Page 5 of A Duke for Opal (The Carmichael Saga #2)

F uck.

And this time, Strathearn didn’t even try to dress the vulgar curse in his head up in a fancy, French whisper.

Absolutely any other time, he would have plucked his eyes out and cut out his tongue for having broken a code of friendship that forbade one man from lusting after a friend’s sister or sister-in-law.

Forget the fact Strathearn hadn’t recognized Little—or not so little anymore— Lady Opal Carmichael. The sin, accidental or not, was still a sin.

And now, Opal had gone and fallen in love.

Fury flashed through him.

No, not just that. She was in love with one of the bloody bastards who was even now a guest under Strathearn’s damned roof.

He’d kill the blighter.

He’d rip the cod sucker’s limbs from his body, make the unworthy fellow chew them, and then choke the bastard to death on the remnants of his arms and legs.

Opal’s quiet, hesitant voice cut through Strathearn’s all-consuming, feral rage.

“Locke?”

“Hmm? Uh…” Aside from her confidence that threatened to turn him into a ruthless savage, he hadn’t heard another word to leave her ripe, sensuous lips. “You were saying?”

“I wasn’t saying,” she said, exasperated. “You know that.”

No, he hadn’t.

He did, however, wink, pretending he had.

All the while, Strathearn fought to rein in his temper.

No, Opal hadn’t asked anything of him or from him.

Which also meant if he hauled her back to Lady Glain and Grimoire, without the information she’d intended to impart, then Strathearn would have absolutely no bloody idea who he needed to kill.

Striving for a calm he was certain he’d never again feel, he released his hold on Opal and folded his arms. “What is it you want to say to me?”

“ Ask you,” she demurred.

“Hell, Opal, you just said you hadn’t asked me anything.” He ran both hands over his face this time.

“And, at the time, I hadn’t .” She flashed a siren’s smile. “Now, I am.”

Strathearn gnashed his teeth so hard it was a wonder they didn’t break. “You’re trying to drive me stark, raving mad.”

She pressed her thumb and index finger together. “Maybe just a little.”

“ Opal .”

Her ebullient expression faded; all the joy inherently etched in her features melted away so that only sadness filled the lines of her cheeks.

And bastard that Strathearn was, he couldn’t stop from noting with a rake’s gaze how cheeks that’d once been chubby were now high and arched like those carved in homage of the Greek goddesses. As enrapt as he was with the beauty she’d become, it took a moment before her next words reached him.

“I’m in love, Locke.”

I’m in love...

There it was again.

Opal spoke with a gravity he’d never before heard from her.

But then, she’d been a girl. Over the years, she’d transformed from a bothersome duck to a breathtaking swan. He’d just happened to miss the transformation. Some other chap, however, had not.

This time, he gleefully entertained all the ways he could kill the blighter.

“And?” he asked between gritted teeth.

Fury brought her breathtakingly back to life. “And I am a prisoner,” she hissed.

His breath came harder. God, she’d be a siren in be—

He recoiled. Disgruntled with himself for lusting after Opal Carmichael even now, he spoke gruffer than intended. “Opal—”

“Is this where you tell me I’m not?” she cried. “Is this where you proclaim me hysterical and flighty?”

Oh, for all that was holy.

“I haven’t said any of that,” he bit out.

“But you were thinking it, Locke.”

Actually, he’d been imagining stripping both cloaks from Opal’s curved body, so he could assess for himself all the ways and places in which she was now a woman.

Either way, both thoughts—and most decidedly, acts—were forbidden.

“I don’t know what I was thinking, Opal,” he snapped. “Because you seem to know what I’m thinking or intend to say before I even say it.”

Her lower lip quivered.

Oh, hell.

“Please, don’t cry,” he implored.

He’d always been utterly powerless in the face of her tears. The last having been her last visit to Cambridge when she’d jumped from an oak tree into Strathearn’s lake, in water too shallow, and sprained her ankle so bad she couldn’t swim the rest of her time visiting.

She’d cried more over that loss than the pain of her injury.

“I’m not.” The moisture that welled in Opal’s eyes made a liar of her.

As she attempted to gain control of her emotions, Strathearn himself remained in tumult. Until Opal, he’d never believed a person capable of such innocence, cheer, and truthfulness. He’d first met the young woman years earlier. She’d been a small girl and stormed into Chetham’s Subscription Library like a veritable Joan of Arc and shredded Grimoire for having hurt her sister. She’d been witty, light-hearted, and he hadn’t a bloody clue how to help when she was this way.

Frantically searching about, Strathearn yanked his hat off and beat it against his leg.

“You’re right,” she conceded on an aching whisper.

“I’m not.”

A watery smile hovered on her lips. “You don’t even know what I’m referring to.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he spoke swiftly. He’d have given up his title, wealth, and bloody full head of hair to keep her from hurting. “Just…whatever it is you’re right and I’m wrong.”

Her eyes sparkled with their old familiar, glimmer of joy and something shifted dangerously in his chest.

“You’re just afraid I’m going to cry and you hate a woman’s tears, Strathearn.”

Correction: He’d otherwise been indifferent to the practiced, pretty weeping of experienced women who’d employed those crystal drops like weapons.

He hated this woman’s tears.

Unnerved as all hell, he affected an air of insouciance. “Guilty. You have my full attention. I do love being told when I’m right about something.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Which is, always.”

She rolled her eyes.

Her expression became somber, once more. “I assumed you’d judge me so I didn’t give you a chance to listen.”

“I would never judge you,” he said quietly. “But you were correct earlier; I wasn’t listening. I’m listening now , Opal.”

“You as a man and duke, have complete and utter control of every aspect of your life. Me, on the other hand?” She breathed deep, and her shoulders heaved from the force of that unsteady intake of air.

“The duke…” she began.

Every muscle in his body tensed.

God, how Strathearn despised he shared so much as the title ‘duke’ with the bloody monster.

“Yes?” he asked quietly and gently so as to not startle her into closing up.

She hugged herself in a lonely embrace, and it was all he could do to keep from taking her in his arms, the way he’d done the first time she’d returned from finishing school, and rushed at him.

“First,” Opal said sotto voce, in flat deadened tones that proved more agonizing than her palpable suffering.

“He took away everything here I loved,” she continued in that haunting way. “My sister, Abaddon, F-Flint. And when I lost my family, I turned to my books.” Misery bled from within her eyes. “And just like Glain said he would, he even took my b-books,” her voice trembled. “He sent me away, Locke, and he is going to do it again.”

A fresh sliver of agony speared his heart. “I know, ma fee .”

Determination sparked to life in her previously suffering gaze. “The duke will separate me from the man I love…If I let him.”

Separate me from the man I love…

Opal’s fervency and adoration for some undeserving bastard, sent vitriolic hate shooting through Strathearn’s veins, and goddamned if he didn’t find himself on the Duke of Devonshire’s side for the first, last, and only time.

Strathearn seethed. It was a good thing the man she loved , was here, after all. That way, it’d allow Strathearn to quickly narrow down the one he’d be killing this holiday season.

Opal touched his sleeve and he jolted, feeling like he’d taken a bullet.

“But you can help!” she said brightly.

“You want me to murder him?”

Opal gave him a peculiar look and then tossed her head back and laughed. “You are always so silly, Locke,” she gushed, swatting his arm like he was her dearest friend.

Hell, that’s what he’d really been these past years, but then she hadn’t looked and sounded like this.

A memory slipped in of the last time he’d seen her. Opal, seated at the river shore, with her legs stretched out, her skirts up about her knees, and her face, tilted towards the sun as she’d absorbed the summer ray—

She dropped her voice to a low, mellifluent whisper. “What I need…”

Between his sensual reminiscence of her and sultry voice, his rake’s body responded as it always had and would to the husky promise contained within, but this was Opal. She was different.

Alas, lust didn’t give a shite about right or wrong, friendships or betrayal.

Opal beckoned Strathearn closer, with a little wave. Like he was the serpent and she the snake charmer, he went.

The minx took a swift glance about, which was good, as one of them was alert for possible discovery. Shock of shocks, he, the masterful rake ceded the role to the innocent. In fairness, he couldn’t have managed the task were his life dependent on it, which it might well be. If Grimoire discovered Strathearn here alone, lusting after his virginal sister-in-law, he’d be dead on the spot.

Funny, the threat of death didn’t prove as compelling as it ought.

When Opal looked back, her lips curled in a soft, cat-like smile.

“I want you to help me capture his heart,” she whispered.

Unbidden, his gaze went to her cupid’s bow mouth, and he stared transfixed by the gleaming, crimson flesh.

As such, it was a moment before he registered Opal’s request.

His cockstand wilted. “Absolutely not,” he gritted out.

Her radiant features fell. Any other time, he’d have immediately rescinded his rejection.

Not. This. Bloody. Fucking. Time.

“But…”

“I said ‘no’,” he said more sharply than intended.

Opal turned her palms up. “ Why ?”

The desperate entreaty in her voice brought his eyes sliding closed. “ Opal .”

“You believe I’m too young,” she said with a calm that attested to how Opal Carmichael had matured and changed—further, changed, that was.

“As Grimoire’s friend, it’d be—”

“I’m not your friend, too?” she asked quietly.

“Of course you are!” he exclaimed.

Or she had been, but that’d been when she was a girl and he a grown man enjoying bachelorhood. He slashed a hand through his hair.

Opal persistent, obstinate vixen she’d always been, pressed him further. “Do you not trust I’m capable of making decisions about my own future?”

“You know I do,” he said brusquely.

“Then why not help me—?”

“Because the last bloody thing you should be doing, Opal, is out here scheming with me about how to capture some bastard’s heart.”

His raised voice echoed like a shout in the quiet of the winter storm.

With a quieter curse, Strathearn took Opal by her arm and steered them through the entrance of the garden maze.

When in the privacy of the snow-covered greenery, Strathearn spoke on a hushed whisper. “If the gentleman was in any way deserving of you, then he’d be the one doing everything in his power to woo you and win you.”

Agitated, he drew her up on her tip-toes and pulled her closer so their bodies nearly touched. “And you certainly wouldn’t be outside alone with me, asking me to show you how to earn his notice, ma fee ,” he breathed against her lips.

Their chests moved in like quick, uneven rhythms of two who’d engaged in a chase.

Opal stared up at him with wide eyes, and a fresh wave of lust bolted through him—for within those innocent, expressive depths, he identified all too easily and clearly—she desired him.

He released her quickly.

Opal immediately drew her arm close and rubbed the place where he’d gripped her. “That is f-fine, Locke.” She lifted her chin. “I will figure it out—”

He had her in his arms.

Opal’s threat ended on a sharp gasp.

Cleverer than Hobbes, Hume, and Spenser combined, she certainly would.

“The hell you will,” he gritted out.

If Strathearn didn’t get involved, then he wouldn’t ever figure out the man’s identity.

She eyed him suspiciously. “Why the sudden change of mind, Strathearn?”

“Because I don’t trust you on your own,” he muttered, which wasn’t completely untrue.

On an exuberant laugh, Opal launched herself at Strathearn. “Thank you, Locke,” she cried.

On instinct he caught her.

While she hugged him so tight, Strathearn’s arms hovered about her waist.

Devil rot his already blackened soul at the feel of her—her high, plump breasts crushed against his chest, the flat of her belly nestled against his randy shaft—every male urge demanded Strathearn snatch Opal closer, bury his mouth against hers, and touch her all over.

He grappled with the need to do what was right and the desire to do what he wanted.

Ultimately—and shockingly—his sense of honor, and loyalty to Grimoire, won out.

“Yes, there, there,” he patted her awkwardly on the back, and eased her away from him. “Enough of that. After dinner when the gentlemen retire for brandy, we’ll meet. The library.”

Opal beamed like he’d put the sun in her hands. “Splendid!”

“Yes, splendid,” he mumbled.

Without a bit or hint of the tumult besieging Strathearn, Opal laughed one of her infectious, jubilant laughs.

Going up on tip-top, she kissed him. “You won’t regret this, Locke,” she vowed, and with a quick, jaunty wave, took off.

After she’d gone, Strathearn gave his head a wry shake.

Nearly all the times he and Opal met were over books: the Circulating Room. Her father’s library. Strathearn’s library.

The library was safe.

Amidst all the smell of those old leather volumes and Opal’s admirable obsession with books, he wouldn’t be stuck entertaining all manner of debauched and sinful things to do with a grown-up Lady Opal Carmichael.