“Your Grace, you are dreaming.”
It was a woman, a familiar one. A kind voice, a voice he needed to pursue. There were cool hands on his face. Blessedly cool. He wanted to feel those hands everywhere.
“Your Grace? Oh, to hell with it—Ezra. Ezra, wake up!”
He could not ignore that command. His eyes fluttered open, and he saw a woman—an angel—a sweet, concerned face with wide blue eyes and a long, red braid.
His savior. He had no choice.
He reached up, pulled her down, and kissed her.
CHAPTER 9
Letitia sucked in a gasp as the duke’s lips, warm and soft, landed on hers.
For an instant, she froze.
And then, because she was the most foolish woman alive, she relaxed into it, let him hold her cheeks, let him pull her close, and let herself trail her fingertips down to his shoulders.
She hadnotintended for this to happen. She had been doing a fine job of avoiding the duke, pretending that she didn’t feel his gaze when they crossed paths, and rebuffing Sarah’s probing questions.
And then, she’d woken to screaming.
Her first thought had been Iris, of course. But the screams weren’t the cries of a little girl waking alone in the night; they were deeper, the cries of a man consumed with terror.
She’d been in the corridor before she could think better of it.
She’d had enough sense to try knocking, at least. But there had been no answers, and the tortured sounds kept coming, too pained for her to resist. So, she had gone in. And then, when the duke had failed to respond to her voice, she’d touched his face, which was twisted with fear. She’d called his title and, then, when that had not worked, his name—his given name.
When she laid it all out like that, it sounded almost logical. Except it couldnotbe logical, because there wasnological world in which she and the Duke of Rutley—Ezra—were kissing.
His mouth was warm, his hands gentle on her face. He parted his lips, coaxing hers open. His tongue brushed against her lower lip, just a featherlight touch. She gasped again—and this time, he seemed to wake up the rest of the way.
“Miss Knightley!” he exclaimed, releasing her.
She instinctively reacted to the alarm in his expression, using the place where her hands were planted on his chest to push herself upright.
He lacked his usual composure; there was no smoothness to his expression now, no charm. He looked truly disarmed, utterly shocked.
Letty had known what she was doing was stupid. But now, she worried that what she’d done waswrong.
“I... I am so sorry,” she sputtered, scrambling to her feet and backing away from the bed. She wasn’t even wearing a dressing gown. She felt completely naked in just her night rail. “I should not have... You were screaming, I?—”
“No, no,” the duke said. He looked as though he wanted to stand up, too, then glanced down at his state of undress. Good God, Letty thought faintly, her back pressed against the wall. When had she gotten so far back? How had she not noticed that he wasn’t wearing a shirt? She could not help herself from looking now, her eyes taking in the expanse of muscle.
“I am sorry,” he said, pulling her from herdeeply inappropriateglances. “I should not have... I took advantage?—”
“No!” she insisted. “You were half asleep! It wasn’t you...”
She shook her head sharply. This was going nowhere.
“I am going to go back to bed,” she said, feeling as awkward as she had in her entire life. Her cheeks were flaming so fiercely that she felt lightheaded, probably because there wasn’t any blood left for her brain. “This... Nothing happened. You’re still dreaming, probably. Goodnight.”
She fled before he could say another word, before she could let herself get lost in looking at him again, before she could do or say one more idiotic thing.
She went back to her room and burrowed under the blankets, like a child who believed the monsters under the bed could not get her as long as she was covered by cotton and wool. Only in this case, the monster was her own foolishness. She was tempted to scream into her pillow, but, as she had learned all too well, screams carried in this wing of the house.
Since there was nothing else to do, all she could manage was to seep in her own mortification until dawn arose to put her out of her misery.
