The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel #3)(13)

“Not strange at all,” he said. “Well, maybe Mayweather is. What with his obsession with Hester.”

“Helen!” Mayweather interjected, drawing another small smile from the beauty.

“It seems we have an equal disinterest in given names,” she said.

“If you wish it, I shall remember everything about her,” he replied. “Mayweather, tell me something else about your Helen.”

“She has cats.”

He turned to his friend. “In the plural?”

Mayweather nodded. “Six of them.”

“Good God. I don’t imagine I shall forget that.”

“I like cats,” the angel said. “I find them intelligent and comforting.”

Mayweather smiled. “As does Helen.”

She matched his friend’s expression. “She sounds lovely.”

“She is. In fact—”

No. No more Helen. “In fact, you should go to her and tell her so,” Haven interrupted, grasping at the music that drifted from the ballroom to the private balcony. Clinging to it. “And dance with her. Women like dancing.” The angel’s brows rose in amusement as he insisted. “Go, Mayweather.”

For the first time in his life, the Marquess of Mayweather understood subtext. And he left the two of them alone, finally. Cloaked in darkness and chill, and somehow she made him warm as the sun.

Haven moved toward her. Wanting nothing but to be close to her. “Are you cold?” He let his voice go low, wanting to tempt her as she’d tempted him. Wanting her to desire him as he desired her.

But mostly, wanting her to stay.

She swallowed, and he could see the movement in her throat, his mouth watering with desire to press his lips there, to feel if her pulse raced as his did. To taste her skin, salty and sweet. When he raised his gaze to hers, he could see that she might allow it. That she was not unmoved. “It is time for my departure,” she whispered.

The idea that she would leave, that he might never see her again, that he might never know her . . . it did things to him that he did not appreciate. So, instead, he said softly, “Do you?”

She tilted her head. “Do I like dancing?”

“Yes.”

“I do, as a matter of fact.”

“Would you like to? With me?”

Perfect white teeth flashed. Of course her teeth were perfect. Everything about her was perfect. “We can’t dance. We haven’t been introduced.”

“Then dance with me here. In secret.”

“No.”

It was a game. He could feel it in his chest, the breathlessness of it. “Why?”

“It could ruin me. If we were found.”

He stepped closer, close enough that he could pull her into his arms. “I would never ruin you.”

It should have been a flirt. An empty, teasing trifle. Something men said to women to lure them into danger. But it wasn’t. It was a promise. And more than that, it was the truth. He would never ruin her. It wouldn’t be ruin when he married her.

He stilled. Christ. He would marry her.

He was going to marry this woman.

The realization should have filled him with terror. Not ten minutes earlier, he had decried the entire institution of marriage, suggesting that all women were gamesters and all men who thought otherwise lacked sense. But now, he was not filled with terror. He was filled with something entirely different. Something like joy. Like hope.

And, in the wake of that realization, he did pull her into his arms, this woman whose name he still did not know. She gasped, and he basked in the pleasure of the sound, which matched his own as he discovered what it was to hold the woman for whom he was destined.

They began to move to the music, quiet and distant, cloaking them in privacy. “I recall refusing to dance, Duke.”

“Malcolm,” he said, soft at her ear, loving her shiver at his name. “Tell me again, now that you’re in my arms. Now that I’m in yours. And I’ll stop.”

He wasn’t sure how, but he would.

She sighed, her lips curving into a little, lovely smile. “You’re very difficult.”

He could live in that smile. “I’ve been told that.”

“I thought aristocrats were supposed to be accommodating.”

“Not dukes. Haven’t you heard that we’re the worst of the lot?”

“And they let anyone become a duke nowadays, do they?”

He turned her toward the light, revealing her beautiful face. “If you think dukes are bad, Angel, imagine what they accept from duchesses?”

Her eyes went wide at the words, her lips pulling into a smile, full and lovely, all secrets and sin. “Imagine indeed.” And he couldn’t stop himself. He didn’t wish to. He was going to marry her, after all. They would spend a lifetime kissing, so why not begin now? Just a taste.

She sighed as he closed the distance, and he heard his thoughts on her lips. “Just a taste.”

She was perfect.

He set his lips to hers, fire spreading through him as she caught her breath, then sighed, low and sweet, as he gently licked over that full bottom lip, soft and sweet enough to make him ache. “Just a taste,” he promised himself. Her. “Open for me, love.”

And she did, letting him in, her lips soft and her mouth warm and welcome, tongue meeting his, tasting, tempting, teasing perfectly, as though they were meant for this. As though they had lived their whole lives to meet here, on this dark balcony, and set each other aflame.