The Summer Duke (A Duke for All Seasons Book 3)

by Jillian Eaton

  In short, aside from providing him with an heir and a spare, she’d live her life and he would live his with nothing as preposterous as love to muddy the waters. They’d come together for social occasions. Balls, plays, and whatnot. To the outside world they would always present themselves as a well-heeled, perfect couple. But beneath that thin veneer of perfection would be two people who existed as little more than polite strangers. Married, but not together. Partners in name only. Content to pursue their individual interests as they saw fit without guilt or ill-will.

  A lady like Emmeline knew that. She understood it. She preferred it.

  After all, she didn’t want him.

  She wanted his title.

  Whereas Regina wanted nothing more and nothing less than her book. Which was why, as a general rule, gentle wallflowers ended up as spinsters while conniving vixens ended up as duchesses. An unfortunate piece of truth that was a consequence of a society valuing wealth and good breeding more than it did kindness and character.

  “Have you found it?” Regina called out in a hushed voice from the other side of the library. An impressively sized room with enormous windows overlooking one of the side lawns, leather furniture trimmed in mahogany, and a center fireplace that rose all the way to the vaulted ceiling, the library was easily filled with over a thousand books, any one of which could have been Mansfield Quarry. Or was it Park? Bloody hell, Andrew couldn’t remember.

  He’d been too distracted by the shape of Regina’s luscious mouth to listen to anything she was actually saying. A boorish error, to be sure, and one he didn’t usually make – for all of his sinful activities in private (gambling, drinking, mistressing, and the like), he was nothing short of chivalrous in public. And why wouldn’t he be? No one wanted a discourteous duke. But with Regina he hadn’t been able to help himself.

  “No sign of it yet,” he said regrettably. Whatever the name of her book, it was clear it meant something to her. And even though looking for the damn thing was like searching for a needle in a bloody haystack, he’d gladly continue to do so it if only to see her smile when it was finally found.

  “It must still be in the ballroom.” Disappointment tugged at the corners of her mouth and drew a line between her brows. “I do hope no one took it home with them.”

  “I’m sure if they did they will soon realize the error of their ways and return it. I’ll let Wakefield know to be on the lookout.”

  Regina’s eyes lit up. “You’d do that for me?”

  In that moment Andrew would have done anything for her. A thought that weighed uneasily on the shoulders of a man not accustomed to feeling anything more than wanton lust.

  “It’s nothing,” he said roughly, glancing down at a small circular table. He started to look up at the door as he considered the best way to excuse himself, then his stare darted back to the table. There, sitting in the middle of it beside a pink satin reticule, was a slim volume with the words Mansfield Park printed on the cloth spine in gold letters. The bloody thing had been in plain sight the entire time, and Regina let out an audible gasp when she followed the direction of his gaze.

  “You’ve found it!” she cried, dashing across the room. Picking up the book she hugged it against her lovely breasts, and rewarded Andrew with the most stunning smile he’d ever seen.

  It wasn’t the controlled smirk that a lady like Emmeline could adopt at the drop of a hat, but a genuine grin that showed all of Regina’s teeth and crinkled the corners of her eyes. Happiness glowed all around her, and in the dim library surrounded by towering shelves and masculine furniture she was as radiant and breathtaking as the sun.

  “Thank you so very much,” she said, beaming up at him.

  “Thank me with a kiss.” The very second the words were out in the open he wished he could take them back. One simply did not proposition an innocent, let alone a wallflower. It was in extremely poor taste, and he didn’t know where he’d gotten the idea other than the fact he had been wondering what her lips would taste like ever since he spied her from across the ballroom. He should have known better. But to his surprise – and dark delight – before he could utter an apology she inclined her chin in the tiniest of nods, placed her book down, and tiptoed towards him, her dancing slippers sliding silently across the thick carpet.

  “All right,” she said softly, green eyes soft and wide beneath a thick sweep of honey blonde lashes. “I’ve never kissed anyone before, but you did find my book. If that doesn’t warrant a prize I don’t know what does.”

  Andrew bit back a groan when the hem of her skirts swished over the toe of his boots. Any closer and she’d be wrapped in his arms. He could smell her perfume, a sultry combination of vanilla and lavender that made him want to nuzzle her neck and find precisely where she’d dabbed the intoxicating scent.

  “I – I shouldn’t have said that,” he rasped even as his hands itched to sink into her neat hair and send the pins flying in a dozen different directions. There was a velvet sofa right behind her, and he gritted his teeth against the sudden image of her sprawled beneath him, her arms out flung, her mouth damp from his kisses, her eyes heavy lidded with passion.

  No, he told himself. Devil take it, Andrew, you are not going to kiss the wallflower.

  But then she reached out and touched his chest, elegant fingertips trailing inquisitively across the buttons on his waistcoat.

  And that was precisely what he did.

  Chapter Three

  Kitty was going to have an absolute fit.

  All things considered Regina probably shouldn’t have been thinking about her closest friend as the Duke of Glenmoore’s mouth descended on hers, but the thought slid in anyways, fitting neatly between ‘oh my goodness I cannot believe this happening’ and ‘I hope he cannot tell I had fish for dinner’.

  Oh, why hadn’t she chosen the chicken instead? Because it had been cooked in a French sauce, that’s why. And Regina abhorred French sauces of any kind. She found them much too salty. But the Duke of Glenmoore wasn’t salty. He was…he was…well, she couldn’t think of a word at the moment to describe what his mouth was like.

  She just knew it was better than French sauce.

  Better than anything she’d ever tasted, actually. And far better than she’d been led to expect by listening to Kitty’s horrific stories of wet, slimy tongues and teeth clacking against teeth.

  The duke’s tongue was far from slimy and their teeth definitely didn’t clack when he angled his head and deepened the kiss, the hand he held cradled against the base of her skull acting as a gentle guide as it couldn’t have been more obvious that Regina had absolutely no idea what she was doing. But that didn’t make her any less of an eager pupil.

  Truth be told she’d been secretly craving her first kiss ever since she was twelve. Huddled in her bed and reading her very first romance by candlelight, she’d dreamt of what it would be like to have a handsome nobleman kiss her senseless.

  Not that her books contained any real kisses. The anonymous author of Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility – simply called A Lady – always stopped shy of describing in detail what happened when the hero kissed his heroine. But it was certainly implied, and Regina’s imagination had been more than happy to fill in the missing details over the years. Yet for all her imaginings, she’d never even come close to the real thing.

  In the duke’s kiss she discovered the first sultry night of summer when fireflies lit the sky and the sheer fabric of her nightdress clung to her damp skin. And even though she knew they were in the library she could have sworn she heard crickets, or perhaps it was just the ringing of desire throbbing in her ears, like the vibrating of a bell after it was struck.

  His fingers tugged at her hair, loosening the jeweled pins that held her coiffure in place. She gasped when she felt the heavy weight of her curls tumble down her back, and Glenmoore groaned as he swallowed the tiny sound, his tongue retreating from her mouth to skim across her plump bottom lip before he drew it between his teeth and suc
kled, causing a jolt of sensation to race down the front of her body and pool between her thighs.

  She felt her nipples tingle and harden. They swelled beneath the modest cut of her bodice and rubbed against the duke’s chest when he tightened his embrace, one hand remaining wrapped in her long thick locks while the other spanned her waist, fingers digging into the curve of her hip.

  With her eyes firmly closed she couldn’t see his expression, but she could feel his possessiveness and the depth of his need when he lifted his head for half of a heartbeat before a violent curse stained the air and he returned to her mouth with all the raw desperation of a sailor returning to the sea after too much time spent on land.

  The second kiss lasted for a minute. Perhaps two. Such a short amount of time, but it might as well have been hours. Days, even. For surely it took days if not weeks to change a person, and Regina felt changed when the duke finally stepped back and looked down at her, eyes dark with need, jaw rigid with self-restraint, brows mired in an expression she couldn’t decipher.

  Was Glenmoore glad to have kissed her? Had she done it properly? Or had she embarrassed herself? Her chin lifted a notch. No matter her experience – or lack thereof – any heroine worth her mettle was never embarrassed.

  “Lady Regina.” The duke’s voice was hoarse, as if he’d just been shouting.

  Or kissing a bookish wallflower in a library.

  “Yes?” Her gaze fell to the table where she’d placed Mansfield Park before brazenly stepping into his arms. Snatching up the book she hugged it against her chest as if it were a shield that would protect her from whatever the duke was about to say. From his frown she deduced he wasn’t about to get down on bended knee and pledge his love for her. Pity, as that would have made a wonderful story the likes of which could have been shelved beside Pride and Prejudice. Although in her version the duke would not be nearly as cantankerous as Mr. Darcy.

  “I don’t…that is to say, I’ve never…blast it all,” he muttered, raking a hand through his hair. “What I mean to say is I am not usually in the habit of seducing young ladies in the library. I apologize.”

  “That’s good to hear, as I am not usually in the habit of being seduced in the library.” She pursed her lips. Lips that were still tingling from Glenmoore’s fiery kisses. Kisses she refused to feel guilty for enjoying. “But I do not apologize.”

  The left side of his mouth twitched in a reluctant grin. “You’re not the usual sort of debutante, are you, Lady Regina?”

  “Much to my mother’s everlasting dismay, I fear I have proven to be quite unusual in more than one regard,” she admitted. “It’s the books, you see. They’ve given me high expectations.”

  “What sort of expectations?” He reached out and took her hand, his thumb running across her knuckles in a gentle caress that seemed born of habit rather than intention. As if this wasn’t the first time they’d kissed in the library, but the fiftieth. There was a softness in his gaze as he awaited her response. A gentle, undisguised yearning that stirred the bees in her belly back to life.

  They hummed in a circle, their translucent wings beating madly as Regina struggled to glean what the duke was thinking. What she was thinking, for that matter.

  She’d never experienced love at first sight before. Or love of any type, for that matter, except for the kind she felt towards her family and dear Kitty. But that love was calm and quiet, like a still pond. What she felt as she peered up at the Duke of Glenmoore was nothing less than a raging wind blowing through a field filled with bright red poppies.

  Everything was exaggerated.

  Sound, color, touch.

  And she thought if she ever did feel love at first sight this was very much what it might be like.

  Did she dare reveal her feelings to the duke? She wanted to. Lizzy Bennet, fearless and no nonsense woman that she was, would have. But then Lizzy would never have done something as ridiculous as fall in love with a duke after one kiss. Although technically Glenmoore hadn’t kissed her just once. He’d kissed her twice.

  Surely that changed things.

  “Love,” she blurted. “I have come to expect love.”

  Glenmoore released her hand.

  The bees abruptly stopped buzzing.

  And Regina, who had courageously stepped out onto a spindly limb with only faith and the blind trust that A Lady – whoever she may be – would never steer her wrong, found herself plummeting to the ground with no one to catch her.

  “You are very nice,” Glenmoore began, and Regina’s shoulders sank. To her knowledge no great romance had ever begun with the hero telling the heroine she was ‘very nice’. “I was glad to have been able to help you recover your book,” he continued. “But–”

  “But?” she sighed.

  “But I do not believe in, nor am I seeking, love of any sort.”

  Regina blinked. “You don’t believe in love?”

  “I believe it is a cleverly employed tool used by writers and poets to lure young, impressionable ladies such as yourself into buying more books. In short, it is a scheme. A fraud. A bedtime story that has no place in the real world.”

  “Well that’s not true at all.” And she felt sorry that he thought it was. Love, a fraud? How ridiculously absurd. “I do not expect you to fall in love with me after two kisses, Your Grace” – although, admittedly, it would have quite nice if he had – “but surely you cannot claim love is nothing more than a ruse used by artists to sell their wares.”

  “But that is precisely what I am claiming.”

  She pursed her lips. “Then kiss me again.”

  “You – you want me to do what?” he exclaimed, visibly startled.

  “Kiss me again,” she repeated. A winged brow arched. “If love is a scheme, as you say, then it won’t matter if you kiss me once or a dozen times. Besides, I rather liked it and as I doubt our paths will ever have an occasion to cross again I should like to do it once more before you leave.”

  Glenmoore glared. “I cannot kiss you again.”

  “Why not?” she challenged, green eyes taking on a determined gleam as she plunked her hands on her hips. “Afraid you’ll fall in love with me?”

  “Of course not,” he scoffed.

  “Then what is the issue, pray tell?”

  His jaw clenched. “The issue is that I shouldn’t have kissed you in the first place!”

  Her shoulder lifted and fell in an elegant shrug before she headed for the door. “Then I suppose I’ll simply have to test my theory with someone else.”

  “The devil you will.” Before she’d made it halfway across the room Glenmoore caught her wrist and spun her into his chest. She caught a glimpse of his nostrils flared in outrage and his brown eyes dark with temper before he kissed her in a manner that could only be described as deliciously savage.

  His hands swept up her body, fingertips gliding across the outside of her breasts before he plunged them into her hair and thrusted his tongue between her lips. Heat exploded inside of Regina, lifting her up on the balls of her feet. She laced her arms around the duke’s neck, nails sinking into corded muscle. With a rumbling growl he backed her into a shelf and books fell to the floor in a clattering thump of leather bindings as the desire between them grew to a fever pitch, spilling flames into the air and threatening to burn the entire library down to the ground.

  Heavens knew how far they would have gone if the door hadn’t suddenly opened, its loud creak the only warning Regina and Glenmoore had they were no longer alone. They sprang apart like two guilty children who’d been caught sneaking a sweet, but it was too late.

  Far too late.

  “My, my,” Lady Emmeline trilled as she stepped into the room. Her voice was sweet, but there was no mistaking its malicious undertone. Nor the gleam of triumph in her sharp blue eyes that sliced like a knife when she looked at Regina. “Why Lady Regina, you naughty little minx you.”

  “Lady Emmeline,” Glenmoore growled, his expression formidable as he stepped protectively
in front of Regina. “What are you doing here?”

  Emmeline fluttered her lashes. “Oh, I think the better question is what are you two doing here? Still looking for that book, are we?”

  Frozen to the spot, Regina could only stare at the duke’s back in open-mouthed dismay. Beneath her bodice her heart beat madly as she bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to quell a helpless whimper.

  What to say, what to do? This was going to ruin her. Not that she minded being ruined. Especially if her ruination came at the wicked hands of a man like Glenmoore. Truth be told, he was the only one she would want to ruin her. But she wasn’t naïve. Stupid, perhaps, to have let herself be caught in this situation.

  But not naïve.

  She knew the scandal this would cause. Lady Emmeline and her duo of busybodies weren’t exactly known for keeping secrets to themselves. Particularly secrets of a salacious nature. And while the gossip wouldn’t alter her future – ruined ladies and spinsters were both bound for a house filled with cats – it had the potential to devastate the twins.

  Regina paled.

  She wouldn’t be responsible for destroying Emily and Evelyn. She simply wouldn’t. So she did the only thing she could think of. The only thing she could do given the circumstances. It may not have been what Lizzy Bennet would have done, but then Lizzy had never found herself in a library with her mouth swollen from a duke’s kisses while London’s most notorious gossip sneered at her from across the room.

  “We’re engaged,” she mumbled, her tongue stumbling awkwardly over the lie. If the sudden stiffness in the duke’s shoulders was any indication he’d heard her clearly enough, but Emmeline’s countenance remained unchanged.

  “What was that?” she chirped. “Speak up, darling.”

  Regina braced herself as she stepped out from behind Glenmoore. He turned to glare at her, gaze glinting black as coal in the flickering candlelight. He started to speak, but before he could contradict her she sucked in a quick breath and told the biggest lie she’d ever told in her entire life. A lie that was either going to save her reputation…or ruin it so completely there would be nothing else to do but quit Society, move to the country, and take up sheep shearing.