You mentioned something about my lost senses. But I’m still behaving in precisely the same manner I was a fortnight ago.”

  “This is nothing to jest about, Sophia. You can’t go about in trousers or throwing things at people.”

  She expected to hear it, but it still hurt. “Evidently I can.”

  His shoulders tensed. “You did it deliberately,” he said, his voice a low growl.

  “Of course I did,” she returned. “No one throws a snowball by accident. And you deserved it.”

  “You went rolling about in the snow on purpose.” Slowly he drew the curtains closed again, the room dimming with the absence of the moonlight. “The question is, did you do it to aggravate me, or because you know what those damned trousers do to me?”

  A low shiver went through her. So even if he’d decided she was too unconventional, he still desired her. But she hadn’t been the one ignoring him; it was the other way around. “I am what the world and circumstance have made me,” she said after a moment, trying to shake herself free of the distraction of having him in her room. “Surely you’re aware of that by now. Don’t expect me to be embarrassed just because you would be, and don’t give me orders.”

  “You feel comfortable talking back to me, do you?” he murmured.

  Not so much comfortable as … electrified, but that didn’t leave her any more inclined to give in to his wish for her to be like everyone else. “I’m having the holiday I want. If that’s not acceptable, then I’ll leave. I offered to do that the day I arrived, if you’ll recall.”

  “I recall.” His jaw clenched. “It would be easier if you left.”

  Stunned surprise sucked all the air out of her lungs. He knew how much this holiday meant to her, and he knew why that was so. Well. At least it would be easier now to look back on these weeks without the keen longing she feared would leave Greaves Park with her. “I’ll be gone before breakfast, then.” Her voice shook a little, but she didn’t particularly care.

  “I said it would be easier. You set everything on its ear. With you running loose here, someone’s going to get hurt. More than likely me. But I didn’t say you should go.”

  Sophia snatched one of her drying boots set before the fire and threw it at him. He must have expected it, because he caught the thing just before it could smack him in the chest. Lifting an eyebrow, he dropped it back to the floor.

  “You are no gentleman, sir,” she ground out. “You say I should leave, then offer me a very nice compliment, and then tell me you were only jesting about having me go? Was that to make me feel grateful? I have enough troubles awaiting me without you adding to them.”

  His expression darkened. “That’s enough, Sophia.”

  “It certainly is. You and Caroline Emery can laugh all about it after I go. She’s the one you’ve settled on, isn’t she?”

  He stalked directly in front of her. “You aren’t leaving,” he stated.

  “Go to the dev—”

  Adam caught her by the back of her night rail as she stalked past him toward the door. Evidently she intended to walk to Hanlith barefoot and in her night clothes. Before she could lift a hand to hit him, he spun her around, caught both her hands in one of his, and closed his mouth over hers.

  Good-natured Sophia evidently had a temper at the end of her long fuse, and he’d finally lit it. That seemed only fair. He shouldn’t have to be the only one driven mad in this little scramble. In her opinion he’d clearly done something wrong, and he understood that even though he tended to think just the opposite. But by God she gave as good as she got, and he had to admire that about her. Almost as much as he admired the way her enormous slip fell down from her shoulders. He’d been bloody patient enough.

  Only when she began kissing him back did he release his grip on her hands. Sophia slid her arms around his shoulders, but thankfully didn’t then attempt to strangle him. Instead she shoved. Reluctantly he gave way, straightening. “No more arguing,” he cut in, before she could begin something else. “Not tonight, at least.”

  She looked him squarely in the eye. “I’m not your mistress. I happen to want you, and that’s all this is.”

  If she had been his mistress, she wouldn’t have been nearly as much trouble. “I want you as well,” he agreed, then closed on her again.

  Perhaps she’d acted as she had today to declare her … defiance of Society in general. As part of that Society, he found it both dismaying and arousing. One swift tug reduced her night rail to a puddle around her feet. Her hair was already loose, and he tangled his fingers into the heavy mass and gently pulled back, exposing her throat to his kisses.

  Sophia moaned, and sharp arousal speared through him, decimating the frustration that had dogged his heels all day. Bending, he scooped her into his arms and carried her to her bed.

  Women pursued him all the time, and for the past three days he’d felt rather like the last grain seed in a meadow full of geese. And he still found her the most interesting chit in the house. Sophia, who didn’t follow the rules, who embarrassed him and hurled snowballs and boots at him. Sliding onto the bed beside her, he took one of her breasts into his mouth.

  Gasping again, she reached up to push off his jacket. With his mouth occupied, Adam unfastened his waistcoat and cravat and cast them aside. When he sat on the edge of the bed to pull off his boots, she moved up behind him, pressing her warm breasts against his back. Sophia kissed the nape of his neck, then reached around his shoulders to unfasten his trousers.

  “Come here,” she said, chuckling, and pulled him backward to lie flat on the bed.

  He wasn’t in the mood to wait there for her to torture him, however. Not after she’d already done so—knowingly or not—all day. Before she could straddle hi

s hips, Adam yanked the French condom, which he’d been fingering for the past two hours, from his pocket and kicked out of his trousers. Turning onto his hands and knees, he pursued her across the bed as she grinned and scooted backward.

  “Oh, let me,” she breathed, taking the condom from his hand.

  “Don’t play about with it,” he cautioned, unable to help his grin at her aroused excitement.

  Running her tongue across her lips, Sophia took his cock in her hand. As he gritted his teeth and concentrated on anything other than the exceedingly desirable and very naked young woman touching him so intimately, she slid the goat intestine up over him and tied the red ribbon to hold it in place.

  “There,” she said, straightening the bow a little.

  “That’s enough of that,” he rumbled. Tugging on her legs, he pulled her beneath him. Delivering another deep kiss, he took a moment to brace his hands on either side of her shoulders before he pushed forward, entering her.

  With a breathless smile Sophia wrapped her arms and ankles around him, throwing back her head as he rocked into her again and again. When her muscles began to tense he slowed his pace, deepening his thrusts until with a muffled cry she climaxed.

  The sensation was … exquisite. There was no other word for it. And he couldn’t resist it. With a deep groan he followed her over the edge, holding himself hard and deep inside her.

  When he could breathe again, he put an arm around her back and flopped them over. Panting, Sophia draped herself across his chest. The pulse of her fast-beating heart drummed from her into him. Adam held his breath to feel her more closely.

  After a moment Sophia lifted her head. “I haven’t killed you, have I?” she asked.

  Adam let his breath out in a low laugh. “Not yet.” Brushing her hair out of her face, he leaned up to kiss her again. “There’s no reason you can’t make an attempt not to scandalize everyone, is there?” Impressively worded, if he said so himself. Not an order or a demand in earshot.

  She put both hands on his chest and levered herself up to look down at him. “The more you want me to be someone else, the less inclined I am to listen to you. I’m anticipating a lifetime of being frowned at, and I don’t intend to begin changing my ways before I absolutely have to.”

  Stubborn, stubborn chit. And she made a damned fine argument, as well. “Being unconventional is what caused you this trouble in the first place. Perhaps if you … made an attempt to fit in, your father wouldn’t have felt the need to send you so far away,” he said cautiously.

  With a short laugh she rolled to the edge of the bed and stood. “Being unconventional has been a matter of survival for me, Adam. And if you’ll recall, all I ever did was attempt to survive without selling my body. I’m not accepting the blame for my father’s … lack of compassion,” she said, picking up her night rail and pulling it on over her head. “You have a great deal of nerve, attempting to hand me advice.”

  There were times that control and patience were overrated. “People fall over themselves to receive my advice,” he snapped.

  “Aha. I think you’re far too accustomed to people falling over themselves to please you. For most of us, things just don’t bend to our whim.”

  “That’s what you’ve come up with after a fortnight?” he retorted. “That I’m accustomed to getting what I want? Of course I am. I’m a duke. And we were discussing you.”

  To his surprise, she returned to the bed and slipped under the covers beside him. “And I am—I was—a card dealer in a gentlemen’s club. Perhaps I should have said that things don’t bend to my whim.”

  “And?” he prompted, turning onto his side to gaze at her, and finding himself genuinely curious about where this conversation was going. No one else had ever spoken to him the way she did, and for some damned reason he found it endlessly fascinating.

  “And I’m not like anyone else. At least not anyone else you know. I never will be. I don’t want to be. Whatever Hennessy or Mr. Loines say or think, and whatever I may have to … pretend in order to survive, I know who I am. I like who I am. Can you say the same thing?”

  He could say that of course he was perfectly happy with himself, but they would both know it was a lie. She’d seen him behaving like a lunatic out on the ice. Happy persons, he was fairly certain, didn’t act in that manner. Neither of them happened to be particularly enthused about their impending nuptials, and neither of them had much of a choice in the matter. The only difference was that she was acquiescing in order to help her friends. He was doing it to help himself.

  “Don’t be angry,” she said after a moment, thudding a hand against his chest. “I’ve seen you help your friends thanks to who you are. You’re a good man, and there’s nothing wrong with wishing to keep hold of what you have. If I could manage it, I would do the same.”

  “Don’t humor me, chit.”

  “Then don’t say insulting things to me, boy.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “‘Boy’?”

  Sophia scowled. “I couldn’t think of an insulting term for you. Everyone knows ‘chit,’ or ‘hoyden,’ or ‘minx.’ There aren’t any good insults for dukes.”

  “Yes, well, we arranged it that way.” Stifling a laugh, he tucked her against his side. “Go to sleep, chit.” Relaxing, he closed his eyes.

  “Of course there is ‘scoundrel,’” she mused into the silence, and he opened one eye.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “And rogue. And rapscallion.”

  Sighing, he shut his eye again. “Don’t forget ‘devil.’”

  “Oh, that’s a good one. Or ‘devilish rogue.’ Is ‘picaroon’ still appropriate?”

  “Very old-fashioned of you.”

  He heard the soft catch of her breath as she chuckled. “I have to agree,” she said thoughtfully. “Hm. ‘Scaly bounder.’”

  “I am not scaly. And if you call me a blackguard, I’m going to throw you out the window.”

  “Damnation. I hadn’t thought of that one.”

  Adam smiled. “Good.”

  As he felt her slowly fall into sleep, he decided that he would do something to help her. He was a damned duke, after all, and if a duke couldn’t arrange to do a good deed for a … for a dear friend, then he wasn’t anything but a scaly bounder. Just what the something was, he didn’t know yet, but he hadn’t earned a reputation for deviousness by being stupid. All he needed was a plan. And a little more time.

  * * *

  The sky at the edges of the curtains had already grayed when Adam awoke. Sophia lay beside him, one hand across his abdomen and her wild hair half obscuring her face and tickling his nose. While under other circumstances he would have been perfectly content to remain there, this morning he didn’t have time for sentiment.

  He lifted her hand and gently deposited it beside him, then slid to the edge of the bed and stood. All he—they—needed was for someone to see him stepping out of her bedchamber at nearly six o’clock in the morning. All the rumors would be confirmed, and no one would believe anything other than the gossip that Sophia was his mistress. Only secondary was whatever fit his future bride might choose to throw; whoever she was, if she didn’t know about his reputation then he had little sympathy for her.

  Why would Sophia simply wish to be his lover, when she could do so in exchange for money or whatever else it was he usually doled out? And why would the Duke of Greaves choose to spend the night with such an eccentric chit without some assurance that he had her loyalty and her silence? Her leash, as it were? That was what they all would think. He could almost hear the gossip already. They had no idea of her true character. And thanks to Hennessy, they would likely have forgotten all about her before the beginning of the Season. That was her father’s aim, after all.

  She sat up, brushing hair out of her face. “It’s morning.”

  “Very nearly.” Swiftly he buttoned his trousers and pulled on his shirt. “Some of us are going for a ride around the lake after breakfast. You’re welcome to join us.”