Page 9 of A Duke for Opal (The Carmichael Saga #2)

A s guests gathered at the terrace that morning, and it became apparent Locke would not, despite his promise, join her, Opal found herself partnered with the Duke of Savage.

That pairing had earned more than a few envious sighs from the unmarried—and older matrons—present.

Certainly, there could be a great deal many fates worse than a lady finding herself in the company of the Duke of Savage, a fact that Opal, the daughter of a mercenary lord, knew all too well.

Opal’s every meeting with the duke revealed the gentleman to be charming, intelligent, and possessed of an appealingly wry, humor.

Except, walking through Hackfall forest beside Savage, the gentleman’s arms brimming from greenery they’d collected for Opal to arrange later, every moment she’d spent with him, she’d secretly wished he’d been another.

The duke spoke, pulling Opal out of her regret-filled musings. “Never say you are disappointed with our selections, Lady Opal?”

Giving her head a shake, she offered the charming nobleman a playful smile. “How could I ever be disappointed with such a grand collection, my lord?” she countered. “Why, you were gracious as to cut,”—At his insistence—“and carry every last object I set my heart upon.” Locke would have let me clip the branches, twigs, and shrubs myself because he knows how much I enjoy doing so.

“I would be the last gentleman to deny you that which you’d set your heart upon, my dear,” he spoke in a most debonair way that should set her heart to racing.

Instead, the memory of Locke’s ‘ma petite’ and ‘ma fee’ and every other endearment he’d uttered filled her mind.

Opal carefully picked her way over the snowy, uneven earth. As she wandered, she stared wistfully at the small pond, which had iced over.

How funny. All the romantic tales she’d loved to read and the warnings issued to debutantes painted all rogues as being the same, where Opal had discovered only one, specific rogue so moved her; a different duke than the one accompanying Opal now.

It was a moment before she realized the Duke of Savage was no longer beside her.

Frowning, Opal stopped and turned around.

In his high, beaver top hat, and sapphire blue, box coat, Savage, wearing a lopsided smile, hung some four paces back.

Oh, hell.

The duke sent a single black eyebrow slowly arcing up. “I’d begun to suspect you’d make it all the way to the warmth of Strathearn’s estate before realizing you’d left me behind, my dear.”

Heat fanned her cheeks and blended with the rosy color left by the cold. “My apologies, Your Grace, my head is elsewhere.”

As soon as that blunt, and brutally honest reply, slipped out, Opal pressed her lips together. Bloody hell.

The duke stared at her.

And then, tossing his head back, the Duke of Savage roared one of his familiar, robust laughs until the objects in his arm shook so badly, he had to set them down to keep from dropping them all into a disordered pile.

Opal’s entirely too gracious partner gave his head a wry shake.

“My pride is taking quite a beating, love,” he said after he straightened.

She flashed him a playful smile. “Given you are met with, written about, and spoken to and of, with nothing less than the world’s adoration, I hardly think you’ll be wounded by my wandering thoughts,”—With thoughts of another— “Your Grace.”

Instead of responding in teasing kind, Savage’s expression grew serious.

Forgetting the stack at his feet, the duke clasped his hands behind him, like some great Greek philosopher of old, born anew in this modern, wooded forest. “It is interesting you say that, my dear,” he murmured.

Even with the snow-covered grounds, Savage moved with impressively languid, even strides.

“What exactly do you find so interesting about it, Your Grace?” she asked. “Do you find my statement to be untrue?”

“Untrue?” He chuckled. “On the contrary. You are very accurate. I’m quite revered.”

“But not modest,” she riposted.

“You offered honesty and I’m merely offering the same,” he said simply, and without clear offense having been taken. “By your own admission, the world favors me, and at that, for nothing more than my title.” He paused, dipping his head close. “And perhaps in some part, my good looks?”

Her lips twitched. “More honesty?”

Savage gave her a wolfish look. “I shall let you be the one to decide that, my dear.”

The playful nature of their exchange evaporated like the warm sough of their breaths on the winter air.

This time, the charismatic duke’s expression grew serious. “In a world where people offer platitudes, I find I prefer your forthrightness. It is…rare.”

He spoke of her like she was some oddity he wished to figure out and not like a friend and equal the way Locke did.

Disconcerted, Opal looked back toward their bounty. “We should return, Your Grace,” she murmured.

“Yes,” he said, regret tinged his concurrence.

Opal took a step to go, but Savage caught her gloved hand in a tender, but firm grip.

Only one other man had held her so. And only that other man’s mere touch brought with it a penetrating heat.

Opal opened her mouth to gently, but stoutly rebuff his attentions.

Whoosh.

Opal gasped; specks of powdery dust peppered her eyes, stinging them.

Whoosh.

Opal just barely registered she’d been the secondary target of someone’s furtive attack when a second snowball took the duke’s hat clear off.

A third projectile came right behind it. This one caught the Duke of Savage squarely at the back of his head and exploded into a spray of icy, watery flecks.

Grunting, Savage whipped around. “What in—” Whoosh . “He ff ?” he muttered around a fourth ball of snow.

The crunch of scampering bootsteps and high-pitched squeals and giggles identified their offenders.

“My siblings,” the duke muttered, though a playful glint shone in his eyes, and were her heart not so fully belonging to Locke, she thought she might have understood the gentleman’s appeal. “Run.”

Before she knew what he intended, Savage stretched his arms out, and bolted.

With her teeth chattering from both the cold and—lest she give herself away—laughter she fought to suppress, Opal headed in the opposite direction, to the pond. The hems of her cloak, wet and muddied, slowed her pace, putting her at a decided disadvantage.

Breathless, she took a quick glance back to assess the threat of danger. Strangely, the melee seemed oddly, specifically, reserved for the duke, who by the sounds, or more accurately, fading sounds, indicated he had a lot of little ones bearing down on him.

Laughing, she looked about for a hiding place.

A tall, imposing figure, jumped into Opal’s path and reached for her.

She gasped. The fist she sent flying was caught before it landed.

Opal flared her eyes wide.

Locke snatched her around the waist, and drew her close, so their bodies touched.

“I don’t know about you, ma petite ,” he whispered against her ear, and she prayed he attributed the hitch in her breath to the cold and not the power he had over her body and senses. “I’d say your doltish sweetheart would be better served properly arming himself with some snowballs than waving his arms about like an angry bear.”

Her lips twitched.

“Worry not, Lady Opal,” Savage bellowed from somewhere deep within the forest. “They shan’t keep me away. I will come for you.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

She glanced in consternation up at Locke. “What…?”

He’d already scooped Opal under the knees and bolted.

Dazed, still breathless with laughter, she clung to his chest.

“What are you doing, Locke?” she asked, exasperated.

“Shh, you’re going to give us away…” His obdurate jaw cinched. “Unless that’s what you hope to do?”

Reveal she and Locke were together and end the stolen time she had with him? “No.” Never.

He smiled. “Splendid. We, ma petite , are winning the battle out here. Savage doesn’t stand a chance.”

“Aren’t Savage and I on the same team?” she drawled.

Locke snarled. “You most certainly are not.”

Opal searched and found no hint of levity or his usual light-heartedness.

The stone ruins of the ancient castle that’d stood on these grounds came into view, and like the medieval master of the keep, Locke carried her on through. Then, there, amidst their own private ice palace, hidden away from the world, Locke eased her body slowly down his. He did so with such languor Opal could feel his chest muscles roll and the contoured, flat of his stomach ripple.

She sank her teeth into the inside of her lower lip. No man had a right to be built as Locke, the Duke of Strathearn.

“You were supposed to be my partner, this day,” he said, crossly.

From her father’s oppressive rule, Opal had learned to fear noblemen. With the Duke of Strathearn’s honor, his selfless defense of those who did not enjoy the same luxury of power as he, and he, on the other hand, displayed a nobility of spirit.

“Yes.” Opal allowed in solemn tones. “But that would have required you to, you know, be present this morning, Your Grace.”

With the tip of his boot, he kicked at the snow. “I was…present,” he grumbled.

Folding her arms in a like manner of his, Opal prodded. “Perhaps I should ask where you happened to be present?”

“I was…sleeping.”

An even starker silence, filled the quiet forest. “Sleeping?”

He nodded.

“I…see.” And he thought this was a suitable defense of his absence because…?

Apparently, he either didn’t, or didn’t care to elaborate.

“Yes, well, while you opted to forego our plans in exchange for further rest, I was required to find another partner.”

Locke narrowed his eyes. “Required?”

“ Yes ?” Opal scrunched her brow up. What was he on about?

Locke eased closer until he’d anchored her body between him and the cyclopean wall. “Required, suggests Savage wasn’t your first choice, ma petite .”

“He wasn’t,” she said quietly. You were.

Smiling like the cat who’d gotten into the cream, Locke grunted. “I knew you’re too clever to fall for a rogue like Savage.”

Opal moved her gaze over his smug-set features. “I see…” she said, glancing past him and out instead at the pond she’d once swam in.

Here, I’d dumbly, hopefully, and naively believed Locke’s fiery reaction had been a product of maybe some small jealousy on his part.

Locke glided his knuckles along her cheek and forced her gaze back to his. “Oh? Do tell, ma petite.”

She glared at him. “There’s some manner of rivalry between you rakish dukes.”

“There wasn’t before.”

Opal puzzled her brow in confusion.

Locke touched his brow to hers. “I need to know, Opal,” he whispered, the sough of his breath fanned her lips and liquified her inside and out. “Tonight, I need you to tell me.”

“Wh-Why?”

“I don’t know,” he rasped, frustration leant a graveled edge to his deep baritone. Just as suddenly, his anger dissipated. Folding his arms at his chest, he smiled widely.

Then it hit her…

“You staged this attack?” she said, her voice timorous. “All of it. You didn’t join me so you could see who I paired with and then snatched me from the duke to question me.”

A light flickered in his eyes, but before she could make sense out of whatever she spied there, it was gone.

Making a sweeping motion with both arms, Locke took a deep bow. “I did come prepared with a second lesson for you, Opal.” A shadow descended over his gaze leaving it as opaque and unforgiving as the winter’s hold and him darkly serious, once more. “Do not waste your time pursuing a gentleman who, even during a child’s game, would willingly part from you. If he’s worth a grain of salt, he couldn’t bear being without you, and if he had a lick of sense, he’d know the minute he was gone, there’d be some other attentive fellow there to take his place.”

Not unlike when Locke failed to show that morn and the Duke of Savage was there to take his place.

A blast of frigid wind whipped through the forest. Opal’s eyes stung not from the punishing cold, but an insurmountable amount of pain.

She’d been foolish to hope, nay , mad to believe she, an inexperienced young woman, could ever capture the debonair duke’s notice, let alone his heart.

Numb, Opal wandered along the snow-covered stone castle floor and stopped. Facing the westerly side of Locke’s ancestral properties, she wrapped her arms about herself and stared emptily out.

She’d known in coming here to woo the Duke of Strathearn, she had but a ghost of a chance at success. She’d simply hoped that in reuniting, he’d come to see she’d become a woman and dreamed he might desire her. Never once, in all the time they’d known one another, had he given Opal leave to think he viewed her as anything other than a little sister of sorts. And if he did, well, there still remained the matter of his best friend, Opal’s brother-in-law, Abaddon. Everything she knew to be true of Locke said honor would never allow him to pursue a relationship with her.

She moved her gaze across the desolate winterscape.

The thing of it was, she’d known all of that.

But somewhere, deep, down, there’d been a secret place within Opal that’d envisioned only one outcome—Locke loving her in return.