Slightly Dangerous (Bedwyn Saga, #6)

by Mary Balogh

If a lightning bolt had crashed to earth between them the air could not have crackled with greater tension.

But he did not kiss her—for which fact she was mortally thankful later when she could think straight again. She would probably have kissed him back and clung to him and begged him to carry her off deep into the woods and ravish her.

And yet if he had kissed her just now, she would have kissed him back. Yet all he had been able to say when he did not kiss her was that he regretted more than ever coming to this house party.

She hated him with a passion. It was an alarming thought. She would have far preferred to be indifferent to him.

She was made up of more than just sunshine and laughter. There was darkness in her too, deeply suppressed,

Apart from what he had to confess was a lingering attraction to her person, he had no further interest in her or the dark complexities of her life. And yet, annoyingly, he found his eyes drawn to her quite as much as ever during the second week of the house party.

She was a light-bringer despite the darkness he had glimpsed in her. He was still unwillingly dazzled by that light.

Balls had never been his idea of pleasurable entertainment, though they sometimes had to be endured.

For a moment his plump, beringed hand rested against the small of her back. Wulfric’s fingers curled about the handle of his jeweled evening quizzing glass.

Nevertheless, all the time in the ballroom—every single moment—she was aware of the Duke of Bewcastle, looking severe and immaculate and positively satanic in black evening coat and silk knee breeches with silver waistcoat and very white stockings and linen and lace.

was startled to see him take one step back into the ballroom, hesitate, look pained and supercilious, and then step forward again to bow over the hand of Mavis Page, the thin, plain daughter of a deceased naval captain, who was sitting with her mama as she had been all evening.

But it was annoying—and disturbing—to witness the duke behaving so out of character.

Christine really had not wanted to find even one redeeming quality in him. Yet it appeared now that he had spotted a wallflower and had gone to her rescue.

What had she just thought? That he was a gorgeous man? Gorgeous? Did she have windmills in her head? She looked up at him again. His nose was too large. No, it was not. It was his prominent, slightly hooked nose that gave his face character and made it more handsome than it would have been with a perfectly formed nose.

She had not known what it was to waltz before tonight. Not really. It was pure sensual bliss. Light, colors, perfumes, body heat, a man’s musky cologne, the music, the smooth, slightly slippery floor, the hand at her waist, the hand holding her own, the delight in her own body’s lightness and movement—it was pure enchantment.

She looked into his face and smiled and for the moment felt utterly, mindlessly happy.

He gazed back at her, and in the flickering of the candlelight from the chandeliers overhead it seemed to her tha...

The enchantment did not l...

“A foolish question if ever I have heard one, Hector,” Melanie said tartly. “Of course you have hurt her, you great looby.”

“Oh, dear,” she said, “this is getting to be a habit.” What normal woman had to be swept up into a gentleman’s arms twice within two weeks?

The Duke of Bewcastle had gone down on one knee before her and was untying the ribbon bow about her leg and easing off her slipper.

He looked very picturesque. He looked as if he were about to spout a marriage proposal.

How horrified you must have been when you discovered your mistake. You poor . . . duke.”

He was unaccustomed to being laughed at. He could not remember ever being pitied.

Suddenly it seemed as though the air between them and all about them fairly sizzled.

“Let us waltz out here,” he suggested.

“Under the lamps and beneath the stars? How wonderfully rom— How delightful! Yes, do let’s.”

How romantic, she had been about to say. He grimaced inwardly. He was never romantic. He did not believe in romance.

And it was not quite proper behavior to dance alone with her like this.

And yet he was fully aware that being alone with her thus, waltzing with her thus, was more than slightly dangerous.

and it struck him after a few minutes that grass was the perfect surface to have underfoot and starlight the perfect ceiling to have overhead. The night smells of grass and trees were more enticing than all the combined perfumes in the ballroom.

And he held the perfect partner in his arms. She did not dance the steps stiffly and correctly. She followed his lead, she relaxed in his arms, and she felt the magic with him.

He drew her a little closer, the better to guide her over the uneven surface of the lawn. Then he tucked her hand palm-in against his hea...

And then somehow her face was lost in the folds of his neckcloth and her hair was tickling his chin. Her body, all soft and warm and feminine, rested against his, and her thighs touch...

The waltz, he thought, was a downright...

Moonlight rather than lamplight lit her face this time. She was, he thought, quite ethereally lovely.

He ran one thumb lightly across her lips, drew down the lower one, and moistened the pad by running it across the soft flesh within. She touched the tip of his thumb with her tongue, luring it into her mouth before sucking it deep. She was hot, soft, wet.

He withdrew his thumb and replaced it with his mouth. But only briefly.

He drew back his head a few inches and gazed into her moonlit eyes. “...

He held her hand in his. She could almost have wept at the intimacy of it.

There was no tenderness between them and definitely no romance. Only this intimacy and the promise of more when they reached the lake.

Yet here she was walking among the trees on her way to the lake with the Duke of Bewcastle halfway through Melanie’s ball because he had said he wanted her and she had agreed with one word that she wanted him too.

Their hands parted company. Her arms went up about his neck. His came about her waist. Their mouths opened. His tongue came into her mouth and clashed with her own tongue.

And the refined accents and faint hauteur of his voice made her realize anew just who it was with whom she was doing these things. But the realization only heightened her desire.

There was no gentleness, no tenderness. She reveled in the unabashed carnality of what was happening.

no pretense of romance or love, no commitment to any future. It had been purely carnal. She had enjoyed it anyway.

For some reason that perhaps neither of us fully understands, there has been this something between us. Now we have given in to it and satisfied it. Now we can say good-bye and go our separate ways tomorrow and forget each other.”

Her feelings were very much engaged in this night’s doings even if they had nothing to do with romance or love.

but he had never thought of himself as a passionate man. Tonight he had felt passion.

More especially, he did not want a duchess who was not his social equal, who looked pretty at all times and startlingly lovely when animated but was not at all elegant or refined, who behaved impulsively and not always with proper decorum or gentility, who drew attention to herself every time she became enthusiastic about something and then simply laughed when things went wrong instead of being suitably mortified.