Lady Guinevere and the Rogue with a Brogue - Julie Johnstone Page 0,48
at whatever game he wanted. He was a duke, a man. He would be forgiven nearly anything. They always were. But she was a woman and forgiven nothing. Expected to live above reproach always, never to falter, never to succumb to passion. In fact, women were never to have such great passion that they were carried away. It was an unfair fact, but the wrongness of it made it no less true.
“I do not know what you are about,” she said, trying to move around him to go to the door. He stepped neatly in front of her path and tilted his head down to look at her. His closeness was almost more than she could bear. She felt faint, so she locked her knees firmly in place. “Move please.”
“After we talk.”
“I will not speak another word to you until you unlock that door.” She leveled him with her most practiced withering stare.
He sighed, not looking worried in the least, but he turned, made his way to the door, and unlocked it. Then facing her once more, he leaned against it.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, striding to him to open the door.
He wagged his finger in denial. “Isn’t it obvious?” he asked with an adorable, devil-may-care grin she had quite forgotten. It was a rare look for him, carefree as a lad in the summer sneaking back into his home after a night of forbidden carousing. She’d seen that look on her brother a number of times, though not lately. “I have unlocked the door as ye requested, but I’ll not be allowing anyone to enter quite yet.”
“Carrington!” she cried out, frustrated and intrigued, so help her.
He shrugged. “If someone comes scratching, I’ll open it immediately and say it was stuck, blown shut by the wind.”
She frowned. “There is no wind today.”
“I say there is, and I’m the Duke of Carrington. Who would dare contradict me?”
“And you said you needed guidance on the rules of the ton…” She pressed her lips together in annoyance. “I think not, Your Grace. You seem to have it well in hand, except of course, I should educate you—though I would think you would already know—that Kilgore would dare.”
The carefree look was replaced by a dark thunderstorm of an expression that made her want to take a step back, but she stood her ground even as regret at her words pierced her. Why must she be so prideful? Asher’s eyes narrowed. “Would ye want him to contradict me?”
She sighed. “Of course not! That would set me in the middle of a scandal, and that is a place I have no wish to be again.” The man was fraying her nerves, and she preferred them smooth. “I am beginning to think you are trying to confuse me.”
“I have had the same thought about ye, lass,” he said, now sounding as annoyed as she felt.
She stomped her foot. She didn’t even care that it made her appear like a spoiled child. “Why do you seem to be pursuing me? Is it because you think Kilgore desires me and you are a child in a man’s body? Am I simply the prize you don’t want him to have because you want all the toys for your own pleasure?”
A woman who looked as enticing as Guinevere did in the height of anger should not allow the word pleasure to tumble from her delectable lips and not expect a man to kiss her senseless. But he was sure that was exactly what she expected. Asher held himself in place, still leaning against the wooden garden door, by the sheer will born of a child who’d grown up thinking he was a bastard and had been forced to ignore daily taunts hurled at him and master his natural instincts to respond.
Every part of him wanted to straighten, swallow the remaining distance between him and the glorious siren before him, and claim her mouth—and whatever else she was willing to surrender. He had to try very hard to concentrate on what she had said, what he was trying to discover, and not his base instinct to kiss her—everywhere.
Directness was best. “Do ye want me to pursue ye, or do ye want Kilgore to do so?”
“I knew it!” she burst out, splotches of ruby red coloring her lovely, sculpted cheeks. “If you think me such a fool that I will let you play games with me twice in my life, Your Grace, then you are an addlepated louse.”