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She wanted this. She wantedhim. She wanted him to keep kissing her, his lips soft against hers, the blunt press of his teeth on her lower lip barely noticeable. He tightened his arm around her waist, his fingers cupping the back of her neck. What would those large, strong hands feel like elsewhere on her body? The front of her bodice, even?

Reaching out uncertainly, Daphne moved to touch his broad shoulders, intending to pull him closer, to let him know that?—

Abruptly, she was shoved away.

Staggering backward, Daphne regained her balance. Her face was flushed—she just knew it—and she could feel an errant tendril of hair tickling her neck. She glanced up at him, breathing hard as if she’d just run a mile.

“What…?” she managed before the Duke spoke up.

“I am sorry,” he said, his face rigid and blank. “I don’t know why I did that. I shouldn’t have done it. I beg your pardon.”

She cleared her throat, wishing the color would leave her cheeks. Her head felt as if it were going to explode. “I’m not offended. But Your Grace?—”

“I meant what I said,” he interrupted. His arms hung heavy at his sides, and she noticed that his fingers were curled into fists.

“I… what?” she managed.

He sighed, turning away. “I didn’t want a wife. I don’t want companionship or anything morephysical. I don’t need more children. I can barely manage the one I’ve got. No children, no sharing of lives. Just a plain marriage, in name only, to save both of our reputations and Alex’s. I should not have done that, Miss Belmont, and I hope you’ll forgive me. Itwon’thappen again.”

She flinched a little at that.

He’d put emphasis on the word, for clarity. In case she got ideas.

Well, I don’t wantit to happen again, either,she felt like shouting, although that might be a case of the lady protesting too much.

Instead, she took a leaf out of Emily’s book. Despite a few recentfaux pas, Emily tended to behave very well and made excellent choices.

Daphne folded her arms over her chest and smiled as gracefully as she could. “I accept your apology. And I accept your offer of marriage, Your Grace. You are right—I really don’t have any other choice.”

He breathed out slowly, his broad shoulders sagging. “Right. Well. In that case, I—” He broke off at the sound of running footsteps, his heavy eyebrows lowering into a frown.

There was an impatient tap on the door. Not waiting for a response, the door opened, and a red-faced and breathless Peter Tinn stumbled inside.

“We have unexpected guests, Your Grace,” he gasped. “It’s… It’s Miss Belmont’s family. They’re here. And they’refurious.”

‘Unexpected guests’was not an accurate description. Daphne did not find herself surprised. Of course, her family would come the instant they read that scandal sheet with everybody else.

The Duke had told her roughly that he would leave her to go ahead and manage her family, and he would join them soon to iron out any details. And that was that—she was engaged and dismissed in the course of a couple of sentences.

It’s the stuff romances are made of.

Daphne could hear raised voices from an open door down the hallway—one of the parlors, she thought—and quickened her pace.

It was her mother’s voice, of course.

“… and Iinsiston seeing my daughter atonce,” Octavia was saying, her voice raised to a shout. “You cannot keep her from me. We have the Duke and Duchess of Langdon here, so don’t start thinking she’s some friendless pauper. This is an outrage.”

Daphne heard the steward’s voice quavering back, trying and failing to calm down the livid woman.

Looks like I came in the nick of time,she snorted inwardly as she pushed open the door and stepped inside.

All conversation ceased, and five heads swiveled towards her. Theodore, Anna, Octavia, and, of course, Emily. And, naturally, the beleaguered Peter Tinn.

“You’re safe,” Emily said, speaking first. Her voice wobbled, and her eyes were red-rimmed.

She was wearing an old pair of spectacles with a crack on one of the lenses, and Daphne guiltily remembered tearing her sister’s other spectacles off her face as she rode, losing them in the undergrowth.

“I’m safe,” she echoed.