Page 15 of Duke of Eccess (Seven Dukes of Sin #4)

“I’m sorry!”

The voice sounded from down below, from the children’s apartments, and Temperance raised her head to listen.

The single candle in her governess’s bedchamber flickered violently from the sharp exhale of her breath.

On her writing desk, shadows danced over the paper covered with algebra problems she’d been creating for Margaret.

Hers were very modest quarters for a lady but quite luxurious for a governess.

She didn’t mind. Papa had taught her to be content with little, and she knew she needed only to wait it out until her birthday.

She wasn’t quite with the servants, and wasn’t quite with the household, but somewhere in between two worlds.

A world of her own, until Christmas Day.

“I’m sorry! Don’t send me away!”

It sounded like James. He must be walking in his sleep again.

Temperance jumped to her feet and snatched up her shawl, pulling it over her nightgown.

She picked up her candle in the candlestick and hurried past her single bed, the small fireplace that radiated heat from the coal grate, and through the door.

In the attic corridor outside her room it was pitch black, and she illuminated the creaking stairs as she descended, hurrying one floor down to the children’s bedroom.

“No—no! Don’t send me away!” came James’s voice.

It was as she feared. Two white silhouettes stood in the darkness on the landing at the head of the staircase.

When Temperance came to stand by their side, her candlelight revealed James stood too close to the edge of the stairs, holding on to the railing with one hand and reaching out to the darkness with the other arm.

Margaret was holding him by the fabric of his nightgown, murmuring something soothing.

The more she was pulling him back, the more he was leaning towards the dangerous darkness of the empty stairwell.

Sophie was nowhere in sight. Thank heavens . Hopefully she was sleeping like a rock as usual.

Margaret’s blue eyes were wide with concern and helplessness and Temperance swallowed. This hadn’t happened before. James would walk to the closed windows, or towards the door, sometimes out into the corridor and towards the window at the end of it.

But not this.

If he fell, he’d break his neck.

Skin clammy with fear, Temperance laid her hand on his shoulder and gently pulled him back. “James, dear boy,” she said as she tried to tug him away from the edge, “no one is sending you away.”

But James kept reaching, trying to take an unsteady step down, his bare feet feeling for the edge.

Temperance suppressed a gasp and reached for him as Margaret clung on to his nightgown.

“Don’t…don’t hate me,” the boy murmured, his words slurred with sleep. “Will be…good boy.”

Panic numbed her limbs. “James, he doesn’t hate you—please, dearest, let’s return you to your bed.”

But there was no use. He couldn’t hear her.

The more Temperance tried to soothe him, the more he pulled forward, reaching towards an invisible place he thought contained the duke, always threatening to take another unseeing, dangerous step down.

And although he was only twelve, he was tall and sturdy and seemed to have an unnatural strength in this state.

She couldn’t stop him, and he would only return to the stairs if she did manage to pull him away.

There was just one person who might get through to him before he lost his balance and fell down the stairs.

Temperance released him, clutching the edges of her shawl to her chest. “Margaret, I’m fetching his grace, I’ll be right back. Do not fret, dearest, I know James is worrying you, but he’ll be all right.”

Margaret nodded mutely, holding James’s nightgown tightly in her fists.

With the candle shimmering before her, Temperance descended a flight of stairs to the duke’s wing. It was highly inappropriate for her to come alone to his bedchamber, but what choice did she have? She could still hear James’s whimpers.

Temperance froze for a mere moment before the duke’s door, her hand hovering. She was about to knock at the door of her employer in the darkness of night. Highly inappropriate.

But it was an emergency, and it was for James’s sake.

She knocked and waited. The only sounds she could hear were James’s cries and her own heartbeat. When no reply came, she knocked again. Bother. He must be sleeping.

She’d need to wake him up. As she thought of the duke in his bed, her heart pounded a little harder. Propriety and her reputation—and James’s predicament—warned her not to give in to temptation…no matter how much she wanted to.

Temperance opened the door.

In the flickering light of a candelabra, the Duke of Eccess sat in his chair with his body turned away from her.

The smooth skin of his massive shoulder was golden in the flickering light, his biceps moving in rhythm, his bare thigh fallen to the side revealing his shapely knee and muscled calf.

His head was leaned back in the armchair, high cheekbone glistening in the firelight, his jaw was open and moving in pure bliss.

What was he doing?

Naked…alone…moving his arm up and down…and…oh, good heavens… moaning .

Temperance’s mouth went dry as she cleared her throat. She shouldn’t be here, especially since she had a strange hot sensation of a pull towards him . Good Lord.

No . What on earth was she thinking?

He was pure temptation, but she couldn’t allow herself to fall for it.

Especially not with him.

Remember why you’re here: James needs you.

She had to stay strong. Temperance cleared her throat louder and said, “Your Grace…”

Octavius was in heaven. Feeling the absence of pleasure acutely thanks to abstaining from drink and from debauching at Elysium, he hadn’t had a woman since the day Miss Fields joined his household.

So it was her he was imagining.

In his imagination she was gliding up and down on his cock, perfectly matched to the strokes of his hand.

Her dark hair spilled around her shoulders and breasts, its strands stuck together from sweat.

Her small, round breasts were bouncing as she was riding him, nipples taut from pleasure.

She was so small for his immense size and yet fit him perfectly, could take him perfectly.

Her eyes were dark, almost black, and glistening, focused solely on him as her plush lips parted in pleasure, mewling his name.

Seeing her like this in his mind—ruffled, losing control, seduced by him, taken in by his dark side—was what undid Octavius the most. He was so close to his first release in days. Good God, he needed it like a breath of fresh air.

There was some disturbance…a knock, perhaps, but his butler knew better than to just barge in when Octavius hadn’t called for him. He just needed a little more time… Even a cough couldn’t bother him, not when he was so close.

“Your Grace…”

It was her voice that did it. Octavius turned his head to the door and couldn’t believe his eyes.

As if he’d conjured her from his dream, Miss Fields stood in the doorway and in a white nightgown, clutching a shawl around her shoulders, her hair undone and spilling around her, just like in his imagination…

Her eyes were wide in surprise… interest …and resting on him.

He must be a pig. His first thought wasn’t that he was compromising an unmarried young lady by sitting here bare arsed with his cock as hard as wood in his hand…

His first thought was to invite her to join him…paint reality into his fantasy.

Octavius wasn’t even embarrassed or ashamed she’d seen him in this private act. His first instinct was to find a way to get her to lose her own clothes and straddle him.

But damn it, he couldn’t finish now. He released his cock regretfully and wished to God he was bolder—or more penitent.

“You can’t be here, Miss Fields,” Octavius grumbled, searching for his dressing gown even as his body cried out for release. “Are you lost?”

To his regret, she averted her eyes. “It’s James, Your Grace.”

He quite liked her eyes on his naked skin, flickering over his body.

It had taken him a long time to stop being ashamed of his size, the bulk and muscle considered so ungentlemanly today.

He was what he was. A glutton in every sense of the word.

Food, drink, all other pleasures of the body and mind.

No amount of flesh had deterred a woman from entering his bed yet.

Miss Fields’s words finally cut through the insatiable fog of lust. He pushed his arms through the sleeves of his gown. “What’s happened to James?”

He walked towards Miss Fields. As he approached the door, he could now hear some distant cries coming from upstairs.

Worry for the boy chilled his desire like pure ice.

“He’s walking in his sleep again,” the quiet governess said.

She was so close he could smell the scent of her skin, could try to guess the shape of her body under the single layer of white fabric. He loved seeing her hair undone and spilling over her shoulders in black waves, so intimate. So domestic. He ached to reach out and tuck a lock behind her ear.

“Walking in his sleep?” Octavius asked, trying to focus.

“And trying to reach you, I’m afraid.”

Him? Good God, he’d really done it this time. He was right to worry, right to feel guilty. He now was James’s nightmare, just like his own papa had been his. While he’d been pleasuring himself, indulging in his sins, there had been a fearful child in his house.

The guilt in his stomach whirled in a desperate need for escape. For a drink. To return to his comfortable chair and take his cock out and keep pumping.

“I can’t get him away from the stairs,” Miss Fields continued. “He’s calling for you, mumbling how you hate him… I think he needs to hear from you that he’s wanted.”

Good God. There was no running from these demons now. He had to answer the call of distress when one of the—his children needed him.

Octavius exhaled sharply. “Of course.”