Who Wants to Marry a Duke - Sabrina Jeffries Page 0,4
it?”
Smiling down at her, he cupped her face in his hands. “So we could indulge ourselves. Like this.”
He kissed her gently, and she drew back, her eyes going wide. “Oh, my.”
A chuckle escaped him. “Oh, my, indeed,” he murmured, then kissed her again.
This time her hands caught his waist, and she leaned up to meet his lips more fully. Ah yes. Sweet as cherries, those lips. But bold, too, as if she’d done this before.
Not that he cared if she had. It had probably made her into the delicious armful of woman she was, one he could happily kiss all night. Her wonderfully warm mouth tasted of champagne, which he discovered when he ventured to deepen the kiss, and she opened it to his tongue. After a moment she tangled hers with his, and his blood rose.
Oh, hell. She made him want to throw caution to the winds and do more than kiss her, but he dared not. So he settled for exploring every inch of her mouth, finding all the lovely secret places of it. With a moan, she wrapped her arms about his waist, firing his need even more.
God, she smelled delicious, like tropical hothouse flowers. He wanted to sink into her scent as one sank into a hot bath.
He ran a hand down one shoulder to beneath her arm and along her ribs. Why not? He had just begun to wonder if he did dare to cover one of those ample breasts with his hand when another voice thundered in the room.
“Olivia Jane Norley! What the devil do you think you’re doing?”
Olivia jerked free of him, looking a bit disoriented, not to mention disheveled. His stomach roiled. He’d been well and truly caught. He feared he knew exactly what that meant.
He turned to face an elegantly dressed matron whom he could only assume was Olivia’s stepmother. How had she found them if Olivia had truly been hiding from her as she’d said? And the woman was accompanied by a few friends, too. Witnesses. That was bad. Very, very bad.
In a flash he remembered where he’d heard the name Norley. Baron Norley was supposedly a member of Grey’s club, which Thorn had visited a few times while trying to decide if he wished to join. That meant Miss Norley was the Honorable Miss Norley, probably in search of a husband and simply more clever at it than the other young ladies at this affair.
“This is not how it looks, Mama,” Miss Norley began. “His Grace spilled negus on his waistcoat, and I was cleaning it up.”
Lady Norley’s friends laughed at the very idea.
Lady Norley did not. “Olivia, please step into the hall. I need a private word with the duke.”
“But—”
“Now, young lady.”
Miss Norley’s shoulders drooped as she left the room. With a word, Lady Norley banished her friends to the hall as well. Then he and the woman were alone.
“Lady Norley—” he began.
“I expect to see you at our town house first thing in the morning, with an offer of marriage in hand.”
Marriage! God help him.
He attempted to climb out of the hole he’d so unwisely fallen into. “There’s no need for such precipitate behavior. I only just met your stepdaughter tonight, and although she is a nice girl—”
“Yes, she is a nice girl and barely eighteen. I will not allow her reputation to be damaged one jot because of your . . . animal desires.”
Striving to look the part of a duke, he drew himself up and put ice in his voice. “It was just a friendly kiss.”
“That you removed your coat to engage in.”
Bloody hell. He’d forgotten he was standing here in his shirtsleeves. That was damning, and he’d done it to himself.
Remembering Grey’s warnings, he scowled. More likely, Miss Norley had done it to catch him, and her stepmother had been lying in wait to finish the deal. That possibility infuriated him.
His anger must have shone in his face, for Lady Norley neared him and lowered her voice. “In case you’re considering not showing up to offer marriage in the morning, you’ll force me to make publicly known a certain secret about your family I’ve kept to myself all these years.”
A chill swept over him. “You don’t even know my family. What secrets could you possibly have heard about them?”
“Actually, I knew your parents quite well years ago. Your mother and I came out together, and your father was a friend of my family’s. That’s why I happen to know exactly where he was headed