Page 28 of Duke with a Lie (Wicked Dukes Society #4)

She couldn’t stop her smile at his antics. This lightness was a new side of him, and she liked bantering with him far better than sparring with him.

“Of course not, rake,” she countered as she tugged off her gloves. “I fear I am yet too much a novice for such depravity.”

He shrugged out of his coat and hung it on a hook alongside their hats, then removed his gloves and took hers as well, laying both pairs neatly atop his coat. “What makes you think I am not too much of a novice for such depravity as well?”

“Your reputation.” Rumors about him were plentiful. She’d heard many.

“Exaggerated, I’m sure. Let me help you with your coat.” He stopped before her and began undoing the buttons of her coat. “You’ll catch an ague if you stay in this sodden fabric.”

She held still for his ministrations, feeling odd to be tended by him so intimately and yet enjoying it all the same. “I am fully capable of undoing buttons myself, you know.”

“Yes, but judging from the state of your bedchamber, if I allow you to do so, you’ll simply toss it onto the floor.” His gaze flicked to hers as he continued his task. “Besides, I like tending to you. You’re like a little lost lamb who needs to find her way.”

She pursed her lips. “I don’t think I prefer to be likened to a lamb.”

“You’re my lamb.” He finished and drew the sleeves down her arms, which wasn’t the simplest of tasks given their fitted and wet state. “At least until the house party’s end.”

She didn’t want to think about the house party’s end.

Didn’t want it to end at all.

But she rather did like being his.

At last, he had the coat removed and moved to hang it on the last empty hook.

She admired his fine form as he did so, noting the way his tweed trousers lovingly silhouetted his firm derriere.

There was something about the moment that felt so wonderfully domestic, as if they were husband and wife taking care of each other. But that was not to be.

Before long, she would be another man’s wife.

Aubrey turned back to her, his gaze searching. “Why so Friday-faced suddenly?”

She didn’t want to confide her foolish yearnings to him, so she shook her head. “I was only wondering why you have brought me here, aside from sheltering from the rain.”

“Come with me, and I’ll show you.” He offered her his arm.

She accepted it, and he led her down the hall.

He was a bloody idiot, but Aubrey couldn’t recall when he had last been so eager as he led Rhiannon down the hall to the kitchen of the cottage.

He had spent the afternoon arranging a surprise for her, telling himself that he was doing so only to bed her again, this time somewhere that he wouldn’t need to fret over how loud she was when she came.

That he was a heartless, despicable cad who was intent upon ravishing his good chum’s sister and he would go to any lengths to get what he wanted—namely her, beneath or atop him.

But in truth, spoiling her pleased him. She had been like a girl with her excitement over his proposed bicycle ride.

He could lie to himself no longer, however, as they crossed the threshold of the kitchen to where a sumptuous picnic had been laid out for their delectation.

He had plotted this jaunt with her not to seduce, but to win her smile.

She had him wrapped around her damned pinkie finger.

“A picnic dinner for the two of us,” he said, leading her to the table.

“You did this?” she asked, taking in the room with an astonished look on her lovely face.

“With the help of some servants,” he admitted. “I thought it would be nice to enjoy a meal together, and since we cannot do so in the dining room, I reckoned this cottage would suit the purpose well enough.”

“Oh, Aubrey.” She turned to him, looking at him as if he were a knight errant who had just returned from grand exploits in her name. “This was so thoughtful of you.”

Chrissakes, there she went with prattle about him being thoughtful again. He truly had to disabuse her of the notion that he was anything other than a dark-hearted villain who was bedding her for purely selfish reasons.

“We’ve been through this, have we not, my dear?” he reminded her. “There isn’t a modicum of thoughtfulness in me.”

She arched a golden brow, still looking at him as if he were noble. “I think that is what you would like for me to believe, but this is the second time you are feeding me a meal today alone.”

Damn it, perhaps arranging this idyll for them had been a mistake.

Except, being alone with her didn’t feel like a mistake.

It felt like a bloody relief. It was refreshing to have her where he wanted her without having to hide behind masks or steal into her bedroom.

He wanted to enjoy her thoroughly before he had to leave Wingfield Hall and pretend as if none of this had ever happened.

Still, she needed to understand who and what he was.

He wasn’t thoughtful or considerate or caring.

He was the son of a madman. He was a selfish sybarite.

A dishonorable scoundrel who had betrayed Whitby—his own friend—and had taken his sister’s virginity.

Not just that, but he intended to bed her as many times as he possibly could to get her out of his system until they parted ways.

“I like to eat. I like to fuck.” He waved a hand toward the picnic dinner. “Here we are.”

“Why do you do that?” she asked, studying him with her vibrant blue gaze in a way that made him feel as if she saw him.

Saw him far too well.

“Do what, minx?”

“Try so very hard to persuade me that you are irredeemable when we both know the opposite is true?”

“Ah, but I am irredeemable.” He started moving them toward the table in an attempt to distract her. “If I weren’t, what would I be doing here with you?”

“Just because I am Whitby’s sister doesn’t mean that you cannot desire me,” she pointed out.

“It means that I shouldn’t. You’re my friend’s sister. A lady and an innocent. Yet I’ve treated you like a seasoned mistress, all to slake my own lust. That ought to convince you, if nothing else.”

He stopped before her chair, pulling it out for her. She seated herself, and the tempting scents of jasmine and bergamot mingled with rainwater and fresh air reached him.

“Has it never occurred to you that I have lust also?” she asked sharply. “That perhaps I have a mind of my own and that I am not so much an innocent lamb as a lioness who has decided to seize what she wanted?”

He stared at her, awed by her boldness. One part menace, one part goddess, she was intoxicating.

“I can honestly say that no, it has not.” He inclined his head. “Perhaps I stand corrected in that regard.”

“As every lady at this house party confirms, women can experience lust every bit as strongly as our masculine counterparts,” she continued.

“Being a lady doesn’t make one incapable of feeling desire, and neither does being a virgin.

You may feel guilty all you like about what has happened between us, but don’t think for a moment that you somehow seduced me into bending to your sinful whims.”

Wryly, Aubrey seated himself at the opposite end of the small table. “Believe me, my dear, I am more than aware who seduced whom when it comes to the two of us.”

It had been her, of course. He had been no match for a determined Lady Rhiannon Northwick.

He hadn’t the willpower to deny her. Even today when she had approached for their ride together, she had all but brought him to his knees.

Sweet Christ, that bloody bloomer suit of hers had nearly proven his undoing.

He’d had half a mind to take her then and there against a tree.

Call them whatever she liked, but Rhiannon in trousers was a bloody revelation.

“There. Now, if you would please cease all attempts to persuade me that you’re Beelzebub so that I may enjoy dinner, I would greatly appreciate it,” she said.

But he wasn’t finished warning her yet. “I’m not a good man, and the sooner you accept it, the better off you shall be. I’m not kind, and I don’t do anything if it doesn’t benefit me.”

She smiled. “If you say so.”

“I do, and had you any idea how depraved I truly am, you wouldn’t be sitting here at this table with me,” he continued sternly. “You’d be on your bicycle pedaling as fast as those delicious legs of yours could possibly manage.”

“You think my legs are delicious?”

This bloody hoyden. What was he to do with her? He knew what he wanted to do with her—keep her here in this cottage and shag her like mad for the next few weeks at least. Long enough to ease the poison of lust from his veins. But that was impossible.

“Quite,” he bit out. “But you are missing the point entirely.”

“Which is?”

“That I’m a very bad man, the sort you ought not to know, and absolutely the kind you shouldn’t welcome into your bed.”

She arched a brow. “I fear you are a bit tardy with that particular warning. Moreover, I hardly think that you are as depraved as you suggest. Why, you’ve scarcely shown me anything thus far that I haven’t already come upon in the bawdy books I have managed to read.”

“Your mother and your brother haven’t an inkling what you do with your days, do they?” Good God, if Whit knew what Rhiannon had been reading and—worse—doing, he would be bloody apoplectic.

“I should think not, and I prefer it that way.”

“But as for depraved, my dear, we have barely scratched the surface.”

She held his gaze, challenge sparkling in her eyes. “Show me, then. You are conducting lessons for my edification, are you not?”

The minx. She had trapped him neatly.

“Yes, but there are limits?—”

“Nonsense,” she interrupted archly. “You are a very bad man. You’ve just told me so yourself. There should be no limits where you are concerned. You promised to educate me. I demand that you do so.”

His cock went positively rigid. “You demand, do you?”

“Yes,” she returned, defiant and bloody gorgeous. “But first, let’s have dinner. I find that I’m famished.”

The death of him, that’s what she was.

He was certain of it.

Aubrey reached for the lemonade he’d had the cook bottle for them, opening it to pour Rhiannon a glass. “Then let us begin.”