The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel #3)(55)

“Get out,” he said, turning back to the window.

“I could leave. I could run.” She spat the words.

He waved his hand at the door once more. “By all means.”

She couldn’t run, however, not without bringing down her sisters, and she knew that. He did, too. Sera had always been the noble one. Even in deception.

Her skirts rustled against the carpet, and for a moment, he imagined that she might have done it, lowered herself to her knees. Offered him a plea like a serf to a king. Instead, she spoke all too near. “Do not ever imagine that I do not see what you do,” she said. “You play the dog in the manger. You don’t want me. But you don’t want anyone else to have me, either.” He faced her, hating the guilt that threaded through him at the words. “You are punishing me. And doing a superior job.”

She was right. It was one or the other. It might have been both. But he was so blinded by betrayal and anger that he couldn’t have said which. All he knew was that he wasn’t letting her go.

Even as he knew it made him the worst kind of man.

She seemed to see it, though, taking a deep breath and closing in on him like a huntress, setting a single finger to his chest, strong as steel. Just as she always was. “Fair enough. You do what you must to me, Malcolm. You blame me for my betrayal, and for the shattered remains of what was once promised to us.”

“I do blame you,” he said, backing away from her. “Make no mistake.”

She pursued him. In this, unwilling to let him hide. “Then blame me. They have nothing to do with it. And I expect you to fix this.”

It was an impossible request. Once the gossip rags had their teeth in a tale, they held on until it was dead. She knew that. She and her sisters had been called the Soiled S’s since her coal-baron father had come down from Newcastle with five beauties in tow. “Perhaps you should have thought of that before, Sera.”

The words were a mistake.

She turned on him, and he saw the rage in her face. “Before? Before what? Before you stumbled onto the balcony that night? Before you urged me to dance? Before you kissed me? Before you sent a carriage to fetch me to your country house? Because, as I recall it, there were two of us on the floor of your study, Duke. Not just Delilah, with her wicked blade.”

His anger rose, too, along with guilt and frustration and—goddammit—desire. And he approached her, pulling her close. “You were Delilah,” he growled. “Delilah and Salome and Diana . . . goddess of the damn hunt.” He paused. “And I the blind, fat bull.”

“What nonsense,” she spat back, meeting him without fear. “You think I do not remember? How you opened my gown? How you lifted my skirts? Who begged then, Duke?” She laughed, the sound a wicked sting. “I wish I could take it all back. What a mistake I made.”

He pulled her close, and she bent backward, over his arm, his lips lingering at her skin, loving the warmth and the scent and the feel of her even as he hated himself for being drawn to her. For wanting her so desperately. For being unable to give her up. Even as he hated her for wanting to go. “You say you made a mistake.”

The words were air at her throat, and he imagined he could see the proud pounding of her pulse beneath them. “The worst of them.”

“Tell me precisely what it was. Was it the trap that was your mistake? Or the fact you were caught setting it? Would you do it again if you could be certain I’d never know what you’d planned? How you orchestrated it? How you lured me in?”

Her gaze flew to his and he saw the pain in her eyes the instant before she confessed. “Of course I would.”

For the rest of his life, he would wonder why he kissed her then, crushing her mouth beneath his until they were both gasping for breath. Until her arms were wrapped around his neck and she was matching every touch, every groan, every caress. And he would wonder why she kissed him back instead of pushing him away and leaving him forever. Perhaps it was because in passion, they saw the truth—that they were perfectly matched in strength and power and desire. Perhaps it was because, in those moments, there was a tiny thread of hope that they might find each other again, when their anger had passed and there was space for something else.

Or perhaps it was because he loved her, and she loved him in return.





Chapter 16



Lawn Bowls? Or Courtship Goals?



“Come along, Emily, toss the kitty!”

“Oi! Don’t rush her! You take your time, Lady E. Get it just right.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s lawn bowling, not surgery, Em.”

“All right!” Lady Emily found her voice, and Sera could not help but smile. “I’m throwing it.”

“Tossing it,” Seline corrected, quickly adding when the entire assembly looked to her, “What? That’s what it’s called.” She added under her breath, “It’s not my fault I’m married to a sportsman.”

Sera resisted the inclination to suggest that lawn bowls were not precisely sport, and most definitely not when played by eight women in the gardens of an Essex manor house.

A cheer went up when Emily tossed the small ball the ten yards or so necessary to start the next round of bowls, punctuated by a cacophony of barking from the Marchioness of Bumble’s dachshunds and Sesily’s “Cor! That’s a good arm, Emily!”