Page 11 of Defying the Duke
Folding his hands across his chest, Jack accepted defeat. Miss Westfall was quick-witted and utterly enjoyable. He leaned toward her and spoke softly as if passing along a secret. “I have it on good authority that I’m not the only one who is fond of my…skills.”
Miss Westfall’s eyebrows lifted, but she didn’t grow pale or faint in some missish fashion. The corner of her lips twitched, and he saw a hint of a smile as she leaned forward, answering in a whisper. “Perhaps your skills are needed upstairs. Surely you have rooms set aside for ladies’ pleasure.”
Without thinking, Jack captured that sassy mouth, pressing his lips to hers with all the heat building in him. He held her shoulders as much to keep from pulling her to him as to control their embrace. Her lips parted with a sigh, and the tiniest moan escaped her. The sound made his groin tighten.
He kneaded her lips with his, and his tongue slipped between her teeth, darting, tasting her sweetness. His fingers tightened on her shoulders to keep from sliding down her arms or around her back.
Then sanity smacked him in the face, and he tried to pull away, only to kiss her again with equal fervor.
When he finally stopped, he opened his eyes to find her watching him, but he could not read her expression. “Should I apologize?”
“Please don’t tell me you’re sorry you kissed me,” she whispered. “I know it’s wrong. I understand it won’t happen again, but please don’t say you’re sorry.”
He frowned. “Never that. You are the most unique creature I’ve encountered, Miss Westfall.”
Now she looked away and pressed herself back in her chair. “That doesn’t sound like a compliment, Your Grace.”
Jack rose and put more distance between them before he could give in to the urge to kiss her again. Or do more glorious things with her. “It’s meant to be one. You’re not afraid to be yourself. You don’t hide behind a façade constructed by a sexually-repressed governess.”
“It was merely a kiss,” she argued.
He stopped his pacing, standing almost toe-to-toe with her. “I’m fully aware of what it was. But don’t concern yourself that I will insist on other liberties.”
“As I said, Your Grace, it won’t happen again. You’ve finished your work here, so we won’t be tempted again. Besides, we are both adults, fully capable of avoiding temptation.”
Running his hand between his cravat and the back of his neck, Jack grimaced. From the passion in that brief kiss they’d just shared, he wondered if that was true. He needed to leave. “Yes, I need to update my partners with my findings. You’ll be all right on your own?”
She smiled. “I prefer to be on my own, if you’ll remember.”
Her comments on their first afternoon in the office came back to him. He chuckled. “I do recall that, now that you bring it up. I leave you to your work, then.”
Dinah watched the duke leave, then buried her face in her hands the moment the door latch clicked shut. She gasped. What had she done?
She’d kissed the Duke of Abingdon. And thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it.
It was not her first kiss, but it was so unlike anything those two other men had done, those chaste, unremarkable brushing of lips.
This kiss was precisely as he’d promised, from his hand on her shoulders to the thrusting of his tongue between her lips. What he hadn’t described was how her body would respond. Butterflies at first, settling into a curious ache low in her belly. She hadn’t wanted him to stop.
Remaining in her chair had taken every ounce of her control when all she’d wanted to do was press her body against his. She needed to feel him close, to experience how their bodies fit together.
How did her body know what it wanted when no one had ever held her like that?
Oh, why did it have to be the duke who’d awakened these desires in her? Somehow, she knew kissing another man that way wouldn’t be the same.
The air around her still held a hint of his scent, soap, and expensive cologne. She wished she could bottle it to open later when she was in bed, so she could dream of him.
Dream of the duke? What foolishness. She was not for the duke. She was his employee. Why, the kiss had likely only been to stop her from speaking so insolently toward him. He couldn’t desire a dowdy woman like her. Plain Dinah Westfall with the intelligence God should have given a man, her mother used to say.
Plain Dinah Westfall who should be grateful to be allowed to use that intelligence to support her family. She must ensure nothing like that kiss ever happened again, or she’d likely lose her job.
She needed this job for other reasons, too. As much as she hated mathematics, she knew what to expect from the numbers on the page. They never lied. They never pretended to be something other than what they were. Threepence was always threepence, and a shilling was always a shilling.
A clerk in an office was always just a clerk and a duke was far above her reach.
“I still say the chit’s father was behind the thefts,” Dainsfield said after Jack relayed to him and Nomansland what he’d learned in his research.
“I take it his ghost is responsible for the thefts after he died,” Nomansland pointed out. “Use your head.”