The Duke's Guide to Correct Behavior

by Megan Frampton

  Smithfield uttered a bark of laughter. “You could say that. I got the impression you never did anything you didn’t wish to, and so to see you here—you were most vehement about—let me see if I can recall correctly—‘not changing just because I’m a damned duke’—well, to see you here being a damned duke is a surprise.”

  That did sound like him. But he’d be damned—so to speak—if he’d be entirely selfish at the cost of another person’s happiness.

  “Are your sisters here?” Marcus took another sip of his wine.

  “Of course. They wouldn’t have missed this party, not when a real duke promised to be in attendance.”

  Marcus cocked his eyebrow at his friend. “I can tell that event doesn’t impress you.”

  Smithfield laughed again. “Don’t forget, I’ve seen what you look like dancing with a cat in a corset.” He cleared his throat. “That is, the cat was wearing the corset. Not you.”

  Oh. So that had happened. Interesting. And no wonder Stripey had bolted every time he’d seen him since.

  “Your Grace, Mr. Smithfield.” A small group had manifested in front of him, led by a gentleman who seemed to have been poured into his suit, it was so tight. “I am the Earl of Daymond,” he said. “I am so pleased you were able to accept my invitation.” The man bowed with an audible creaking of his stays.

  Marcus reminded himself not to eat too much of the food being passed around.

  “The pleasure is mine, my lord,” he said without a trace of sarcasm.

  He heard Smithfield smother a snort. So perhaps there was a trace there.

  “May I introduce my daughter, Lady Lucinda?” The earl put his arm behind a young woman’s back and propelled her forward.

  She curtsied and held her hand out. “A pleasure, Your Grace.” Lady Lucinda had blond hair that sparkled in the glow of the multitude of candles placed in sconces and candelabras on the walls and throughout the rooms. Her gown was a demure white, no doubt signifying her status as an eligible young lady.

  Marcus bowed.

  A silence. And then Smithfield’s elbow nudged him in the ribs. Oh, of course—an eligible young lady.

  “Ah, yes, Lady Lucinda, are you free for the next dance?”

  Another woman, not Lady Lucinda, answered. Must have been the countess, who seemed to have taken the opposite approach to food as her husband—she was so bony she might have been a model for a scarecrow. “Yes, she is, Your Grace.”

  The lady herself, Lucinda, met his gaze and smiled, a hint of wryness in her eyes. “It appears I am, Your Grace. Thank you for the invitation.”

  And then the pack of them moved away, apparently having satisfied the courtesies and gotten the duke to dance with the daughter of the house.

  Marcus exhaled. “Thank you for that, by the way,” he said in a low voice.

  Smithfield nodded. “Figured you were out of practice with this sort of thing.”

  Practice. He definitely needed more practice.

  “The room is very nice,” Marcus said. “Has your family owned the house long?”

  Lady Lucinda nodded. So much for that conversation.

  They were parted in the movements of the dance as Marcus racked his brain for more noncontroversial conversation, but something that would require more than a head shake or nod.

  “And is this your first Season?” he asked.

  A shake this time. Damn it.

  “Do you prefer chocolate or lemon ice?”

  This time he got another one of those wry smiles. “You are determined to engage me in conversation, Your Grace.”

  Well. She was certainly direct.

  “Lemon.” And decisive. That was good.

  But now there was nothing else to say.

  He couldn’t allow himself to think that this might be what marriage to an eligible young lady would be like.

  Damn it. He’d thought it.

  “And which do you prefer, Your Grace?” She tilted her head back to regard him. She had brown eyes, very pretty brown eyes, actually.

  He preferred hazel. It was a good thing she hadn’t responded with her own question about the most attractive shade of eyes.

  “Chocolate.”

  She smiled. “Our first disagreement.”

  “Likely not to be our last,” he replied without thinking. Damn.

  She laughed. Thank goodness—he hoped he wouldn’t have inadvertently offended her.

  He really needed that practice. As in right now.

  Unfortunately, he was at this party, and he had to stay for at least another hour and dance and mingle and make idle conversation.

  “I apologize for being so quiet, Your Grace,” Lady Lucinda said as they turned and made the walk up the line of people to the next movement of the dance. “You see, I know that my parents will wish to hear every word we’ve said, and I don’t have a good memory, so I thought if we limited our conversation it would be easier later.”

  “Perhaps we should write out our conversation in advance, so as to be better prepared?” He hadn’t expected anyone here to be amusing. That was his own prejudice, one he had to admit to.

  Not that he wished to marry Lady Lucinda on the basis of half a conversation, but at least it wasn’t entirely painful.

  She laughed again. She had a nice laugh, but it wasn’t— Damn it. It wasn’t hers.

  They finished the dance in silence, no doubt so Lady Lucinda could accurately report what had been said. But it was a comfortable silence, at least.

  He escorted her back to her parents, excusing himself as he saw Smithfield and his sisters.

  “Your Grace,” one of the sisters said. “You’re here!” As though it was the most wonderful thing she’d ever seen.

  No, probably the most wonderful thing she’d ever see would be Miss Blake making a decision. That lady was here as well, standing to the side and frowning as she viewed a tray of wineglasses. She had to be figuring out which one to take.

  He couldn’t bear it. He strode forward and took a glass off the tray, handing it with a bow to Miss Blake.

  “Th-Thank you, Your Grace,” she said.

  “It is nice to see you again, Miss Blake,” he said. “May I ask if you are free for the next dance?”

  “Of course she is,” one of the sisters said. It seemed no young lady was capable of answering such questions themselves. In Miss Blake’s case, he could understand that.

  “Yes, I am,” she confirmed, taking a sip from her glass. “Oh, this is good! I am not certain it is as good as the tea we had this afternoon, but I do like it.”

  Well, he was glad that was settled.

  “I don’t believe you’ve met my other brother-in-law, Mr. Haughton,” Smithfield said, gesturing to one of the gentlemen. “He was unable to attend dinner the other evening.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Haughton,” Marcus said as he grasped the other man’s hand.

  “The pleasure is mine, Your Grace.” The man looked as though he wished to say something else, but his wife—who was taller—nudged him and he snapped his mouth closed.

  The music started up again, and Marcus knew he had to face the inevitable.

  “This is our dance, Miss Blake?” He held his arm out to her, not giving her the chance to pick which arm she should take, and she hesitated only a moment before placing her hand on his sleeve.

  He escorted her out to the middle of the dance floor, grateful that the movements of the dance would not allow for much conversation.

  Yes, his first foray into Society was going spectacularly well.

  “How is your Miss Rose?” Miss Blake asked, when she had a chance.

  Rose. Her little face when she was talking so earnestly about cats, and how she stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth when she was drawing, and how she’d held his hand on their walk.

  “She is wonderful,” he replied, knowing it was the most honest thing he’d said the entire evening.

  “I know the children liked having her over. Miss Lily said perhap
s she would come over again. Would you accompany them?”

  He’d have to decide that, wouldn’t he? And suddenly he understood some of what Miss Blake must go through in her every waking moment.

  “I will consider it,” he said after a moment.

  He didn’t have a miserable time after all, he reflected as he sat in the carriage a few hours later. But it hadn’t been precisely fun; perhaps he would have to practice that as well. Having fun.

  The thought of practice made him think, naturally, of her; not that he hadn’t been thinking of her all evening.

  And he wanted, no he needed, to see her. Now. That was a decision he didn’t have to ponder.

  A duke should treat a lady as though she were a lady. That is to say, as though she were a delicate flower, unable to deal with passion, strong emotions, manhandling, and cavorting of any kind. A lady who wishes to be treated otherwise must indicate her preferences to the duke in question.

  —THE DUKE’S GUIDE TO CORRECT BEHAVIOR

  Chapter 18

  She tried telling herself that she was only in this room to retrieve something to read. Herself responded that she was a liar and that she should just admit that she wished to catch a glimpse of the duke when he returned from the Earl of Daymond’s ball.

  She continued to look for a book, refusing to even consider Agricultural Practices in the Midlands, Mary Shelley’s Falkner, or Thomas Moore’s The Epicurean.

  Perhaps she would have to admit to herself that not only was she a liar, but that she had no interest in any kind of book at this moment. So much for liking to read.

  Thankfully she heard the door open before she could wade through all the lies she was telling herself, and she pushed a book—she didn’t know which one it was, but knew she didn’t want to read it—back onto the shelf and turned to leave the room.

  Before she could exit, however, he burst in, one hand already ungloved, pulling his cravat off as he strode toward her.

  A flurry of white fabric as gloves and cravat came flying through the air, and then he had her in his arms, her back pressed to the bookshelves.

  “Do you want this?” he asked, heat in his eyes.

  She couldn’t speak, not even to tell him a book spine was poking her in the back. She just tilted her head back, closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable kiss.

  Which, she realized after a few moments of eye-closed waiting, was not inevitable after all. She opened one eye, and he was still there, his face hovering above hers, the heat in his eyes not lessened, if anything even more intense.

  “What is it?” she asked in a whisper. When she really just wanted to ask, Why aren’t you kissing me?

  “I promised I wouldn’t ever use my privilege.” His voice was rough and raw. “You have to tell me—‘Marcus, I want this.’ Otherwise I won’t—I can’t do something you might not want.” He sounded so torn, as though it hurt him to say it and yet he had to.

  Silly man. “Oh, so you want to know how it would sound when a young lady wishes for you to take liberties?” She smiled and raised an eyebrow, because two people could play that eyebrow game. She spoke in a low voice. “Marcus”—it was the first time she’d said his name—“I want this.”

  And even as the s of this had left her lips he was kissing her, his mouth warm and soft, his hands on her arms, almost tender, his palms moving on her bare skin.

  She reached up to cup his cheek, feeling the stubble that had escaped his most dukely ministrations. It chafed against her fingers, but it was a delicious hurt, and she wanted to rub her face against his, to feel just how different he was from her.

  For one thing, he was very male, and that fact was making itself known somewhere near her waist.

  He still hadn’t done any more than kiss her and touch her arms, and yet with all that seemed to be happening, she felt a smug sense of satisfaction that she had done this to him.

  Although she had to admit he was having an effect on her as well, making her insides tremble, and her brain stop thinking, and her body wanting to engage in all sorts of activites she hadn’t even dreamed of when flipping through the pages of The Epicurean. No offense to Thomas Moore.

  She slid her hands around the back of his neck, anchoring her fingers in his hair, pulling herself up off the offending book spine and closer to his body.

  His hard, lean body, with that lovely wall of chest pressing into hers (not that she knew if she had a lovely wall of chest, but he definitely did), and he intensified the kiss, sliding his tongue along the seam of her lips until she opened, softly. His tongue slid inside and she welcomed it, and him, and felt a rush of sensation all over her body as though she had been set on fire.

  Which she almost felt she had.

  Only there was no way fire could make her feel this—delicious, this worshipped, nibbling her as though she were a rare treat, his tongue tasting hers, sucking her lip into his mouth. His hands had slid lower so they were on her waist, holding her to him, as though she’d wish to go anywhere—silly man!—and the hard warmth of his bare hands seeped through the fabric of her gown to her body. She shivered at the sensation.

  Well. If she were asked now if she liked to kiss, she would have to say yes. Because she liked this an enormous amount, even more than new gowns, or brandy late at night with Dangerous Dukes, or seeing what a virile man’s throat looked like.

  She moved her hands down his back, feeling the flex of his muscles as he kissed her, devoted himself to her mouth. A part of her wanted to rip his shirt from his body so she could see what she was touching, but that would mean she’d have to concentrate on something other than what his mouth was doing, and she did not want to do that, not at all.

  Not when it felt so incredibly good.

  But people did need to breathe to survive, so eventually he drew away, panting, resting his forehead against hers, still with his hands on her waist, but his thumbs higher now, on her rib cage. She wanted so badly for him to put his hands there, there where she hadn’t realized she was so sensitive.

  Forget listing everything she knew about him; apparently there was a lot she didn’t know about herself. Like how right it felt to be held by him, like this, and how much she liked it when he lightly bit her mouth, and how delicious it felt to have his hardness pressed against her.

  All of that. Plus a lot more, if she could just clear her brain to think of it.

  But he was still here, still breathing fast and loud into her ear, and she couldn’t think straight.

  “Why?” she asked after a few moments.

  He chuckled, and she felt the rumble of his laughter against her body.

  Suddenly she wished she were better at telling jokes so she could feel his laughter all the time.

  “I couldn’t stop thinking about you all evening,” he said, speaking softly into her ear, “and it wasn’t that the evening was bad, it was surprisingly not awful, but I kept wishing you were there so I could talk to you about the party, and the music, and catch your eye when someone said something ridiculous.” He exhaled, and her skin prickled at feeling his warm breath. “Which was often.

  “And also,” he added, and Lily could hear the humor lightening his tone, “I knew I had to practice precisely what I must never do with a proper young lady.”

  Of course. Because she was not proper.

  She took a deep breath and pushing herself away, against the bookshelf again, this time welcoming the stab from the book spine. A reminder of just how foolish and shortsighted she was.

  “Did I say—” he began, taking his hands from her body, and in pulling away, leaving her suddenly feeling cold. “But I did say something wrong. I did something wrong.”

  She shook her head. “You didn’t. I asked, you answered. It is fine.”

  He touched his finger to her mouth. “So lovely,” he said. “I don’t wish to hurt you.”

  You don’t wish to, but you will.

  If she had thought him virilely handsome before, it was nothing compared to how he looked now
—a flush on his cheeks, his eyes heavy-lidded, filled with desire, his bare throat just inches from her mouth.

  She was in so much trouble. And yet she knew this was not at all the worst kind of trouble she could be in. If she were honest with herself for a moment, beyond not wanting to read a single book anywhere, she’d have to admit that she wanted to find out what other kind of trouble she could get into, with him, in here.

  What kind of trouble they could get in together.

  Which was why she leaned up to kiss the side of his mouth and then scurried past him out the door and up to her bedroom—before she could be any more . . . troublesome.

  That was definitely more than two minutes. And he’d liked it far better than what he’d always managed to do, in its entirety, within two minutes.

  He thought of his evening as split into two segments: before he’d arrived home from the ball and after, Before Kiss and After Kiss.

  Compared to this last kiss, the first one had been merely an aperitif. A sip of something pleasant, to be sure, but lacking the heady power of a snifter full of brandy or a satisfyingly rich glass of port.

  But it was even better than any of that. It was . . . well, he didn’t think he’d ever drunk anything so delicious as her mouth, the way she pressed her body against his, how she’d stroked his back, and the low moan he recalled, deep and soft in her throat.

  Damn, he wished he could just stride up to her bedroom and take her, satisfy his body’s urges—and hers—in a lot longer than two minutes.

  Judging by how hard he was, his cock wanted that, too.

  The thought of her in his bed was enough to make him take a few steps to the door, only to be stopped by his own conscience (his cock objected mightily). He had promised her he wouldn’t abuse his privilege of who he was, and beyond that, it just wasn’t right.

  Things were easier, to be sure, when all he cared about was brandy and gambling and the occasional cat.

  But those things didn’t satisfy him. Not that he was satisfied—sexually, at least—right now, but he was satisfied in other ways. The way Rose held his hand and talked to him, and that because of her influence he was finally living up to his ducal responsibilities by examining the books, possibly even meeting with some of the people who managed his estates.