Page 2 of Kiss the Duke Goodbye
Miss Marlowe rested back against her front counter, sipping leisurely. “Ah,” she said, skepticism rippling through the word.
Turning to her, he leaned his shoulder against the cupboard, hoping his irritation didn’t show. His father’s stern voice telling him toremember his stationpealed through his mind. “It isn’t like that. I’ve known the baroness’s ancient goat of a husband since I was in leading strings. She’s seventy if she’s a day.”
“I thought perhaps…” With a petite gust of laughter, she nodded to the folded broadsheet on the counter. Just yesterday, there’d been a mention of him in theHerald’sgossip column. Some bit about an actress and the bachelor duke that was utterly baseless.
“I wish to point out, Miss Marlowe”—pausing, he tossed back the rest of her fine brandy and wiped his lips with the back of his wrist—“for the first time, I’m certain, that your judgment is incorrect.”
She tipped her head in apology when she didn’t seem apologetic in the least. The amusement curving her enticing lips was at his expense in every way.
“I mean…,” he started, then fell silent. What was there to say? She couldn’t be faulted for suspecting his motives. Undoubtedly, he had his pick of women and society found nothing more interesting than debating his choices. Of late, he found himself shaking chits off like ants who’d gotten at a jar of honey. Making it worse, the news of his need for funds had made the rounds of theton.
Nothing excited pursuing mothers quite like a duke in desperate need of a duchess.
Complicating matters, in a hidden part of his heart, Knox longed for a family. A wife, children. Someone tolove. Aside from his brothers, he’d never had a single person to call his own. What he didn’t want was a marital contract laid out like so much ducal business. Unfortunately, he didn’t think it mattered what he wanted. “The scandal rags have much of it wrong,” he said, uncertain why she made him so bloody unsure of himself.
In response, she shrugged, kicking his temper a notch higher. She used fewer words than any woman he’d ever met. Usually, he couldn’t get them tostoptalking.
Exasperated, he tapped his glass to his chest. “Would it matter if I gave one of your splendid hats to a nameless chit before peeling her clothes from her body and stretching her across a set of silken sheets? Perhaps crushing your fine handiwork beneath us in our haste? Must they all be for mysisters?”
With this inappropriate set of questions, his life changed.
Or his tactics, in any case.
Because Clarissa Marlowe, owner of the most gorgeously composed face in England, hesitated as an adorable streak of color ripped across her cheeks. A full three-second stop while she deliberated.
Tumbler shoved beside a pearl and lace piece on the top shelf, Knox crossed to her. Taking her chin and tilting her gaze to his, he searched her eyes. They’d gone the dark, deep mystery of a thunderous sky. He brushed his thumb across her temple, seeking entry. “What’s going on in there, Miss Marlowe? It’s not a duke asking, it’s merely a lowly, confounded man.”
She shook her head but didn’t move away. Her lips pursed, relaxed, then pursed again. Her breath was whisper-soft against his jaw. “I’m not sure.”
A pulse raced from his chest to his belly, daring to settle in places below he’d rather it not. Having to vacate her shop because of his unbidden arousal was a dismissal he couldn’t contemplate.
Kiss her, Knox.Take what you desire.
God knows, he’d never wished to touch anyone this badly. And heneverhad to ask twice.
Still, she might mean more. A thought that scared the breath from him.
“How can I help you be sure?” Knox whispered, his lips falling to the loose strand of hair at her ear. His inhalation brought the scent of lilies and aged velvet home. “Bloody hell, I want to know.”
“You’re too late, Your Grace,” she returned in that sultry voice of hers, “as I’ve already been properly approached.”
The Duke of Herschel released her and stumbled back as if he’d been scalded. Clarissa would have laughed if she’d not witnessed the quickly suppressed look of despair that crossed his face.
His stunning, stop-a-girl-in-her-tracks face.
What was she to do when the most gorgeous man in England was on display in her shop once a week, sometimes twice—and as easily accessible as one of her bonnets? She loathed the complexities of the man. She respected the complexities of the man. He was arrogant, yet adorably vulnerable. Intelligent, but not overwhelmingly so. Surly, but incrediblykind. She’d seen him giving shillings to the scamps in the alley on more than one occasion. Months ago, in the winter, he’d even given his coat to a beggar with a racking cough that spelled certain doom.
After one particularly vexing visit where he’d regaled her with stories from his week in the House of Lords, she’d drawn up a list of reasons why Knoxville DeWitt, the Duke of Herschel, was an impossibility. The titled gambit being number one. Two, he and his brothers, the so-called Troublesome Trio, were walking scandals. When she’d done everything possible to distance herself from a remarkable past that would be of interest to the masses should they find out about it. Of interest to the man standing before her with a gaining-fury scowl on his face.
His eyes glowed, an opaque, emerald wonder as they took her in. “You’ve been propositioned?” He tapped his ear with the heel of his hand, the garnet stone in his signet ring glimmering. “Did I hear that right?”
She reclaimed her glass to keep her hands off him. His chest beneath superfine had been as hard as the marble sculptures in the British Museum, his hip where it bumped hers a point of enticing exchange. If she fantasized about lying beneath his long body in her sturdy tester bed, she merely joined the ranks of many. There wasn’t anything unusual about being attracted to a beautiful specimen. A man out of reach on so many levels.
Too numerous to contemplate.
Nonetheless, it was what onedidwith yearning that separated the winners from the losers. She’d learned this lesson from her mother early on.
Clarissa swallowed past her chagrin at sharing something this private, even if the sharing was a means to an end. The end to the Duke of Herschel stopping by the Petal and Plume so often that it felt like they were becoming friends. “I’ve been approached, I prefer to term it. Very courteously. A brief affair without the threat of marriage. I wasn’t insulted, I should say. I was flattered. It follows what I want for myself. Freedom, choice, independence.”