Page 9 of Corrupting his Duchess

The air shifted.

Anna could feel it in the way Henry looked at her. Not with irritation.

With interest. Genuine, focused interest.

And she hated–deeply hated–that a small part of her thrilled under the weight of it.

“I can see,” he said after a pause, “that Lord Stenton’s cousin has claws.”

“Only when cornered,” she replied evenly. “Or bored.”

Nathaniel raised his glass to Gretchen, a smile tugging at his lips. “And this is precisely why I came.”

Anna shifted in her seat, her fingers curled around the stem of her glass. She ought to stop. She should have stopped three sentences ago. But something about Henry–his quiet confidence, his maddening calm, made her reckless.

He didn’t smirk or tease. He simply watched her, head tilted slightly, as if trying to decide whether she was a puzzle worth solving.

“Would anyone care for a card game?” Sophia’s voice rose lightly from across the room, her smile a gracious deflection from the tension.

“I would,” Natalie said quickly, ever eager to keep the peace.

The sound of chairs and murmurs resumed, and the heat of the moment dispersed.

Anna rose from her seat, smoothing her skirts. As she passed by Henry on the way to the card table, she didn’t look at him.

But he leaned slightly, just enough that she could hear his voice.

“I would rather like to hear opinion number six.”

“A lady, I am told, keeps her opinions to herself.”

CHAPTER 2

The morning air seeped cold through the stone of Yeats Estate, the kind of chill that crept into one’s bones no matter how many fires burned through the night. Henry stood at the tall window of his bedchamber, nursing a lukewarm cup of coffee he had no interest in finishing. Below, the lawns stretched pale and frost-tipped, still shadowed in places where the sun hadn’t quite reached.

He hadn’t slept well.

Not because of the usual restlessness or the weight of letters waiting on his desk, but because of her.

Lady Anna Hessey.

It had started the moment she entered the house, chin high, eyes observant, dressed in a green traveling cloak like she wasn’t here to impress anyone, least of all him. She had said little uponarrival, but her silence hadn’t been shy. It had been calculating. Measured. She watched people the way he did.

And then there was last night.

The drawing room. The firelight. The way she’d spoken to him, sharp enough to earn a pause, but never vulgar. Confident enough to look unafraid.

She hadn’t laughed at his barbs, hadn’t flushed and looked away. No. She’d matched him beat for beat. Six opinions, she had said. All unfavorable.

He should have been annoyed. Irritated, even. Instead, he’d found himself intrigued, maybe even attracted.

He hated that word. Attraction.

It was messy. Dangerous. A gateway drug to expectation and obligation and all the false intimacy people wrapped around a title like his.

He’d seen it too many times—women drawn not to him but to the glitter of his name, the promise of ducal power.

He’d sworn never to be fooled by it again.