Rules to Catch a Devilish Duke (23 page)

“Come here,” she said, chuckling, and pulled him backward to lie flat on the bed.

He wasn’t in the mood to wait there for her to torture him, however. Not after she’d already done so—knowingly or not—all day. Before she could straddle his hips, Adam yanked the French condom, which he’d been fingering for the past two hours, from his pocket and kicked out of his trousers. Turning onto his hands and knees, he pursued her across the bed as she grinned and scooted backward.

“Oh, let me,” she breathed, taking the condom from his hand.

“Don’t play about with it,” he cautioned, unable to help his grin at her aroused excitement.

Running her tongue across her lips, Sophia took his cock in her hand. As he gritted his teeth and concentrated on anything other than the exceedingly desirable and very naked young woman touching him so intimately, she slid the goat intestine up over him and tied the red ribbon to hold it in place.

“There,” she said, straightening the bow a little.

“That’s enough of that,” he rumbled. Tugging on her legs, he pulled her beneath him. Delivering another deep kiss, he took a moment to brace his hands on either side of her shoulders before he pushed forward, entering her.

With a breathless smile Sophia wrapped her arms and ankles around him, throwing back her head as he rocked into her again and again. When her muscles began to tense he slowed his pace, deepening his thrusts until with a muffled cry she climaxed.

The sensation was … exquisite. There was no other word for it. And he couldn’t resist it. With a deep groan he followed her over the edge, holding himself hard and deep inside her.

When he could breathe again, he put an arm around her back and flopped them over. Panting, Sophia draped herself across his chest. The pulse of her fast-beating heart drummed from her into him. Adam held his breath to feel her more closely.

After a moment Sophia lifted her head. “I haven’t killed you, have I?” she asked.

Adam let his breath out in a low laugh. “Not yet.” Brushing her hair out of her face, he leaned up to kiss her again. “There’s no reason you can’t make an attempt not to scandalize everyone, is there?” Impressively worded, if he said so himself. Not an order or a demand in earshot.

She put both hands on his chest and levered herself up to look down at him. “The more you want me to be someone else, the less inclined I am to listen to you. I’m anticipating a lifetime of being frowned at, and I don’t intend to begin changing my ways before I absolutely have to.”

Stubborn, stubborn chit
. And she made a damned fine argument, as well. “Being unconventional is what caused you this trouble in the first place. Perhaps if you … made an attempt to fit in, your father wouldn’t have felt the need to send you so far away,” he said cautiously.

With a short laugh she rolled to the edge of the bed and stood. “Being unconventional has been a matter of survival for me, Adam. And if you’ll recall, all I ever did was attempt to survive without selling my body. I’m not accepting the blame for my father’s … lack of compassion,” she said, picking up her night rail and pulling it on over her head. “You have a great deal of nerve, attempting to hand me advice.”

There were times that control and patience were overrated. “People fall over themselves to receive my advice,” he snapped.

“Aha. I think you’re far too accustomed to people falling over themselves to please you. For most of us, things just don’t bend to our whim.”

“That’s what you’ve come up with after a fortnight?” he retorted. “That I’m accustomed to getting what I want? Of course I am. I’m a duke. And we were discussing you.”

To his surprise, she returned to the bed and slipped under the covers beside him. “And I am—I was—a card dealer in a gentlemen’s club. Perhaps I should have said that things don’t bend to
my
whim.”

“And?” he prompted, turning onto his side to gaze at her, and finding himself genuinely curious about where this conversation was going. No one else had ever spoken to him the way she did, and for some damned reason he found it endlessly fascinating.

“And I’m not like anyone else. At least not anyone else you know. I never will be. I don’t want to be. Whatever Hennessy or Mr. Loines say or think, and whatever I may have to … pretend in order to survive, I know who I am. I like who I am. Can you say the same thing?”

He could say that of course he was perfectly happy with himself, but they would both know it was a lie. She’d seen him behaving like a lunatic out on the ice. Happy persons, he was fairly certain, didn’t act in that manner. Neither of them happened to be particularly enthused about their impending nuptials, and neither of them had much of a choice in the matter. The only difference was that she was acquiescing in order to help her friends. He was doing it to help himself.

“Don’t be angry,” she said after a moment, thudding a hand against his chest. “I’ve seen you help your friends thanks to who you are. You’re a good man, and there’s nothing wrong with wishing to keep hold of what you have. If I could manage it, I would do the same.”

“Don’t humor me, chit.”

“Then don’t say insulting things to me, boy.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “‘Boy’?”

Sophia scowled. “I couldn’t think of an insulting term for you. Everyone knows ‘chit,’ or ‘hoyden,’ or ‘minx.’ There aren’t any good insults for dukes.”

“Yes, well, we arranged it that way.” Stifling a laugh, he tucked her against his side. “Go to sleep, chit.” Relaxing, he closed his eyes.

“Of course there is ‘scoundrel,’” she mused into the silence, and he opened one eye.

“Beg pardon?”

“And rogue. And rapscallion.”

Sighing, he shut his eye again. “Don’t forget ‘devil.’”

“Oh, that’s a good one. Or ‘devilish rogue.’ Is ‘picaroon’ still appropriate?”

“Very old-fashioned of you.”

He heard the soft catch of her breath as she chuckled. “I have to agree,” she said thoughtfully. “Hm. ‘Scaly bounder.’”

“I am not scaly. And if you call me a blackguard, I’m going to throw you out the window.”

“Damnation. I hadn’t thought of that one.”

Adam smiled. “Good.”

As he felt her slowly fall into sleep, he decided that he would do something to help her. He was a damned duke, after all, and if a duke couldn’t arrange to do a good deed for a … for a dear friend, then he wasn’t anything but a scaly bounder. Just what the something was, he didn’t know yet, but he hadn’t earned a reputation for deviousness by being stupid. All he needed was a plan. And a little more time.

*   *   *

The sky at the edges of the curtains had already grayed when Adam awoke. Sophia lay beside him, one hand across his abdomen and her wild hair half obscuring her face and tickling his nose. While under other circumstances he would have been perfectly content to remain there, this morning he didn’t have time for sentiment.

He lifted her hand and gently deposited it beside him, then slid to the edge of the bed and stood. All he—they—needed was for someone to see him stepping out of her bedchamber at nearly six o’clock in the morning. All the rumors would be confirmed, and no one would believe anything other than the gossip that Sophia was his mistress. Only secondary was whatever fit his future bride might choose to throw; whoever she was, if she didn’t know about his reputation then he had little sympathy for her.

Why would Sophia simply wish to be his lover, when she could do so in exchange for money or whatever else it was he usually doled out? And why would the Duke of Greaves choose to spend the night with such an eccentric chit without some assurance that he had her loyalty and her silence? Her leash, as it were? That was what they all would think. He could almost hear the gossip already. They had no idea of her true character. And thanks to Hennessy, they would likely have forgotten all about her before the beginning of the Season. That was her father’s aim, after all.

She sat up, brushing hair out of her face. “It’s morning.”

“Very nearly.” Swiftly he buttoned his trousers and pulled on his shirt. “Some of us are going for a ride around the lake after breakfast. You’re welcome to join us.”

“Do you have enough horses?”

“I do, but regardless of that, you have your own mount.”

“Oh.”

Adam frowned as he buttoned up his waistcoat. “What does that mean?”

“I believe it to be a mild exclamation of surprise or affirmation.”

“It’s too early for you to be taxing my wits, Sophia. Just speak plainly, will you?”

She tilted her head. “I don’t wish to sound petulant or complaining.” Scooting to the edge of the bed, she turned onto her stomach and placed her chin in her hands over her bent elbows.

“I’ve never seen you petulant,” he returned. “Go on.”

“Very well. It irritated me yesterday when I saw Sylvia Hart riding Copper. But then I realized that when you originally planned this party you of course intended for all the horses—except for Zeus—to be at everyone’s disposal. Selling me Copper for three pence was a jest, and I shouldn’t have taken it seriously now that circumstances have changed. I’ll hardly have a use for her after this holiday, anyway.”

Damnation
. He was going to have a word with his stable staff. “If Sylvia rode Copper yesterday, that was a mistake,” he said succinctly. “You purchased Copper, and she is yours. Here, or London, or Cornwall. It won’t happen again.” He sat in the chair by the hearth to pull on his boots, but settled for draping his wrinkled cravat over his shoulders rather than attempting to knot it into anything resembling its former grandeur.

“I might go riding,” she said slowly. “I’ll have to see what Cammy is up to this morning. And I said I would deal faro.”

Adam stood again. So she still insisted on reminding everyone who—what—she was. He stopped his protest, however; he could already hear her response that she was merely
being
who she was and he should keep his snobbery to himself and let her have her fun. Instead he nodded. “I’ll have the faro table set up. But don’t feel obligated if there’s something else you’d rather be doing. You’re on holiday, after all.”

That earned him a smile, thank God. Swiftly he walked over, knelt beside the bed, and kissed her. Desire tugged through him at her warm response, but he stood again anyway. If he didn’t leave now, how he felt toward Sophia White would be obvious to anyone he encountered between there and his own bedchamber.

“Good morning,” he said, and walked to her door.

“Good morning.”

He cracked open the door and peered into the hallway. It stood silent, dim, and empty. Stepping out, he silently shut her door behind him and made his way to the corridor that connected the east wing of the house to his rooms in the west wing.

A few of his servants were about, lighting hallway sconces and opening curtains, but other than acknowledging their hushed greetings, he ignored them. There likely wasn’t one of them who didn’t already know with whom he’d been spending his nights and sharing his baths.
His
servants kept his secrets. It was everyone else’s he had to worry about.

Once he made it back inside his dark, chilly bedchamber, he stopped, resting his forehead against the closed door. He needed to stop delaying his own search. Yes, he wanted to help Sophia, but he couldn’t very well do that if he lost half his properties and became the jester of London because of it. His wife was there, at Greaves Park. He merely needed to point at one of the chits and say, “Her. She’ll do.” Because at this point the who of it didn’t matter. If there had been a particular female he wanted to marry, he would have done so by now. All he needed, then, was a spouse. Any spouse. And spending time with Sophia, though eminently more pleasant, wasn’t helping either one of them.

“I don’t think ‘later’ has the same meaning for you that it does for me,” a soft, silky voice said from the direction of his bed.

Shit.
“Caroline,” he said, turning around.

She lay on her side beneath his covers, her head propped up on one elbow. Given the emerald evening gown neatly folded over the back of a chair, she was naked beneath the sheets. And from her half-asleep expression, she’d been there for some time. Likely all night.

“I thought you wished a better acquaintance, Your Grace. But it seems you had someone else’s acquaintance to make.”

“Blackwood plays a relentless game of piquet,” he stated, sliding off his loose cravat and dropping it onto his writing table. “And yes, evidently we do have different interpretations of the word ‘later.’ My apologies.”

She uncoiled and sat up, catlike. The sheets dropped to her waist, revealing a large, inviting pair of breasts. “No harm done,” she purred with a slow, seductive smile. “What is your interpretation of the word ‘now’?”

She likely didn’t want to hear his interpretation of anything at this moment, because it involved a great deal of cursing. Nothing he or Sophia had ever said to each other had implied anything exclusive or even more than casual, but she was the first place his thoughts went. Even when the woman he was most likely to marry sat, attractive and naked, five feet away from him.

With Caroline on his arm during the Season, he would have a companion for soirees and dinners and nights at the theater, and he would have a mother for his heirs. But whatever his conversations with Sophia had or hadn’t touched on, whatever he knew with as much certainty as he knew his own face, stating his intentions to Caroline would mean ending something with Sophia. And he wasn’t prepared to do that.

He took a deep breath. “Unfortunately, my interpretation of ‘now’ is when I need to change my clothes and go downstairs for breakfast.”

Dark brown eyes, black in the dimness of the room, regarded him levelly. “Should we discuss ‘later’ on another occasion, then? Or should I assume that I altogether misinterpreted my invitation to Greaves Park?”

God, she was so civilized. So … bloodless. Precisely what he wanted in a wife—someone who would show well and not put up a fuss if or when he decided to take up with some mistress or other. No arguing for Lady Caroline, no throwing things—and no supreme joy or passion or laughter.