Romancing the Duke (6 page)

His brow furrowed. “You think I’m joking.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I’m not laughing at you. Forgive me. I don’t doubt your skill at ravishing women. I’m sure you’re quite accomplished at . . . at ravishing. Expert, even. I laughed because no one’s ever threatened to ravish me.”

“I won’t believe that. With this hair?” His touch drifted to her neck. “And this softness? You have the voice of a temptress.”

What Izzy had was the beginnings of a cold, and she could have told him so. She could have explained that there was a very logical reason she’d never been in danger of ravishment, and it was because she was plain.

But was she truly plain, here and now? With a blind man, in the dark?

If he was tempted . . .

Didn’t that make her a temptress?

She’d always envied beautiful women. Not solely for the beauty itself but because when attributes were parceled out by whatever deity assigned them, beauty seemed to come tethered to confidence. She craved that more than anything.

He swept a touch up her spine, and his hand brushed aside her plaited hair to settle on her bare neck.

A rush of power went through her, magnificent and intoxicating.

“Who lets a woman like this go untested?” He caressed her nape. “I won’t believe no man’s tried.”

“Oh, you know how it is,” she said lightly. “It must be the stunning degree of my beauty. It puts them off.” Surely, he would catch her joking tone. And if he did take her to be serious . . . Whom could it possibly hurt? “I suppose all the gentlemen are intimidated.”

His thumb rubbed over her lips. “I’m not intimidated.”

Suddenly, she didn’t feel quite so bold.

“Goodness, think of the hour,” she said. “If I’m going to set about improving this place tomorrow, I suppose tonight I ought to return to my—”

A drop of molten wax rolled downward, singeing her hand. Izzy dropped the candle. The flame was extinguished before it even hit the floor.

The turret was instantly plunged into darkness.

Her heartbeat began to race. Oh, drat. And just when she’d been holding her own with him. So much for being a woman in his eyes. So much for being his temptress. He’d laugh at her if he knew how she felt. How could this little girl hold a claim to any castle? She was a ninny who swooned in the rain and shrieked at bats and quivered helplessly in the dark.

Perhaps he wouldn’t notice the quivering part.

His hands went to her shoulders. “You’re shaking.”

Drat, drat,
drat.

“I’m fine. I just dropped the candle, that’s all. If you’d just be so good as . . .” She swallowed hard. “As to show me back downstairs.”

“I don’t think so.”

Oh, Lord. The bottom dropped out of her stomach. He was going to leave her here. Alone. In this tiny room, up thirty-four steps, in the miserable, moving blackness. And that would teach her, wouldn’t it?

But he didn’t leave her. Instead, he took her in his arms.

And pulled her close.

Izzy didn’t know how to resist. Those strong hands . . . they were her only anchor in the spinning dark. She was reeling with surprise, so very frightened.

Then suddenly . . .

She was so very kissed.

Chapter Six

R
ansom kissed her.

Framed her face in his hands, held her still, and claimed her lips with his own. No prelude, no finesse. Just a strong, unyielding press of his lips against hers.

She needed to understand a few things, and he was done trying to explain them with words.

The girl was so damned innocent. She’d grown up on tales of chivalry and romance. She hadn’t a clue what danger a man like Ransom could pose.

Very well. No great pain for him to demonstrate. This one uninvited kiss should send her fleeing to her chamber tonight—and then, in the morning, away.

“There,” he said, breaking the kiss. “You seem to have me confused with some innately decent man. I hope that clears matters up for you.”

He released her, giving her the space to run away.

Instead, she fisted her hands in his shirt and clung tight. “Do it again.”

He couldn’t speak for a moment. Nothing made sense.

“Do it again,” she whispered. “Quickly. And this time do it right.”

“What on earth are you on about?”

“That was my first kiss. Do you know how long I’ve been dreaming of my first kiss?”

Ransom didn’t know. He couldn’t care less.

“All my
life.
” Her fists pounded his chest for emphasis. “And so help me, Your Grace, I won’t let you ruin it.”

“You don’t seem to understand. Destroying your romantic fancies was rather the point of that little exercise.”

“No,
you
don’t understand.” She drew closer, still clutching tight. “I’ve always tried to make the best of what life gave me. When I was a girl, I longed for a kitten. Instead, I got a weasel. Not the pet I wanted, but I’ve done my best to love Snowdrop just the same.”

He took a step back.

She moved with him.

“Since my father died, I’ve been desperate for a place to call home. The humblest cottage would do. Instead, I’ve inherited a haunted, infested castle in Nowhere, Northumberland. Not the house I wanted, but I’m determined to make it a home.”

She tilted her face to his. He could feel her breath against his neck. Soft wisps of heat.

“And ever since I was a girl,” she whispered, “I’ve dreamed of my first kiss. I just knew in my heart that it would be romantic and tender and knee-meltingly sweet.”

“Well, now you know you were wrong. By this age, you should be accustomed to disappointment.”

“That’s where you’re mistaken.” Her grip tightened on his shirtfront. “I’ve started fighting against it. You’re not going to ruin my first kiss. I won’t let you. You’re going to kiss me again, right now. And make it better.”

He shook his head, incredulous. “It’s over. It’s already done. Even if I did kiss you again, it wouldn’t be your first kiss anymore.”

“It counts,” she said. “So long as it’s part of the same embrace, it all counts as one.”

Bloody hell. Where did women come up with these rules? Did they keep them in a book somewhere? Sometimes he wondered if women were all lawyers, with an extensive code of Romantic Law that they kept stubbornly hidden from men.

“Stop dithering,” she urged. “Surely, that kiss wasn’t the best you could do.”

He bristled. “Of course it wasn’t.”

“I mean, you’ve made love on horseback enough times to draw generalizations about it. You must know how to kiss better than that. I’m not leaving this turret until—”

He grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her again. Harder this time. Mainly just to quiet her prattling, but also to underscore the original meaning. If she wanted tender starlight interludes, Ransom was not her man. When it came to physical pleasure, he was aggressive, bold, and unashamed of it. If he had to make the point twice, so be it.

But as he kissed her, something went horribly, horribly wrong.

This time, she kissed him back. Not with mere curiosity or artless enthusiasm but with a sweet, unfettered passion that made his ribs ache.

His eyes flew open in shock—not that it made a damn bit of difference. He still couldn’t see, only feel.

Sweet God above, did he
feel.

This was . . . This was not supposed to happen.

Her lips were even more tempting than he’d dared suppose. Plump, wide, sensual. He savored each in turn, then swept his tongue between. She matched him kiss for kiss, taste for teasing taste.

He tugged her close with one arm. As he thrust his tongue deep, her mouth shifted and softened under his. Generous. Giving.

This was everything he’d been craving for so damn long. Closeness, warmth, sweetness, surrender.

He might have confined himself to this castle in the months since his injury, but he hadn’t stopped moving. He’d walked this place every night, traversing the galleries, climbing the stairs, measuring the rooms in paces and learning the way his steps echoed off the stone. Hour after hour and day after day turned into month after month.

First, he’d walked to rebuild the strength sapped from his limbs. Then he’d walked to master the lay of this castle without his sight. He might be a wreck, he told himself, but he’d be damned if he’d be an invalid.

But there was something else that kept him walking, prowling the corridors and towers of Gostley Castle. Even if he wished to rest, he couldn’t. Not without indecent amounts of whisky, anyhow. He just never felt easy. He never knew true peace. He was beginning to think he never would.

And now . . . now, this woman grabbed that tormented, wandering part of him and kissed it. Like a long-lost lover welcoming him home.

Good God. Good God.

She kissed him with
everything.
As if she wanted to. As if she’d
always
wanted to. As if her small, slender body were nothing more than a cunningly crafted decanter of some bewitching potion. An essence of desire, aged and corked and waiting for years. As if in one single kiss, she’d sensed her chance to foist it all on him because she was weary of the burden.

Take this sweetness,
her kiss said.
Take this passion. Take all of me.

He explored her mouth thoroughly, desperate for more.

He should have refused those reckless gifts. But he couldn’t bring himself to pull away. His desires had been caged a long time, too. He couldn’t evade the longing she kindled. Couldn’t deny the hard, hot response of his body—not with his cock throbbing vainly against his buckskin falls.

God, he felt alive. Fully alive, for the first time since . . .

Since dying.

Ransom didn’t know if this Beware-My-Dangerous-Kisses ploy was having any effect whatsoever on Izzy Goodnight, but he knew this much.

This kiss had
him
rattled to his boots.

W
ell, Izzy thought, her first kiss wasn’t everything she’d hoped and dreamed it might be.

It was a thousand times more.

Now
this
was a proper kiss.

Not just a harsh press of bruising lips, but a real, true kiss, by a man who knew what he was doing. He was kissing her with not only skill but with
passion
. And
ardor.

And
tongue.

Best of all, she was somehow managing to acquit herself in a manner that had him growling against her lips. Pure luck there, she had to imagine. Or maybe he was the kissing equivalent of those London dancing masters—the ones who made a girl look graceful and competent when she was just following his lead.

It didn’t matter. She was being kissed, and she was kissing in return, and thus far, it wasn’t a humiliating disaster.

This . . . was . . . glorious.

For the second time in a single day, he made her knees go weak.

She threw her arms around his neck for balance. And then she kept them there for the sheer pleasure of lacing her fingers at the nape of his neck and sifting through the heavy locks of his hair.

He smelled so good. So simply, and so masculinely, good. It made no sense to her, how the most humble, unlikely scents could add up to an exotic cologne. If one gathered a flask of whisky, a strop of old leather, and a cake of plain soap, then tied it all together with a few wisps of dog hair—no one would expect the resulting “bouquet” to smell more enticing than an armful of roses. But somehow it
did.

And then there was his heat. He seemed made of it. The man was a coal-fired furnace. He radiated warmth through his grasping hands, his hard chest, his lips.

Oh, his lips. The whiskers dotting his chin and jaw were abrasive, but his lips were . . . not soft, exactly. Soft meant pillows or petals, but his lips were the perfect blend of resilience and gentleness. Give and take
.

When at last he reached her mouth again, his taste was easy to name. Whisky and tea. And when he thrust his tongue deep, whisky and need.

So much need.

That was the most stirring, intoxicating part. Everything about his embrace told her that he needed, and what was truly astonishing—that he sought something he needed in
her.
He twisted his hand in the back of her nightrail and kissed her more deeply, relentless, as if chasing that something. Searching for it.

And part of her wanted nothing more than to surrender. To offer whatever he needed of her, and gladly.

Be careful, Izzy.

“Enough.” With that gruff pronouncement, he released her. So quickly, she almost stumbled.

The sounds of labored breathing filled the turret.

At length, he cursed. “That was a disaster.”

Izzy put her hand to her temple. She was alone in the dark again, and her head was spinning. This was the moment for a witty, sophisticated retort.

What came out of her mouth instead was, “You kissed me first.”

“You kissed me back.”

“And then you kissed me more.” She sighed. So much for sophisticated banter. “I won’t make too much of it if that’s your concern. I know you only kissed me to intimidate me. But you should know this. It didn’t work.”

“I think it did work.” He pulled her close again. “I felt your heart pounding.”

Well, if a pounding heart was a sign of fear . . .

She flattened one hand against his chest, covering the thumping beat there. The man must be terrified.

Izzy felt a strange pang of sympathy for him. Growing up as Sir Henry Goodnight’s daughter had taught her all about male pride. Her father had labored for years in obscurity as a poorly paid, frustrated scholar. Once the stories found success, the adulation of readers was the food that sustained him. He couldn’t last a week or more without another meal of fawning praise.

And if pride was that important to a middle-aged scholar, Izzy could only imagine how vital it must be to man like the Duke of Rothbury. How difficult adjusting to blindness must be for a man like him, young and strong and in his prime of life. For the first time, he was forced to rely on others. He must hate that feeling.

So he’d learned Gostley Castle, pace by pace, month after month, building a painstaking map of every room in his head. By now this castle was a fortress to his pride. The one place he still felt in control.

And today . . . thanks to some legal quirk, he’d lost it. To a plain, penniless spinster.

It wasn’t any great wonder he despised her.

But just because Izzy understood and sympathized, that didn’t mean she would give up. She couldn’t surrender her own interests just to soothe his pride. She’d made that mistake before, and it was why she found herself here, penniless and stranded in a crumbling castle with nowhere else to go.

She had to look out for herself. No one else would.

“You needn’t be anxious, Your Grace. We will do whatever it takes to sift through the papers and legalities. In the meantime, I promise, I won’t be much trouble.” She gave his chest a gingerly pat.

His hand closed on her forearm and pushed it away. “What you’ll be in the morning, Miss Goodnight, is gone. I will see you back to your bedchamber now. And when morning comes, I
will
find you somewhere else to stay.”

Izzy relented, saving her strength for tomorrow. In the morning, he would try to make her leave. He might scare her, shout at her, ply her with threats or kisses.

She would be strong as these castle walls.

She would not give one inch.