Miranda blinked, her mind blanking. “Mr. Downing?” Then she caught her breath. Oh, good heavens! She’d completely forgotten that Charles sent his regrets at the last minute. And how terrible was she that she hadn’t missed the man at all? “I had a headache, truly,” she insisted, still dissembling. Although, from the ache blossoming behind her eyes, it would soon prove true.
Josie’s smile curled higher with disbelief. “If you don’t deny it, I’m going to assume you got caught up in the romance of the gardens.” Her eyes shined as she sipped at her cup. “It’s been known to happen.”
Miranda looked down solemnly into her chocolate. It wasn’t romance that had caught her tonight but a stodgy, old duke. One who proved to be not so stodgy nor old after all.
Her heart sank. The worst part—oh, the very worst part!—was that she couldn’t even blame her recklessness on simple lust, because it was being with Sebastian that had made it so wonderful. Being with an intelligent, witty, thoughtful man who for a few precious moments tonight had stopped being a duke and had simply been himself.
“So it was a romantic encounter, then.” Caught up in the excitement of the secret, Josie set her chocolate aside. “And the man?” she pried without daring to name anyone, although Miranda could tell from the gleam in her eyes that she suspected Charles Downing. “Do you like him?”
“No,” Miranda denied quickly. “I mean, yes—no!” Oh, she simply couldn’t think straight! She groaned softly in frustrated confusion as she hung her head in her hand. “I don’t know.”
Josie sat forward on the edge of the settee and lowered her voice. “When you kissed him, did he make your toes curl?”
Oh, Sebastian did so much more than curl her toes! He’d set her entire body afire, in a way she was beginning to suspect no other man could have done. “Yes,” she admitted. Then, she added hesitatingly in a whisper, “I think…I might have curled his toes, too.”
Josie beamed. “Ah, so he likes you!”
“No.” Sadness flashed through her, adding to the confusion of emotions already swirling through her like a tempest. She wasn’t naïve enough to believe that he did. Not the way Josie meant. Because even after all they did tonight in the carriage, even though Sebastian admitted that he wanted her, he’d also been very clear that he would never let himself have her. Not the proper duke in search of his perfect duchess. But for one impossible moment tonight, when she was coming apart in his arms, she wished he could have been just a man.
“I see,” Josie murmured gently, a world of sisterly sympathy in those two words. She pressed gently, “Does he know how you feel about him?”
“Oh no!” She would be mortified if he found out! “I could never tell him.” Especially when she wasn’t certain herself exactly what she felt. And especially when she was certain that he would look on her with pity if she did.
“But how will he know if you don’t tell him?” With her eyes sparkling at the prospect of playing matchmaker, Josie shrugged casually. “And what do you have to lose?”
“My pride.” Miranda heaved out a deep sigh.
Josie smiled gently at her. “I don’t think—” The sound of the front door opening downstairs reached them, interrupting their conversation, and her smile brightened. “Thomas is home.”
Their private moment was over, and Josie rose gracefully to her feet, to be able to welcome her husband home. The look of love that flashed across her face at hearing her husband returning to her made Miranda’s heart ache fiercely with jealousy. Would she ever know that kind of deep love and affection? The kind of love in which her husband not only loved her but completed her?
Miranda set down her cup and moved to the door, excusing herself for the night. She wanted nothing more than to pull the covers over her head and not crawl out of bed until August.
“Miranda?” Josie called out to her to give her one last piece of sisterly advice. “If you really like this man, then you need to tell him how you feel. I know that showing your heart to another can be scary, but you shouldn’t pass up this opportunity. You need to ask yourself which you’d rather have—your pride or a chance at love?”
She thought of Sebastian and bit her lip. Which indeed?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
With a groan of frustration, Sebastian punched angrily at his pillow and rolled onto his back to stare up at the high canopy of his bed.
Miranda Hodgkins…Christ.
He’d gone mad. That was the only explanation for what had happened in the carriage. The woman had frustrated him to the point that he’d ceased all rational thought and restraint, pushing him right to the snapping point. And beyond.
Somehow, when he wasn’t looking, Miranda had grown up and become a woman. A very ripe, delectable temptress who knew exactly how to drive him into a frenzy the way no other woman ever had. Yet what angered him the most, what still made his blood run hot thinking about the encounter even now hours later, was knowing how completely wrong for him she was but wanting her anyway. In every way. And not just physically.
That was the part that stirred the most frustration inside him. Oh, she was pretty, all right, especially when she gave him that expression of innocent seduction when she bit her lip as she looked at him. But he’d been with women far more beautiful than Miranda, and none of them affected him the way she had. No, with Miranda it was more than physical attraction. She possessed a vitality and spirit that drew him, most likely because he had so little of that himself these days. When he was with her—when it was just the two of them together laughing or discussing poetry, debating politics, or simply walking silently together through the park—then he wasn’t the Duke of Trent. Then he was simply Sebastian. And he was happy.
He longed for that—to have all of her with him, in every way. Ways he simply couldn’t have as a duke. Including in his bed. And not just for one night.
Madness!
He rested his forearm over his eyes. Whatever caused this insanity—that unruly hair that couldn’t make up its mind whether to be red or blond, her laugh that always poured out of her at exactly the wrong moment, the way the stubborn gel stood up to him when most men had the good sense to be cowed, how she could infuriate him on the turn of a single word or make him laugh just as quickly—in the morning, he would put an end to it. They would come to an understanding. He would apologize; he would calmly explain that what happened between them could never happen again, that it had been a mistake—
A mistake? He laughed bitterly at himself. Wasn’t that how he’d gotten into this situation in the first place? Heaven only knew what would happen if he told her that a second time.
Even now as he lay staring into the darkness, the guilt gnawed at his gut. He’d been a cad, nearly ruining her—twice now, in fact—when he knew damned well that he could never marry her. He needed a suitable wife and duchess, one his father would have approved of. Certainly not the orphaned niece of a tenant farmer whom society would never accept. And that sent stabbing up inside him the worst guilt of all—because he knew his responsibility to his rank and to his family, knew that if he ruined her it would make it difficult for her to find a husband…yet selfishly he still wanted her and the happiness she could bring.
He was so tired of being Duke of Trent, so tired of the burdens he carried, so tired of wondering if he were living up to his father’s expectations. But when he was with Miranda, he could be himself. Not a peer whom everyone depended upon and whom everyone looked to for respectability, leadership, perfection…
But he was Trent. Always would be. And there was no help for it.
With a frustrated groan, he again punched the pillow and gave up completely on sleep.
The click of the opening door disturbed the silence of the room, followed by the rustle of soft movement.
He blew out an aggravated sigh. His valet was a good man and dedicated to his service, but tonight Sebastian didn’t want the fire banked or the drapes drawn. He wanted to be left alone to wallow in his misery. “What is it, Barlo
w?”
When the valet didn’t answer, Sebastian bit back a curse and sat up, the coverlet falling down around his hips—and froze.
Miranda.
She stood by the door, ethereal like a ghost in the soft shadows, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a driver’s coat that covered her from neck to shoes. But he would have recognized that pert nose anywhere, along with the determined lift of her chin and the clenched hands at her sides. A fury in men’s clothing.
His eyes narrowed in quick anger. So it wasn’t enough to frustrate him in the carriage by giving him a taste of what he could never have. She’d now come to taunt him some more in his own home.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. The damned woman was pushing him right to the edge of his patience.
“Swallowing my pride,” she whispered, her enigmatic words as soft as the firelight playing its fading shadows across her face.
She reached up and removed the hat, and as she dropped it away, her hair tumbled down freely around her shoulders and back. His gut clenched as instant arousal pulsed through him.
Beneath the coverlet that hid the lower half of his naked body, his cock hardened at the memory of what they’d done in the carriage, so suddenly that he inhaled a pained breath through clenched teeth. He watched in sweet torment as she reached down to slip off her left shoe and let it drop away to the floor, then did the same with the other. With each piece of clothing she removed, desire coiled tighter inside him.
“You need to leave,” he ordered, his voice far huskier than he’d intended. And far from convincing.
“After I had to try all the bedroom doors before I found you? No.”
“If someone discovers you here—”
“I’m tired of your warnings, Sebastian.” She boldly held his gaze across the room. “From now on, I’m doing whatever I want.”
With trembling fingers, she unbuttoned the long coat. Each button she slid free revealed a stretch of flesh or thin gauzy material beneath, each one a punch to his gut. Unaware of how torturous it was for him to watch her undress, she pushed the coat off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor around her feet. Then she stood as still as a statue, as if daring him to look his fill of her, wearing the same dress she’d worn the night of his mother’s party. His mouth went dry.
God help him. Lady Rose had returned.
Knowing he had to get her out of the room so he wouldn’t repeat the mistake from the carriage, no matter how much he wanted to, he chastised, “You’re making a habit of stumbling into my bedchamber by accident.”
“No accident.” She shrugged a nearly bare shoulder beneath the satin ribbons that held the loosely fitted bodice in place. “I found exactly the right room this time.”
His cock ached for her, and his head swam with confusion. She was completely wrong…yet so perfectly right.
“What we did in the carriage,” she told him softly, “it isn’t over. You and I have unfinished business.”
His tolerance snapped. Biting out a curse, he leapt from the bed and charged across the room like a bull. She gasped when she realized he was completely naked and averted her eyes, then she retreated until her back hit the wall beside the door.
But Sebastian closed in on her, frustration and aggravation boiling inside him. He planted his hands on the wall on either side of her shoulders, not caring what she thought of having a naked man standing so close to her that he was almost touching her. And not only a naked man but a fully aroused one, too. But at that moment, with the temptation she presented only flaming his frustration until it tightened inside him like a spring, he didn’t give a damn.
“I won’t marry you just because I touched you,” he ground out through clenched teeth. “So if that’s why you’re here—”
“I’m not here to trap you into marriage.” Still not daring to look at him, she raised her chin in a flash of indignation.
He took her chin and forced her to look at him. Her eyes flared brightly in the dim shadows, mirroring the anger he was certain shone in his. “Then why are you here?”
“Because I like you,” she breathed, the confession tearing from her so softly that her words were barely a sound at all, “so much more than I should.”
His heart stuttered painfully as he stared at her, momentarily stunned. He didn’t dare let himself believe he’d heard her correctly. He simply couldn’t have. Because if he had…Dear God. To be this close to having a chance at happiness, only to know that it could never be his—
“Miranda,” he rasped out, unable to say anything more as his voice caught in his throat. She had no idea of the temptation she presented for him, or the torture she was putting him through.
All of her trembled now as she whispered, “And I thought maybe…”
“What?” he pressed, lowering his head until their eyes were even and his mouth was so close to hers that he could feel the heat of her panting little breaths shivering over his lips.
“Oh, you infuriating man!” She shoved at his shoulder, but he refused to back away. “I want to do it again, damn you! What we did in the carriage—” Her voice cracked with frustration and embarrassment. “I came here because I hoped you might like me, too, enough to want to—”
He lunged forward and captured her mouth beneath his.
Unable any longer to resist her, he shoved his hand into her hair and grasped the silky strands between his fingers, to hold her head still beneath his kiss as his mouth ravished hers. He was ravenously hungry, both for the taste of her and for the vivaciousness radiating from her that drew him the way no other woman ever had, and he devoured her kiss in great, greedy mouthfuls.
A whimper of need escaped her. He drank in the sound, his blood surging hot with desire as he plunged his tongue between her lips to taste the sweetness inside, reveling in the electric thrill that cascaded through him. She was infuriating, challenging, aggravating to a fault…and wholly irresistible. She liked him, and not the title he’d inherited but the man he’d shaped himself to be. With nothing more than that whispered confession, she’d completely undone him.
A groan of surrender tore from the back of his throat, and he was lost in her. At that moment, with her softness pressing against his hard body, making herself vulnerable, he didn’t give a damn about the dukedom or propriety; all he knew was that he needed her in order to escape the prison his life had become, if only for one night. All of her.
He tore his mouth away from hers and nipped at the tender column of her throat as his hands stroked up and down her body. Now that she was here with him, he didn’t want to stop touching her, as if in some irrational fear that she truly was nothing but a ghost and would vanish in the night.
“I don’t want to do what we did in the carriage,” he rasped out, then licked at the hollow of her throat where he could feel her heartbeat racing. For him. The sensation left all of him aching.
Clinging to him, she gasped for breath as she panted out in confusion, “You don’t? But I thought—”
“I want so much more than that,” he breathed hotly against her lips, before kissing her languidly and reveling in her soft response. “I want all of you, understand?” He cupped her breast against his palm through the thin material, and she shuddered. “I want every breath and shiver, every laugh and smile…”
He lowered his head to take her nipple between his lips, teasing at it gently until it pebbled against his tongue even through the crêpe. When he lifted his head, a wet circle showed on her gown where he’d had his mouth on her, a possessive mark that revealed her dusky nipple behind the translucent material.
“Every secret in every inch of you,” he promised against her lips, his mouth returning to hers.
Moaning softly, she arched her back against the wall to push her breasts harder against him. He throbbed at the delicious sight of her, her eyes closed as if his nearness was unbearable but her full lips parted with desire to be taken. A beautiful contradiction, just like the strong yet kind woman she was. So fierce yet so f
ragile. The woman who could never be his…who was now his for the night.
“If you want to leave, you need to go now,” he warned, his voice little more than a rasp in his aching need for her. “If you stay, you’ll be ruined. And I cannot marry you.”
Her eyes fluttered open, and she stared up at him, her green depths a stormy sea of excitement and desire, arousal and nervousness. He traced his thumb across her bottom lip and elicited from her in a soft whisper, “I don’t want to leave.”
Cupping her face in his hands, he rested his forehead against hers, squeezing his eyes shut against the swell of emotions. Relief and affection warred in equal measure with the guilt churning inside him, yet he still wanted her, still needed her, even knowing that he could never offer her a future without betraying his father’s faith in him. Something he would never do again with any woman. Even Miranda.
“I don’t need any more warnings from you, Sebastian. I know what I want.” She slid her mouth along his jaw to his ear and whispered, “I want to inspire you.”
He exhaled a long breath in an attempt to slow his racing heart as it jumped into a furious beat. “You already do, Rose,” he murmured. “More than you realize.”
“Then show me.”
He grinned wickedly at that, and his hand stroked slowly down her body and slipped beneath her skirt to tenderly caress between her thighs. “You mean like this?”
She moaned and rolled back her head. “That’s a good start,” she agreed in soft pants, her tongue darting out to wet her lips as her sex began to quiver with quick arousal against his fingers. “Oh yes…that’s good…very good…”
With a low laugh, he reached over to the door and threw the lock.
* * *
Miranda bit back the moan on her lips as his fingers continued their gentle caresses between her legs. Oh, those clever fingers! Her body heated instantly, and the ache at his fingertips grew even more intense than it had been in the carriage now that she knew how good it felt to have his hands on her, stroking her, exploring her. She gasped as he grazed the sensitive nub buried in the top of her folds, and her arms clenched around his neck to keep from falling to the floor.
If the Duke Demands Page 20
