Page 7 of A Duke for Opal (The Carmichael Saga #2)

S trathearn stalked through ancestral halls that went back four centuries and headed for his meeting with the minx who’d charmed every last lord seated at his bloody dining table.

All the while, he recalled Opal as she’d been at dinner—and seethed.

He’d spent the entire course of dinner assessing each and every last bachelor present to determine exactly which undeserving blighter Opal had set her cap on, but by God, the way she’d charmed every last man, Strathearn hadn’t managed to determine his rival among them.

My rival?

Strathearn hit the end of the hall.

Within the gilded floor-to-ceiling length portrait frame, the First Duke of Strathearn’s stern, savage likeness glowered at him. The armored knight, stood with his feet planted apart and his claymore unsheathed, appearing all too ready to climb out and take Strathearn’s head off for being so addlepated.

A rival for what?

Or who?

Because of Opal?

He laughed.

The sternly frozen-in-time duke continued to glare his disapproval.

“Yes, yes, you don’t take me as a fellow who’d appreciate a good joke.” Strathearn gave Duke One a wry grin and continued his march to the library.

He wasn’t being possessive of Opal. Not as in a ‘rival-rival’ per se. Not as in the contender, or challenger, sort of way.

Why, the chit was like a sister, and as such, any fellow who called on her, courted her, married her, or any variation of something in between would find himself on the deserving end of Strathearn’s wrath.

The doe-eyed, worried imp who’d enlisted Strathearn’s help capturing her true love’s heart hadn’t shown up to dine that night. No, in her delectable stead, there’d been the bold, flirtatious, witty, goddamned Aphrodite, charming each and every last fellow present.

Which was the wrong thought to have…as it immediately whispered forward a thought of Opal: Married to her mystery fellow—of a certain, that was the only outcome. Opal, parting her generous lips and taking some stranger’s kiss, the same moment she let her legs splay. Bold, daring, and spirited, she’d be a tigress in the bedchambers.

Rage blackened his vision.

“Shite and piss,” he hissed.

Reaching the end of the hall, Strathearn took the corner fast and collided with a young servant.

Letting out another curse, Strathearn quickly caught the boy and set him back on his feet.

“Y-Your Grace! M-My—”

“Apologies,” Strathearn muttered to the stunned lad, and, hastening around him, continued at a briskened pace.

Oh, the bloody hilarity, the blasted irony, of Opal appealing to Strathearn for help capturing some chap’s attention. Not because Strathearn didn’t know the surefire way to get a fellow looking. Oh, he did . Some of London’s most wanton widows, nubile ballerinas, and scandalous ladies had, at some point or another, each courted his favors.

Those lusty women, however? They wanted—and got—but one thing from Strathearn—sex.

But Opal? She didn’t want that from Strathearn or any man.

A savage growl worked up his chest.

Oh, she’d better not.

Strathearn forcibly thrust away the repugnant idea of Opal lusting for some man…

The devil on his shoulder pricked Strathearn with his pitchfork. Don’t you mean some man that isn’t you, eh?

He stumbled a step, righted himself, and then quickened his pace.

Yes, any and every flesh and blood man and hell, even the dead ones, would agree, Opal Carmichael would tempt even a saint to sin.

Yet again, Strathearn’s observation came more from his history as a connoisseur of beautiful women.

He blanched.

Not that Strathearn now—or would ever—compare Opal to another woman. The stark differences between the black-haired, spirited, chit, and well…well…every other woman was so vast as to be laughable.

“Fuck!” Mad I’m going m—

A young lady glided into his path.

Strathearn let out a shout several decibels higher.

Bloody hell.

“My goodness, Duke,” Lady Glain drawled. “I cannot say I remember you in such a foul temper, but once, and that was when you learned my husband had fallen in love with me.”

Lady Glain.

Splendid.

Strathearn dropped a belated bow. “My apologies, Lady Glain,” he said, his face as hot as his damned neck. “I fear you took me by surprise.”

Lady Glain lowered her voice. “Alas, I referred to your temper in the dining room. The main course, I know was not to your like—”

Strathearn waved his hand. “The meal was fine,” he murmured.

Get yourself together, man.

Strathearn took in a silent, steadying, breath. “My apologies,” he repeated, a second time, calmer.

Grimoire’s wife, a former Diamond, had been known for her comeliness and icy-heartedness. This smiling, teasing, kind-eyed woman before him bore no hint of her former self.

In terms of beauty, though, Opal, with her glossy, thick, black tresses and glimmering blue eyes, outshone her elder sister.

Opal…

Strathearn glanced down the hall.

Opal, who would even now be waiting, and who might very well decide she’d waited long enough for Strathearn to show—in which case, lionhearted, effervescent Opal would take matters into her own hands, which was decidedly not for the better.

He frowned.

“Am I keeping you from an assignation, Duke?” Lady Glain asked with more dry amusement.

Strathearn whipped his gaze back so quick, he wrenched a muscle in his neck. “N-Never!”

Lady Glain snorted.

His scowl deepened. What the hell did she mean by that?

“This time, my apologies are in order,” Lady Glain demurred. “It was my turn to offend you. I was merely jesting.”

“I’m not offended,” he blustered.

“Of course not.” Opal’s sister inclined her head. “I will allow you to your company, Your Grace,” she whispered.

He bristled. “I…”

Oh, fuck it. Let her believe what she would. With his black reputation, Lady Glain wasn’t off the mark. The better question remained: why the hell was he so indignant?

Strathearn bowed deep.

Lady Glain hesitated. “Your Grace?”

What the hell is it now?

“I do not suppose you’ve seen Opal?”

“Opal?” he echoed dumbly.

“Opal, as in my sister?”

“I have not,” he blurted. “That is aside from dinner. I trust you saw her there, seated at the end away from m— you .”

Lady Glain looked at him weirdly.

Get a damned hold of yourself, man.

Strathearn cleared his throat. “I have not,” he repeated.

“Uh…yes. Very well.” Giving him another odd glance, she hastened off.

Strathearn politely waited until the lady had gone, and the echo of her footfalls had faded altogether.

He took off, running the rest of the way, and didn’t stop until he reached the library. Catching his hands on either side of the doorjamb, he took in several deep breaths, composing himself.

The last thing he needed was for Opal to open—

The panel cracked open a sliver.

Through that small slit, a lone blue-green eye squinted out at him.

“Strathearn?” Opal’s whispery greeting contained a wealth of joy, eagerness, and excitement that unleashed a strange—but not unwelcome—sensation in his chest.

Hell, everything about this house party, and his exchanges with Opal, and disordered thoughts, was strange.

A fellow might as well lean fully into whatever the hell it was, and for Strathearn? He’d never been one to turn away anything that made him feel good inside.

Strathearn dropped an elbow along the door frame. He flashed a half-grin. “Hull—”

Opal snaked a hand around his upper arm and tugged him inside.

“Where have you been?” she demanded.

Opal, singularly unaffected by his presence and smile, pushed Strathearn deeper into the room and went about locking the door behind them.

He felt his first feelings of…rejection, and with Lady Opal Carmichael—and he didn’t like her indifference—this, indifference, as in the general sort.

His jaw flexed. He didn’t like it one, bloody bit.

Strathearn rested his back against the locked panel and waited until she looked at him.

“Forgive me, ma fee ,” he said silkily, folding his arms before him. “I found myself… unexpectedly waylaid.”

Everything inside hurt.

The pain in Opal’s chest intensified when, with each passing minute, Locke failed to show up for their appointment.

But that was nothing compared to this all-consuming, wrenching pain.

His smug, proud, rogue’s smile and cocksure carriage spoke the tale all too clearly—he’d been with another woman.

Unable to meet Locke’s gaze, knowing if she did, he’d gather with one single glance, just how pitifully heartbroken he’d left her with nothing more than a veiled mention of the time he’d spent wooing some other woman. “I am sorry you had to end your assignation to help me,” she whispered.

To make herself busy, Opal hurried back to the chair she’d occupied when awaiting his arrival. She picked up the book she’d been reading and made a show of reading.

This is hopeless. Opal had a more likely chance of stopping the earth from turning and setting it spinning in the opposite direction than she did of getting the Duke of Strathearn to fall in love with her and forsake his rakish ways to be with her.

All the while, she felt his gaze on her.

A heat greater than the flames cast by the blazing fire in the hearth, washed over her, and she looked up quickly.

Her breath caught.

With just a heartbeat between them, Locke brushed his knuckles along the curve of her cheek. “Are you?” he asked softly.

She managed a shaky nod.

Locke winged a single seductive blond brow up. “Should I leave, then?”

“No!” she exclaimed, embarrassingly quick.

That same rogue’s smile he’d trained upon Opal at dinner when the rest of the guests’ focus was elsewhere made another appearance on his beautiful, hard lips.

He lowered his lips close to her ear. The hint of Dionysus’s sweet gifts of wine, honey, and grapes clung to the warm, silky sough of his breath and left Opal drunk. “Dare I take your eager denial to mean you want me here, Opal?”

Oh, lord, help me.

Her lashes fluttered like mad. “I-I am a-always h-happy to see you, Locke.”

“Just happy ?” he teased, his lips still so close, that when he spoke, he brushed her right lobe in an accidental kiss.

Opal swallowed hard—or she tried to.

“Tell me, ma petite sirene ,” he coaxed. “I want you to tell me.”

She tried again. This time, with success. “Do you remember the first two years after Glain and Abaddon married, when I’d visit Turvey House, and you’d sometimes find me perched on a swing above the River Ouse?”

“Yes?” he asked, his voice also a whisper, his earlier levity now gone.

Amidst the hypnotic pull of his husky baritone, Opal closed her eyes. “I always pumped my legs as fast and hard as I could.”

She struggled in vain to recall the crystalline depths of that river she recalled—this new memory forming with him, proved an even greater magic.

Locke rested his hands upon her shoulders. “Yes,” he urged, that sonorous rumble set her entire body trembling.

“But then you’d come and in just a handful of pushes, you’d send me soaring until I was so giddy, I became breathless.”

With the pads of his bare thumbs, Strathearn slowly, tantalizingly, deftly edged the gossamer puffs of her sleeves down. He lightly, sensually glided the pads of his bare thumbs along her exposed skin.

Oh, God.

Opal’s legs grew heavy under her. “That’s how I feel with you, Locke,” she said thickly. “Like I’m flying.”

Locke slid his left hand to the small of her back. He curled his fingers into her waist and drew her close. The contoured muscles of his chest tensed against her. “Let me show you what it really is to fly, ma fee .”

Yes! I want that.

Locke lowered his head closer.

He’s going to kiss me.

Opal trembled.

“It was your sister.”

She cringed. Nothing could leave a lady colder in the arms of a man she loved, than mention of her sister.

Strathearn’s husky laugh tickled her lips. “The meeting that found me waylaid, ma fee , was with your sister. She wanted to know if I’d seen you.”

Which meant…

Opal stilled. Locke hadn’t been with another woman. That was, he hadn’t been with some ravishing, sophisticated beauty.

“And what did you say?” she asked on an exhale.

He chuckled. “I didn’t tell her where you were if that is what you are wondering. Being the rogue I am,” he flicked his tongue over her earlobe and she shivered. “I lied through my teeth, ma petite .” My little love.

She sighed. “D-Did you?”

“I did and I always will, Opal,” he said huskily. “When a gentleman hungers for a woman—propriety, respectability, what is right, what is wrong—none of it matters.”

Harsh, mesmerizing flicks of gold glinted in Locke’s brown eyes. “Nothing matters more than having you in my arms.”

Her breath hitched.

Even as Locke claimed her mouth, Opal leaned up and freely, happily gave it to him.

He growled, a harsh, utterance of masculine approval.

Nothing, not one of the thousands of dreams she’d dreamt, not her greatest hopes or most curious wondering could have prepared her for the all-powerful, luminous burst of explosive magic of Locke’s kiss.

Locke tasted her lips, learned them, and coaxed her to learn the taste and feel of his, in return.

With each slant of his mouth over Opal’s, there grew a burning fervor to his kiss.

Opal’s legs failed her. When did she stand up?

Locke caught her fast and held her hard against him, refusing to surrender her or their embrace. He cupped his hands under Opal’s buttocks and squeezed.

She gasped at the deliciously, forbidden, wonderment of the powerful feel of his hands on her.

“I’ve got you, mamour ,” he vowed between kisses, his deep baritone, a shade deeper and harsher. “ Je t’attraperai quand tu tomberas .”

I will catch you when you fall…

Opal cried out; his promise as dizzying as the magic he currently wove with his kiss and touch.

Drunk on his touch, this man who did and forever would hold her heart, Opal met each bold slant of his lips with an increasing desperation and fierceness.

Locke ran his hands all over her; those large, all-powerful fingers exploring her and learning of her with the same devoted effort he did her mouth. “ Je suis en feu pour toi, mon couer ,” he rasped, against her lips. I am on fire for you, my heart.

Je br?le pour toi, mon roi. I burn for you, my king.

With a savage growl, he drew back and burned his gaze into her flushed, heated body. “Tu es la perfection, ma minette.”

Emboldened, Opal tangled her fingers in Locke’s golden mane and drew his mouth back to hers.

They partook in a violent thrust and parry; dueling with their mouths for supremacy in a primal dance, Opal was destined to lose.

A shameful rush of wetness flooded between her legs. Moaning, she writhed and twisted her hips in a bid to ease the hot, unbearable ache.

“Locke,” she pleaded.

He stiffened.

Opal silently screamed, knowing she’d shattered the moment, and wanting to call back her use of his given name.

Tenderly, Locke kissed her forehead. “Your first lesson, love?” he said softly, easing the sleeves of her dress back into place. “The way to capture your gentleman’s heart? Is by being you, by telling him how you feel, and being free in your longings for him.”

Locke stepped out of Opal’s arms and a blast of cold hit her.

In a vain attempt to restore the heat of his embrace, she went to hug herself, but stopped. The last thing she needed to draw attention to was how affected she’d been by what they’d done here when he remained unmoved.

“Here,” Locke murmured and methodically went about righting strands of Opal’s hair that’d come loose back into her diamond snowflake combs. “I’ll have you know, the gentleman whose heart you’re determined to win?” he casually remarked as he worked. “He doesn’t deserve you.”

“He does!” That vehement denial ripped from Opal and resonated around the high, stucco ceiling, where Apollo, deity of arts, poetry, and crops issued guidance to the mortals at his feet.

Locke, about to tuck another curl into place, stopped.

His lips formed a grim line. That tensing of his mouth made his already strong, chiseled, jawline more prominent.

“We shall agree to disagree,” he said, icily mocking, with a glacial hardness she’d never before witnessed from this man, or for that matter, believed him capable of, and it hit her like a kick to the core.

Even while Opal relished being the recipient of his skilled attentions, vicious jealousy clawed at her thinking of all the women who’d come before her…and who’d come after her, if she didn’t succeed in making him fall in love with her.

“Turn,” he murmured, and with his usual tenderness.

Opal, jolted by Locke’s back and forth transformation from hardened stranger to sweet-tempered friend, looked up, confusedly, at him. “I…” What is he saying?

“Here,” he said softly.

Locke guided her into position, and her eyes slid closed at the sure, steady, but commanding way he took her head in his hands, and resumed working on Opal’s coiffure with a care her own lady’s maid didn’t even take.

“We’re nearly done,” he promised. “As I was saying, before your full-throated defense of Lord Mystery Sweetheart,” Locke continued with his usual teasing, good-humored tone, she wondered if she’d merely imagined that earlier break in his character.

The order between them restored, Opal playfully pinched his arm.

“Ouch!” Locke exclaimed.

He finished seeing to Opal’s arrangement. “Whatever was that for, ma petite ?”

“You’re making light of him, Locke.”

“How could I? Why, I don’t even have leave of the gentleman’s identity.” The shameless rogue stared back with such an over-the-top wounded hurt, she laughed.

He stared pointedly at her.

Opal stared back.

Leaning in, he placed his lips near her ear and spoke on an exaggerated whisper. “This is where you graciously volunteer the fellow’s name.”

Her heart tripped several beats. How could she ever be this near to him, have his mouth this close, and not think of that scorching, explosive embrace that’d curled her toes and left Opal forever altered.

She leaned up on tiptoe and mimicking his movements, whispered in his ear, in return. “And this is where you realize I don’t intend to do any such thing.”

Locke swept an opaque gaze over Opal’s face.

They locked stares.

His thick, golden lashes drifted low.

Her body trembled.

He is going to kiss me, again…

And she yearned for him to do just that…and more…

“I’d say, given you’re entrusting me to help you, you’d also trust me enough with the chap’s identity,” the charming rogue groused; he softened his grumblings with a devastating wink.

By the nature of both Locke’s all-powerful title and by the very favor she’d put to him, he had every reason to not only expect Opal share that information with him, but demand she do so, as well.

Locke, however, had never been a man to throw his title around—except to provide support and protection as he’d done when Opal’s father rejected Glain’s marriage to Abaddon.

And it was just one of the thousands of reasons she’d journaled about through the years, why Opal would love Locke, the Duke of Strathearn, until the day she died.

Locke released a beleaguered—and not at all desire-filled—sigh.

“You will not budge, then, Opal?”

“No. I am quite determined.”

He grinned. “When you have your stubborn head set on something, heaven help the one who tries to get in your way.”

Would Locke still be smiling if he discovered he was, in fact, the one she’d set her heart, soul, and dreams on?

Locke perched his right hip on the sofa. “Give me something,” he said, with a pigheadedness to match Opal’s own obstinacy.

“ Very well …”

He inclined his head. “I’m listening, ma petite .”

“You have my promise I will eventually tell you, Locke.”

“Granted your assured success, it won’t be long before everyone knows.”

A twinkle glimmered in eyes that would never not melt her soul.

The levity in which Locke spoke of her with another man, though, would never not break her heart.

“Very well.” Opal stepped between his legs. She rested her hands on Locke’s chest. “I promise you will be the first person I tell,” she vowed, smoothing her palms over the silk lapels.

All the thick, corded, contoured muscles of his chest rippled and bunched.

What she’d intended as a placating, soothing gesture vanished under the whipcord tension in his body.

“That is enough lessons for tonight, Opal,” he said with a brusqueness that made her recoil. “With your sister having looked for you, it’d be wise if you left.”

Humiliation sent Opal’s entire body burning into a red-hot blush. “Uh…yes…” Hastily, she stepped out of his arms. “Time d-did get away from us…me,” she swiftly corrected. “Didn’t it?”

Mortified, she glanced toward the gilded ormolu clock across the temple. With the size of those hands and Roman numerals, she couldn’t make out so much as a hint of the time.

“Look at the hour,” Opal said anyway. “Glain has planned for guests to partner off and gather holly and ivy and hawthorn and—” I’m rambling. Opal took a breath. “As such, tomorrow will come early.”

“Yes, it will,” he said, huskily. “We will be partners for the…festivities.”

He spoke it as absolute, ducal fact.

Her heart quickened.

“All so that we can have more time with one another, of course,” he clarified.

Her fanciful hopes were dashed. Regardless of the outcome, whether Locke did or did not fall in love with her, he had offered to help her in ways no other man would have, and without any proverbial strings attached.

“Thank you for all your help, Strathearn,” Opal said softly. “I will be forever in your debt.”

Dropping a curtsy, she hurried to take her leave.

Locke called out.

“Opal?”

She glanced back.

“You owe me nothing, love,” he said, quietly. “You are not a woman to be in any man’s debt, and if there’s even one stupid bounder who expects that of you, tell me, ma petite . That way I can kill him.”

That fierce, warrior-like vow sucked the breath from her body.

Then, he winked. “Night, Opal.”

Night, Opal?

Do you truly believe an enigmatic, worldly rogue like the Duke of Strathearn would speak proprietorial towards any woman—especially an innocent like you, you ninnyhammer?

That was, however, her hope for how all this ended.

Opal mustered a smile. “Night, Locke.”

And this time Opal, her resolve strengthened, slipped out.