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H er blue eyes flashed an icy anger that made him want to squirm. “Even drunk, my brothers would never behave the way you did. What were you thinking?”

How to convince her? He might as well start with the truth.

“At that moment when I spotted you, I was thinking that you were someone else I’d met earlier that evening.

Someone who’d followed me to the ball. Someone less respectable.

I wondered if, perhaps, town balls were somewhat, er, shabby affairs.

” He forked a pickled vegetable onto her plate.

“I need help, Nancy. My time at school, my visits here, even the etiquette of the officers’ mess—none of those showed me how to navigate nobility.

Can we begin again, Nancy? Can you show me how to find my way in your world? ”

“ My world?”

“Yes. You’re from a titled family. My parents were generations removed from the dukedom.

My father was a humble clerk, and my mother a farmer’s daughter.

They scraped together the money for my schooling so I could at least claim to be a gentleman.

After they died, I had barely enough income to buy my kit and pay mess fees.

A baron’s daughter was out of my reach.”

“And a duke is out of mine.”

“No. And before you bring it up, I know all about the dowry, and that it will be yours to do as you please with.”

“Only if I marry.” She shook her head. “I’m leaving. If you must know, I’m going to get up the nerve to ask Mrs. Simpkins to help me gain an audition. I can memorize lines and project my voice. I can act. I can’t do any of that if I’m making the social rounds of the ton .”

“ This is the woman, but not this the man.” He watched as her color rose again.

“Yes, and then you threw a glass at me.”

“In my defense, I didn’t know it was you then. And you were wrong on both counts. You pointed to James, and he was certainly not the woman. And I?—”

“You are not the man for me, your grace.”

Her glare dared him to contradict her. He held her gaze while her breathing accelerated to short puffs and his own heartbeat picked up. She was going to be a challenge, a delicious, spirited challenge. A girl he knew so little and yet so well.

He touched her hot cheek, and a small gasp parted her lips.

“Let me prove to you that I am. Let me court you. Give me four weeks.”

Frowning, she swallowed hard and shook her head. “No. I’m not the woman for you. Dukes make practical matches. You have your freedom to go where you want and do what you want. You can spend your nights in a gaming hell. You can, and probably will, take lovers. I don’t want a husband like that.”

“And I don’t want to be a husband like that. I want to cherish my wife and have children, and a happy home. I want you, Nancy, now and forever.”

Her eyes grew shiny and her mouth trembled. “You say that now. But only love could make a duke be faithful to his duchess, and you can’t p-possibly be in love with me.”

“I can and will be faithful with you by my side. Give me a chance, Nancy. Here is my proposal: we’ll begin our formal courtship in Birmingham, properly chaperoned. And we’ll end the four weeks with a wedding, and then travel to my villa in Provence.”

A light flared in her eyes, and he knew he’d hooked her. He only needed to hold back the swelling of his head over those words, my villa , and the swelling of his, er, more private parts, which threatened to triumph over his willpower tonight.

He took a breath, damped down his desire, and went on. “Yes. I have a villa in Provence. We’ll spend our honeymoon there. And in between, you’ll learn the lines for the role of a lifetime, the Duchess of Swillingstone.”

She bit her lip then frowned, apparently speechless. Her mouth opened, as if the two plump lips were begging him to lean in and savor them. They would get to that, and very soon.

Before she could muster words, he jumped in.

“The less formal courtship we’ll begin tonight while we have these hours together. You’ll go to the altar a virgin, my love, but not an ignorant one.”

H is warm lips touched hers in a kiss so tender, she shivered against him, and without thinking, opened her mouth to welcome him. But this was a different sort of kiss than the one at the ball—warm, tender, persuasive.

He turned his lips to her cheek and kissed his way down her jaw, to her neck. She gasped at the pleasure he gave her. A honeymoon in Provence with Simon…

But a marriage to Simon? A lifetime with him?

But oh… his lips on her neck made her shiver.

He couldn’t possibly love her, at least not the way she’d adored him for so long. This was too great a transformation from how callously he’d treated her at Lady Chilcombe’s.

“I suppose,” she said, “four weeks of you teaching me how to make love will be useful. If I decide not to marry you, if I can go on the stage—goodness, even if I did marry you. Well, I read the scandal sheets behind Mama’s back. Even as a duchess, there would be men trying it on with me.”

He pulled away from her, his brows furrowed in a puzzled frown.

She was hard pressed to fight the glee rising in her. “Thank you, Simon. It is better to know, to have a taste of what a man?—”

“You minx.” A grin split his face. “I’ll give you a taste, but it will take a lifetime to feast at the whole banquet.”

The kiss that followed was long and thorough and had her melting inside before he returned his attentions to her neck.

This was a sample of heaven and she wished it could go on forever, but…

“Why, Simon?” She had to know. “Why me? Why now? I thought you and Miss Hazelton?—”

“No.” He pulled back and looked at her. “Miss Hazelton? Never. But you… I’ve known you forever. Won’t you please say you’ll be my duchess?”

His duchess . The words sent a frisson of foolish longing through her.

“Before you answer, you must stop distracting me and let me finish my story about the Swilling Duke.” He cast a lascivious gaze over her, and she felt her cheeks heating.

“And perhaps…” he touched a finger to her nose, “you ought to tell me all about my friend’s sweet little sister, the one who followed me around, who grew up to be a beautiful, spirited woman. ”

“The one who was a complete pea goose?”

“Your brother says you fancied yourself in love with me. Can you not fall in love with me again? Or… is there someone else?”

She dropped her gaze.

“I had other tendres—I did.”

Tendres. Not love, nothing like what she’d felt for Simon. What she still felt for him, if she was being honest. It had only, always and forever, been Simon.

“I could never have married them. I didn’t love them.”

Even though she’d come to accept that Simon had no interest in her, she still wouldn’t marry without true love.

“I’d met Sally at school, and wondered if I could act, on the stage, at least for a while.

Before I could get up the courage to raise the subject with my parents, Papa died, Mama was grieving, and Fitz fell apart for a while.

Fitz and George married, Cass met Saulsfield, and, well, I had to face the Season all alone except for Mama’s company.

When I ran into you in the passageway at the ball, I thought, ‘thank heavens, here is Simon.’”

He shook his head and dropped a brief kiss on her lips. “Here is Simon, the jug-bitten, bacon-brained, Swilling Duke.”

Despite her determination to be stern, she smiled. “As you proved to be.”

“Do you know what I saw in that passageway at Lady Chilcombe’s?”

Go back and tell Percy we’ve had our tumble if you will, and demand payment from him . “Yes of course; you told me. You saw a prostitute who’d wandered in through the servants’ entrance.”

One strong arm slid under her knees and the other around her shoulder, making her gasp.

“You may box my ears,” he said, “but let me explain first.”

He carried her to a wingchair near the hearth and sat down, cradling her head on his wide shoulder. His chest hair tickled her nose. She held back a sneeze and set her hand tentatively on his bare shoulder.

His hand came down over hers before she could explore the alien surface.

“I’ll start at the beginning. I was an only child,” he said, and he told her about losing his parents, about his love for Loughton Manor and the Lovelace family.

“I remember. You would arrive looking sad, and by the end of the visit, you were as big a nincompoop as any Lovelace boy.”

With a laugh, he kissed her nose and went on. Though he touched on his military career, he glossed over his time on campaign in the Peninsula, later at Waterloo, and later still in India and the Americas.

“You’re well-traveled,” she said, “I envy you.”

“One day, I’ll tell you more about Spain and the other places, and you won’t.”

When it came to the news of the dukedom, he spoke of his wild swings of emotion and his reluctant decision to seek a girl with a rich dowry, and then he paused.

“My behavior the night of the ball was not my finest hour, I’m afraid.”

Then he told her about encountering two well-dressed women on the street in front of a house across the square from Lady Chilcombe’s. The resident there, a friend of Simon’s companion that night, was holding a party for his bachelor friends.

She remembered that party. “I saw gentlemen and a group of ladies from the carriage window as they were gathering and wondered.”

“Yes, well, I stayed for a drink only. Or perhaps more than one. I did not, er—forgive the boldness, my dear, but when confessing one’s sins, one should be honest. I did not partake of the company. My friend, however, stayed longer and came along to the ball a bit later.”

“Sir Percy. I suppose he participated in the orgy.”

He froze. “I did not say a name. And how on earth would you know of such?—”

“Girls whisper too. And you told me to ‘go back and tell Percy’, remember?”

With a sigh, he went on. “When I saw you…” Fingers swept through her soggy hair. “It was the golden hair and the blue eyes, and the… the…”

“Bold manner?”