The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel #3)(96)

Caleb wanted to break something. “He’s not my protector,” he said, hating that he felt the need to say anything at all. He didn’t care what she thought. Her thoughts were not for him to care about. “I don’t need a protector.”

She turned to him. “Oh? So why do you employ him?”

“Because he needs a protector,” Fetu said with a smirk.

“Go back to the door,” Caleb said, picking up a bottle and pretending to pour whiskey for men who were not waiting for drink. Once Fetu sauntered off, he tried for casualness, looking at Sesily once more. It was not easy, as she was far too beautiful to look at without fearing repercussions. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I wouldn’t have had to come if you’d been less of a coward.”

He grew hot with frustration. “A man would become acquainted with my fists for such a suggestion.”

She smirked. “Well, as we’ve already established, I am not a man. So I think I shall take my chances.”

With a near growl, he tossed the bottle onto a low table and came out from behind the bar, taking her by the arm and guiding her through the throngs of people, into the back room of the pub, where there was nothing but whiskey and gin to play witness. He released her and closed the door behind him.

Sesily was too surefooted, already taking one long step toward him, and Caleb had to work not to back away. She was distilled danger. And that was before she said, low and sultry, as if she were testing the depths of his wildness, “Perhaps not so much a coward, after all. What do you intend to do with me here?”

The question produced so many vivid, stunning, devastatingly wanton answers that he required a moment to wrap his mind about them. Of course, he did not intend to act upon even one of those answers, even as he quite desperately wanted to.

He was, after all, a man with a pulse.

Clearing his head, he searched for a safe topic. Seized upon it. “Where is your sister?”

She stepped closer, her deep cerulean skirts now brushing against his legs. Not that he felt them. Not that he ached for them. “She left the moment we arrived. Argued with Mr. Fetu, gained entrance to the main room, and left to the stage, muttering something about entertainment.”

“She should not have brought you.”

“Are you afraid I shall be ruined?”

“Someone should be.”

She tilted her head. “Hasn’t Sera told you that my sisters and I are ruined before we begin? We are the Dangerous Daughters. The Soiled S’s. Interestingly, we are so ruined that we cannot shock Society. We can run from our husbands. Toss dukes into fishponds. Horserace. Hie off to Scotland in carriages with men we do not know. And all we do is prove the world’s point. One of my sisters is a duchess. Another a marchioness. Another a countess. And the last richer than the other three combined. Ruin has served us quite well.”

He narrowed his gaze. “Not you, though.”

Something flickered in those eyes, blue as the shimmering fabric of her dress. Something that he would have called sadness if he were willing to pay attention. Which he wasn’t.

“No, not me. But perhaps I simply haven’t given it everything I have.”

And then she laid hands on him, one palm high on his chest, flat against the buttoned linen vest he wore over shirtsleeves when he worked. The touch was like fire. He reached for that criminal, glorious hand, certain he was going to lift it from his person. She was a flirt—the worst kind—the kind that made a man want to sit up and beg.

He didn’t move the hand. Instead, he pressed it tighter to him.

Those blue eyes captured his. “Your heart is pounding, American.”

“Incidental,” he said. “I thought I made it clear that I am not for toying.”

“Tell me why, and I shall allow it.”

He couldn’t help a little laugh at that allow. As though the entire world bent to her whim. As though she and her kind ruled it like queens. And perhaps they did. “Because I’ve vowed off women like you.”

Her voice went soft and smooth. “Women like me?”

“The dangerous kind.” Was he leaning down to her?

“Is that not all of us?” Perhaps she was stretching up to him.

“Lord knows it’s most of you.” She was right there, lips parted like a promise. Like a secret.

“You seem a man who likes a bit of danger.” The words were a breath against his skin, that hand sliding up to his shoulder, to his neck. He fisted his hands at his sides.

“Not the kind that lands me married.”

She watched him, beautiful defiance in her eyes. “I never said I wanted to marry you.”

He deserved a damn medal for not kissing her then. For not accepting the tacit offer she voiced—the kiss. The touch. And whatever else Sesily Talbot, the most dangerous of the Dangerous Daughters, wanted.

He deserved to have President Jackson walk into the damn room and present him with a cabinet post. He deserved to be knighted by the damn king. Riches and power beyond his dreams. All of it. Because, surely, stepping away from her was the single noblest act anyone had ever performed. Arthurian in scope.

Made even nobler when he said, “Go home to your cat, kitten.”

Sesily’s lips flattened in something like disappointment, and then she sighed. “My cat is still at Highley.”