What I Did for a Duke (Pennyroyal Green, #5)

by Julie Anne Long

“I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t mean to make you squeak.” What a word! “I’ve never squeaked in my entire life.” “You achieved a special octave then, if you prefer,” she allowed calmly. “And you just did it again.”

“Were you in love with her?” Oh, for God’s sake. Love. Women lobbed that bloody word as gaily as a shuttlecock. Someone ought to teach them it was a bloody grenade. And she’d said it so insufferably gently, too. The same way she’d asked him if he’d needed a walking staff. “It’s not a toy, that word, Miss Eversea,” he muttered under his breath.

We differ so in height I shall be speaking to your third button throughout the dance.

“My third button is so often a wallflower during balls I doubt it will mind your conversation overmuch.”

“A proper kiss, Miss Eversea, should turn you inside out. It should . . . touch places in you that you didn’t know existed, set them ablaze, until your entire being is hungry and wild. It should . . . hold a moment, I want to explain this as clearly as possible . . .” He tipped his head back and paused to consider, as though he were envisioning this and wanted to relate every detail correctly. “It should slice right down through you like a cutlass with a pleasure so devastating it’s very nearly pain.”

“But you like vengeance so very much,” she pointed out with mock solicitousness. “And I should hate to deprive you of it. You could give all of that up for me?” This made him smile, slowly, with a pure, dazzling, wicked delight that strangely infected her with delight. “You’re so thoughtful,” he said, with hushed fervor. She gave a little shout of surprised laughter.

But she could feel his eyes on her. And from the distance he managed once again to make her acutely aware of her good mouth. Her naiad hair. Her unconscionably soft hands. And every inch of her skin was suddenly alive, restless, and even the night rail she wore was a sensual disturbance, reminding her that she was a creature that could touch and be touched. What

“If I come closer you’ll ignite. I shouldn’t like you to become Duke Flambé. Did you drink the brandy, or bathe in it?” He gazed at her. “You’re so solicitous of my welfare.” He was again touched that she didn’t want to set him alight. “I’m more concerned about my mother’s curtains. That particular shade of velvet cost a fortune and I shouldn’t like to tell her I used a duke for kindling.”

“Genevieve,” he murmured speculatively, landing hard on that first syllable, gliding over the next, as though they were soft rolling Sussex hills, as though each syllable had its very own character and deserved equal attention.

You would have thought they’d done this dozens of times, rather than just once before, that it was more natural to her than breathing, judging from her sigh of relief. But he of course dictated how she would be kissed. And the kiss, too, was devastating, his mouth landing soft as moth wings, then sliding gently enough to show her how a universe of sensation and want could be coaxed from her lips. How the slide of his lips over hers could create craving everywhere in her body.

“I couldn’t see it because you are my heart, damn you! And how can I see my own heart if it’s beating in my own chest?” She was practically raging at him. He had no answer to that apparently. But something fierce and thrilling flashed in his eyes, and stayed there and the devil . . . he smiled slowly, as though a dim pupil had finally come around. “And so you see now.” He was demanding clarification.

And though she could scarcely even feel them, her lips formed the words, and sound emerged, sounding frayed, and small and cracked, forged in her somehow before she was born, since before time, words meant only for him. “I love you.”

And at first she thought nothing at all had happened. He didn’t blink. But then she realized she’d somehow set him . . . softly ablaze. Emotion burned from him, and his eyes . . . she would never forget his eyes in this moment. His hands remained at his sides. Which is when she noticed they were trembling. God help her, that’s when she felt tears begin to burn at the back of her eyes. One got away. And she brushed her hand roughly against it. And the man who never cleared his throat . . . cleared his throat. And his voice, in truth, wasn’t a good deal louder than hers. “Then it’s just as well that I love you, Genevieve.”