The Duke and I (Bridgertons, #1)

by Julia Quinn

Men, she thought with disgust, were interested only in those women who terrified them.

“Society mothers, you dolt. Those fire-breathing dragons with daughters of—God help us—marriageable age. You can run, but you’ll never manage to hide from them. And I should warn you, my own is the worst of the lot.”

There were rules among friends, commandments, really, and the most important one was Thou Shalt Not Lust After Thy Friend’s Sister.

Violet blinked rapidly, and Daphne noticed that there were actually tears in her mother’s eyes. No one ever gave her flowers, she realized. At least not since her father had died ten years earlier. Violet was such a mother—Daphne had forgotten that she was a woman as well.

The Duke of Hastings. Daphne decided then and there that she’d be a fool if she didn’t fall in love with him.

“Men are mad.” “Generally speaking,” he agreed.

As she spoke, she turned her face toward his, and in that instant, with the wind catching her hair and painting her cheeks pink, she looked so enchantingly lovely that Simon nearly forgot to breathe. Her lush mouth was caught somewhere between a laugh and a smile, and the sun glinted almost red on her hair. Here on the water, away from stuffy ballrooms, with the fresh air swirling about them, she looked natural and beautiful and just being in her presence made Simon want to grin like an idiot.

Instead, she was wondering why she had the most bizarre urge to throw her arms around the duke and never let go.

“Any man, you’ll soon learn, has an insurmountable need to blame someone else when he is made to look a fool.”

“You are the sort of female men write poetry about,” Simon reminded her with a slightly sarcastic tilt to his head. “It was just bad poetry.”

And in the end, it was inevitable.

And Lord, how he’d been imagining it. Despite his composed demeanor, despite all of his promises to Anthony, he burned for her. When he saw her across a crowded room, his skin grew hot, and when he saw her in his dreams, he went up in flames.

When his lips finally covered hers, he was not gentle. He was not cruel, but the pulse of his blood was too ragged, too urgent, and his kiss was that of a starving lover, not that of a gentle suitor.

And something else filled him as well. Something hot and terrible, something triumphant and wonderful. It was emotion, pure and undiluted, a bizarre mix of relief and joy and desire and dread. And Simon, who’d spent most of his life avoiding such messy feelings, had no idea what to do about it.

And in that moment, as he slowly closed the distance between them, he became her entire world. This time his

To say that men can be bullheaded would be insulting to the bull. Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers, 2 June 1813

“And if you say that’s because you lot barged into her home like a herd of mentally deficient sheep, I’m disowning all three of you.”

“Before I met you I was only half-alive.” “And now?” she whispered. “And now?” he echoed. “‘Now’ suddenly means happiness, and joy, and a wife I adore. But do you know what?”