Page 52 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

Alexandra took Francesca’s scarlet-clad hands in her silver ones, enjoying the rasp of silk against silk. “The best sort. The sort who trusts me when I say I need this.”

“The sort who would bury him in his own gardens if he hurts you,” Cecelia offered.

“Yes, and this time”—Francesca’s voice hardened to cold marble—“there would be no witnesses.”

CHAPTERNINE

“My lords and ladies, it is my extreme pleasure to present to you the future Duchess of Redmayne.”

Piers stood at the top of the grand ballroom staircase. Or rather, staircases, as two of them split from the platform of the opulent second-floor tier to deposit descenders on opposite sides of the ballroom, leaving the revelers in the middle undisturbed.

He extended his hand toward the crimson carpets of that staircase, at the bottom of which the Countess of Mont Claire and Lady Alexandra Lane gripped each other’s hands like sailors about to walk the plank.

They’d come to an agreement, but neither of them readily moved.

Piers allowed the glittering guests to assume the pause was for dramatic effect. Hundreds of thehaute tonstood below him, miraculously silent as they held their collective breath. It was as though, with his declaration, he’d frozen time.

A gasp ripped through the room.

Someone had begun her climb. Someone would take his hand, and with it, his freedom.

Piers couldn’t bring himself to look. His heartbeat spiked, the sound akin to the night drums of the Liberia Jabo in his ears. It drowned out the murmurs of the crowd as ladies bent their heads behind their fans of silk and lace to discuss their snide astonishment.

And still he did not look.

Fuck.He forced a swallow past a cravat suddenly cinched as tight as a noose. He should have acceptedherproposal there in the dark.

Decency be damned.

He should have swept her away with him, and stormed into the grand ballroom with her in tow, staking his claim immediately.

For, after what little intimacy she’d granted him, how could he kiss another?

Why would he want to?

Once a man tasted ambrosia, the idea of any other sustenance curbed the appetite.

Christ, she’d been sweet. Her amber gaze, accentuated by dove feathers and clouded with uncertainty, had nearly unstitched him. How had he never noticed the heat, the variation of hue, the abject brilliance and beauty of brown eyes before?

All that red hair accompanied a banked fire in her gaze. Not the spark of wit, like Miss Teague’s, or an inferno of personality, such as Lady Francesca’s.

Something warmer. Something ultimately more desirable.

How he yearned to fan the coals of heat he’d detected into a flame of desire. He longed to awaken within hersomething he could sense had lain dormant for so long. Perhaps her entire lifetime. Something no other man had ever stumbled upon.

Had anyone even searched? Or dared to brave the layers of her prickly intellect, her dowdy garments, and furrowed frowns to find the sensuous potential within the prim spinster?

Apparently not. All that exquisite softness had gone unnoticed.

Untouched.

Unkissed.

Until him. For a man who’d forged the most remote mountains in order to be the first to plant his flag upon its peak, he couldn’t remember an expedition that’d ended with such unmitigated pleasure.

So why had he walked away?

Because the soft, accepting press of her lips against his scar had threatened to undo him. Because passion had overcome caution, and his hunger had driven him to taste her.