“Your Grace,” she repeated, breathless. Just how he wanted her.
Her back bumped lightly against the glass of the orangery. Her surprised gasp was fuel to his fire. Intoxicating.
Biting his lip, already savoring the delicious pleasure of what was to come, he dipped his head. Her lips were so close that he could feel the pressure of her voice as she whispered his title a third time, like an invitation.
And then, the magic, that warm haze of desire that had ensnared him, was shattered in the most brutal way possible.
“Selina! Selina, look at this!”
Selina was stunned, and rightly so.
One moment, she had been caught in his—Ashbrook’s—arms, the world a distant memory in the back of her head as he drew closer. His very warmth searing her through the layers of her shift and dress, his scent wrapping around her like a warm cocoon.
And she had responded to that warmth in kind, her entire being teetering on the precipice of suchwondrouspossibilities. Only to be shattered by Lizzy calling out to her.
She had never been so dismayed to hear her friend’s voice as when the Dukeshrankback from her. Visibly recoiled as if she had become a pillar of snakes.
Then, she saw it—the emotions dancing in his eyes before they shuttered into two slivers of frozen flint.
Guilt. Regret.
“I… I…”
What could she possibly say? What could she do?
She wanted nothing more than for the ground to open up under her feet and swallow her whole. Yet she was still reeling from the whiplash of emotions he stirred within her. So, she did the next most logical thing at that moment.
Sheran.
Fled from the Duke and the madness that he evoked in her. Past the neatly trimmed bushes and rows of flowers. Past Lizzy herself, who looked rightly confused by her sudden flight.
“Selina? Selina, wait! I thought I could show you something that Mel might want?—”
No, no, no!
Selina wanted to scream. She did not wish to stay and stand there and be shown pleasant things and exchange pleasantries while she played at being Duchess. And not just any Duchess, mind you, but the Duchess ofAshbrook.
Lizzy had looked at her with excitement at the thought of becoming sistersat last. The Dowager Duchess had regarded her with unabashed delight, as if Selina herself hung the moon and the stars in her night sky. And then, there was the Duke…
He most certainly didnotlook at her as if she hung celestial bodies in their respective orbits. He had referred to her one mistake as “recklessness”—one which he had not so gentlypointed out that he was trying to resolve with minimal damage for all parties involved.
He did not look like a man who wanted to marry her. No, he did not seem like he wanted to marryat all. And yet he had proposed marriage as the solution to all their problems!
“He truly must be one of the most shortsighted men I have ever met,” she muttered to herself.
She did not want a husband either, at least not one that she wanted to marry yet, but she did not go about making marriage proposals to solve her problems. One might even say that the ill-tempered man had createdmoreproblems by proposing their union, the unimaginative beast. Now, she would have to marryhim.
A prickling sensation skittered across her skin at the thought, which she resolutely pushed out of her mind.
“Since I must marry, then it will have to be onmyterms,” she told herself.
If Ashbrook thought he was going to marry a biddable girl incapable of holding her own thoughts in her head, then she was going to prove him sorely mistaken.
She wouldnotbe ordered about.
