To Woo a Widow (The Heart of a Duke #10)(35)

With a bow, he turned on his heel and made his way through the guests. Slipping out the back entrance of the ballroom, he made his way down the darkened corridors. His footsteps silenced by the thick carpet, he did a quick search of the rooms along the hall. He pushed open another door and stopped. Moonlight filtered through the crack in the curtains and bathed the room in a soft glow.

From where she stood at the sideboard, Philippa stared back. He ran his gaze over her slender frame, draped in shimmering purple satin. “Miles.” Surprise threaded her greeting.

He stepped into the room and pulled the door closed behind him. “We meet again, my lady.”

The last place Miles, the Marquess of Guilford, should be was in Lord Essex’s private study with the young widow and her midnight tresses. If they were discovered, there would be no expectations of marriage the way there would had she been an unmarried miss. There would, however, be assumptions—about her as a young widow and him as a still unmarried gentleman.

Only, whenever Philippa was near, the world with all its staid expectations ceased to matter. He could only see her—just as he had from the moment she’d came racing down the riding trail in Hyde Park. Miles pushed away from the door and started over to her.



She should not be here. Given her meeting yesterday morning with Miles’ mother and her observation of him with the woman who would, no doubt, one day be his wife, they had no place being alone as they were now.

For even as she wished to be with him, cared for him, desired him, she could not be one of those wanton women who would ever come between him and his eventual wife. Philippa studied the tips of her slippers. “You should not be here, Miles.”

“Why?” His husky baritone wrapped around that question and sent heat spiraling inside.

“Your Miss Cunning.” A woman, perfectly plump and golden blonde and all things an English lady should be. No doubt, she’d give Miles perfect, flawless babes and they’d be a laughing, joyous family, and… A spasm contorted her chest.

She stiffened, as Miles dusted his knuckles along her cheek. “Is that the manner of man you take me for?” There was a hard, wounded edge to his question that brought her gaze snapping up to meet his. “Do you take me for a gentleman who’d seek out one woman while intending to betroth myself to another?”

“No,” she said on a rush. “Of course not.” The oddity of it all was that, even knowing him just these few days, she could say beyond a doubt that Miles Brookfield was a man of honor. The woman fortunate to have him as her husband would have a devoted, loving man at her side. And God, how she despised that eventual lady.

He continued stroking her cheek. “And yet, you believe I would be here if my intentions were to marry another?”

…My intentions to marry another… Words that suggested his intentions to wed her. Philippa’s throat worked spasmodically. She would never have anything more to do with him. And that truth was not borne of his mother’s meddling, but rather a truth of who she was. In a Society where dutiful wives gave their husbands many babes, boys with which to carry on that distinguished title, she could never give him those things. Nor would she ask him to abandon those gifts that all men wanted.

But she would know his kiss once more.

Miles peered at her through thick, hooded lashes. “What are you thinking?”

She trailed the tip of her tongue along her lower lip and his gaze went to that slight movement. Desire flared in the endless green depths of his eyes and a heady sense of feminine power gripped her. “I want you to kiss me,” she whispered.

His body jerked as though he’d been struck and then with a long, agonized groan, he took her in his arms. With his mouth, he devoured hers in a meeting that was fierce and hard. He slanted his lips over hers again and again, a primitive male wishing to forever mark his mate, and a low moan slipped from her throat as her lips parted to allow the sound to escape. He took advantage of that slight movement and thrust his tongue into her mouth, where she tangled her tongue with his; sparring in a forbidden dance. With raspy breath filling the quiet of the room, Miles cupped his hands about her buttocks and dragged her close. The thick length of his desire prodded her belly, liquefying her with a white, hot heat.

In this moment, Philippa forgot all the reasons there could never be anything more with him and, instead, took this gift of passion he offered. He drew his mouth back and she cried out softly at the loss of him, but he merely ran his lips down her neck, sucking and nipping, and finding her pulse pounding away at a maddening rhythm. With a ragged moan, she clasped her fingers reflexively in the silken tresses of his unfashionably long, ginger hair.

“I want you, Philippa,” he breathed raggedly against her skin as he dragged his mouth on a scorching path from her neck to her décolletage. Her knees buckled and he guided her against the sideboard.

“Miles,” she whimpered, as he freed her breasts from her gown. The cool night air slapped her heated skin in a delicious mix of hot and cold. He cupped the white mounds in his hands, pushing them together, and weighing them. Moisture pooled at her center and she reflexively arched her hips, needing this gift he held out—pleasure, desire, hunger—all those wickedly wonderful sensations she’d believed herself incapable of. Then he raised a breast to his mouth. His hot breath fanned the skin and the tip puckered under his mastery. She slid her eyes closed as he drew the bud between his lips and suckled. That skillfully seductive act pulled her into a sea of sensation where she was reduced to a bundle of thrumming nerves. Never, ever in any of the times Calvin had visited her bed and fumbled through their couplings had she burned with the need for his touch.