Page 29 of Dukes All Night Long

“Someone saw us,” she said.

His ears were having a very difficult time working. His eyes worked very well, as did his lower bits. With total regret, he shifted his gaze away from her lips. “I beg your pardon?”

“Years ago, before you left for your Grand Tour. They saw us in the garden. When you kissed me.” Her cheeks stained pink, obvious even in the low light, and she turned away.

That kiss got her in trouble? He remembered that kiss as if it were yesterday.

She had requested it of him—it had been both a dream come true and a knife to the gut.

He’d already committed to Feltonbrough that he wouldn’t touch her, and then she asked him to be her first kiss, and even he was not enough of an arse to say no and dash her confidence.

But the struggle that he’d had to keep the kiss chaste was herculean.

That night he’d gone home, taken a cold bath and wanked three times just thinking of her. He was younger then.

“But that kiss was—” he’d started to protest, but he saw her flinch and she turned away.

She knew how he was about to finish that sentence.

That kiss was nothing, he had been about to say.

But that’s not how he meant it. That kiss had obliterated him, yes.

The touch of her soft lips was enough to escort her up to a pedestal in his mind that was still out of his reach.

But in terms of passion? That kiss was nothing. “That kiss was chaste.”

She looked over her shoulder at him and smiled. “Not the sort of thing to get me with child.”

It was a joke, but even hearing those words from her very proper mouth sent too many messages to his lower half. He shifted the basket to hold it with two hands. In front of him. Proper young ladies did not talk about such things—and this was the reason. “I cannot believe you said that.”

“I did go to medical school.” She shrugged, a thin shoulder going up and down, and he heard the fabric rasp against her skin as the dress shifted, and even that made things worse.

It was like he was a schoolboy all over again. He breathed in through his nose and thought of his valet brushing the mud out of yesterday’s clothes, and that cleared his mind of the wildly inappropriate thoughts of Sibby.

“Baked goods?” she asked, looking at the basket.

Oh God. Even her looking there made his cock twinge. “How about I set up next to the chairs?”

She gave him an odd look, and he wondered if she knew. She couldn’t know. Gently bred women didn’t discover the ribald ways until after marriage, when they gained a bit of freedom. But then, she’d just reminded him that she’d gone to medical school. What had she learned?

“I will get us plates, then. I do happen to have two.”

He laughed, and it came out strained and hoarse. At least being over next to the chairs gave him some space to take calming breaths. Think of horse races or his tailor’s bill. Because thinking of his valet was not enough to keep him decent.

“It’s a proper breakfast!” Sibby exclaimed, as Archie pulled the treasures from the breakfast. “It’s been ages since I had any bacon.”

The comment knifed him. Just as the thinness of her shoulders did. The dampened sparkle of her eyes. This wasn’t right, her living in secret. She had a powerful family. She should have options and money and rights .

But as he knew better than most, having no money severely limited options and rights.

When all you could think about was the next meal, rights were as useful as dancing slippers.

There had to be something he could do to help.

He may not have money, but he had connections, and he knew how to pull himself out of the gutter. Though it wasn’t a pretty way to do it.

“What else do you miss?”

“Hot baths,” she said immediately, still chewing. Her eyes rounded and she covered her mouth, finished chewing, and swallowed. “Oh, I do apologize. I’ve become unaccustomed to any company, especially while eating.”

He decided to not think about her comment because her mistreatment made him furious at Feltonbrough. “Anything else?”

“This sounds so decadent, I’m almost ashamed to say it,” she said, circling her hands around the mug of coffee he’d just poured.

There was nothing— nothing —she could say that he would find too decadent. He’d lived that life. He knew what decadence was, and what it wasn’t. And when decadence teetered into depravity.

“A feather tick mattress. I had one in my bedroom at the house. To sleep in that cloud, warm, and full…?” She sighed and then shook her head.

“I can get you those things,” he rasped. Her moans of pleasure when thinking about the bed, the food, her fullness…

She laughed, a tinkling bell sound. He didn’t even mind that she was derisive. “A feather mattress in here would just rot.” She eyed his arms, which gave him a feeling of smug pride.

“Tonight is a masquerade. Wear your best dress, a mask, and I’ll sneak you up to my rooms, where you can have a private bath and sleep on a feather mattress.”

Her mouth flattened into a line. “And you will be…?”

Wherever you want me to be, he almost purred. But she would not respond to that kind of overt flirtation. “I can be down at the ball, or up in the room. Sleeping on the floor,” he added. “Consider it penance for being ignorant of your troubles.”

She smeared cream and jam on the oat scone, clearly considering his proposition. When she bit into her prepared treat, her face changed into one of ecstasy, and his resolve solidified. Luckily, she nodded. “I don’t have a dress or a mask, but I’ll find a way to sneak in.”

His mind turned off, watching her eat. There was no greater eroticism that he had experienced in his life than watching Sibyl eat a scone with jam and cream.

*

She shivered in the moonlight. All this for a hot bath? She stamped her feet in the dirt around the kitchen garden. This would be worth it. Sneaking into Archie’s rooms was reckless, but she’d been literally living in a cave for a year now. Reckless was no stranger.

The door opened, and the light spilled out around Archie’s impressive silhouette.

He was dressed for a ball, his suit tailored and close-fitting, revealing impressive thighs and emphasizing broad shoulders.

He wore a black leather mask around his eyes and nose, but there could be absolutely no mistaking him.

With one green eye and one blue, Archie would never be able to conceal himself, even if there were a hundred other men with physiques as distinctive as his.

“Come in, but don’t speak,” he whispered to her, gesturing her inside. She crept in, appreciating the heavy, aromatic heat of the kitchen. The staff all stood where they were, heads bowed, eyes closed.

She shot Archie a puzzled look, and he grinned and said, “Fifty shillings for every person who doesn’t look.”

“Holding you to that,” Mrs. Coney said, still stirring.

A pang in her heart hit. Mrs. Coney had always been kind to her. Sibyl wanted to throw her arms around the woman who had snuck her treats and extra jam. Instead, she crept on, letting Archie’s hand scorch her lower back as he escorted her up the servants’ stair.

God, she missed this house. No, that’s not true; she missed the people whom she’d cared for in this house. She missed the feeling of safety and security, all of which left when her brother inherited both his title and the arrogance of a duke.

They climbed the narrowing stair, until Archie opened a door that swung out onto the third floor.

She waited until he signaled her to exit, and she recognized the guest wing passageway.

The heavy pile of the carpets rarely used cushioned her steps to his door.

He was lucky, having one of the rooms with a private bath.

He wasn’t on the lower floors, which were reserved for more prestigious guests, but it wasn’t a bad room.

The suite had privacy, which was perhaps what her brother wanted to afford his oldest friend.

When he opened the door, he turned to face her, ushering her inside his suite. The black leather mask glittered with jet beads, and her stomach fluttered in anticipation.

She walked into his bedroom as if it were nothing at all. As if he was not a well-known pleaser of women, as if he hadn’t over a decade of carnal education. As if he were not the man that had stolen her heart as a girl, only to throw it away as if it were a spent dance card.

The room was warm. A fire was burning, the heavy tapestries on the windows closed. The steam of the bathing area—a small tiled closet hastily upgraded for water drainage, even if running hot water still hadn’t been installed.

There was a knot in her stomach that she hadn’t realized sat there, heavy as a giant’s fist, that spontaneously unfurled in the warmth. The relief was enough to make her cry. But she wouldn’t. Not here. Not with Archie.

“My valet has obtained some lovely soaps and oils for you. I wasn’t sure which scents you preferred, whether you liked rose oils or citrus—”

“I don’t mind. Whatever is at hand.” Her toes ached as they warmed. She could not wait to be fully submerged in hot water. It had been so long.

“I didn’t want to be presumptuous, so I instructed the valet to include a washing station next to the tub as well. So you wouldn’t need to soak in—” His eyes flicked across her body, and he stopped talking, as if speaking had momentarily exceeded his grasp.

“Thank you for your kindness,” she said, which seemed to pull him back. He bowed his head.

“I would like to do more.”

She didn’t know if he meant he wanted to do more tonight, or more in regards to her odd circumstances.

Honestly, there wasn’t much he could do now.

The gossip from their innocent kiss was a decade old at this point, and was water under the bridge of her later humiliations.

The only thing he could do was offer the protection of his name, which, given his poverty, wasn’t what he would want. He needed a wealthy wife. An heiress.