Tall, Duke, and Dangerous (Hazards of Dukes #2) - Megan Frampton Page 0,48

she’d been coated with the spilled brandy.

“Might I ask for the honor of a dance?” He was already reaching for the dance card that dangled from her wrist.

She couldn’t refuse, not without causing a scene.

Why did polite Society have to be so . . . polite all the time?

She allowed him to scribble his name on one of the lines, hoping that particular dance wouldn’t be a waltz.

Her eyes found Nash again as she recalled waltzing with him the same night as the poker incident. How he looked at her, as though he were really seeing her for the first time.

The way he moved, strong and assured, as though he knew his body well and knew what it was capable of.

And now the room seemed even hotter.

“If you will excuse me,” Ana Maria said, this time not waiting for Brunley to respond.

She moved toward Nash, feeling how her breath was quickening, and how her body felt tight in her evening gown.

And how his gaze tracked her as she made her way through the crowd.

Nash tried to stop looking at her.

But he wasn’t very good at denying himself anything—when had he ever needed to?

He was a duke, after all. Dukes did not deny themselves. Even he, who wasn’t a particularly ducal duke, wasn’t told no, either by himself or anyone else.

But he’d told her no.

A decision that had him in agony. He wanted to kiss her again, do more than that, find out how responsive she’d be under his touch, share her laughter. Touch her golden skin.

But he couldn’t care for her—not more than he did already—and kissing her, and more, would intensify whatever feelings he already had.

“That duke’s cousin is coming toward us,” his grandmother remarked.

He nearly snapped at her that he already knew, but the dowager duchess had no idea of his current obsession. Or any of his past obsessions, honestly.

She didn’t know him. All she knew was that he was hopefully less bad than his father, which he had to prove by marrying and fathering an heir.

He could do this.

“I don’t understand why she isn’t under consideration,” the dowager duchess continued. “You are already acquainted with her, she doesn’t seem to dislike you, and she has good breeding, even if her brother turned out not to be the duke, after all.”

Excellent recommendation for a potential spouse: familiarity with one another, an absence of loathing, and a family that was listed in Debrett’s.

No wonder he found most of what was supposed to be his world so unexciting, if this was how they chose their marriage partners.

But she was nearly here. He clamped his jaw, willing himself not to let one speck of his desire for her emerge. That wouldn’t be fair to her, especially since she had kissed him. If it then seemed he was interested, despite his protestations from earlier in the day? And then rebuffed her again?

He’d be no better than those silly debutantes who blew hot and cold, making their potential suitors frantic with confusion.

Not that he’d experienced that himself; he hadn’t gotten close enough to any of those silly debutantes to gauge their emotional weather forecast.

Which was an odd way to put it.

And that kind of thinking was likely also why he was currently unattached, with no prospects for changing that. Except for the one woman he’d explicitly told no.

Excellent planning, Nash, he thought. If he could, he’d take himself to his boxing room and slap himself silly.

“Good evening, Na—Your Grace,” she said. Her cheeks were a delicious-looking pink, and her eyes sparkled. She glanced over toward his grandmother. “And good evening to you, Your Grace.”

His grandmother inclined her head very slightly. As always, subtly reminding anyone who came into her orbit that she was far better than they were. At least in her own mind.

“Good evening, my lady,” Nash said. His voice sounded rough, and he cleared his throat in a likely futile attempt to sound more like the other gentlemen in the room. Gentlemen who knew what to say and when to say it, who didn’t have crises of conscience when lovely young women they’d known all their lives suddenly kissed them.

It was unfortunate it was Sebastian’s sister he had kissed, because otherwise he could ask his much more experienced friend just what to do in this situation. But it was his best friend’s older sister, and he could not let anyone know how he truly felt.

“Lady Ana Maria is addressing you, Your Grace.”

He heard his grandmother’s words as though through a fog,