‘I don’t suppose I could trouble you to do something drastic to get rid of him for me, Mr Duff?’ Because the slight and slender Lord Harlington would feel like a paltry sapling up against this mighty oak. He’d likely burst into tears on the spot if this brute saidbootoo, which would be marvellous.
‘It would be no trouble at all, Hope. I’ve always fancied myself as a knight in shining armour. It would be my pleasure in fact. I’ll get rid of the pest this instant.’
She only had time to smile her thanks as the hapless Harlington wandered into the clearing. A smile which quickly turned to shock a split second later as she found herself attached to her rescuer’s lips.
Effortlessly, he gathered her into his arms, and bestowed upon her a kiss so gentle, yet so thorough and so decadent, she had no choice but to melt against him. And melt she certainly did, as it turned out that despite his tipsy state, Lucius Duff was irritatingly good at it. So good, to her horror, she sighed and looped her arms around his neck, completely powerless to do anything else.
‘Miss Hope! Howcouldyou?’ At Harlington’s outraged squeak, Lucius Duff paused only long enough to glare at him and hold out his hand, palm out.
‘Disappear, fool. Can’t you see that we’re busy here...?’ Then his dark eyes stared deeply into hers. That palm came back to rest intimately on the curve of her hip as his lips shamelessly whispered over hers again, playing havoc with her nerve endings a bit more and doing very peculiar things to her usually level head.
When they heard the other man’s outraged footsteps stomp back over the gravel from whence he’d come, he laughed again, the deep rumble vibrating seductively through his chest to hers and reminding her that she was still shamelessly plastered against him.
‘He’s gone.’ He whispered the words against her mouth, his lips still barely millimetres from hers and his warm palm still splayed possessively across her hip.
Panicked at her own shocking behaviour as well as outraged at his, Hope immediately pushed him away and scurried to her feet, breathless, stunned and mortifyingly off-kilter.
‘How dare you!’
Lucius Duff blinked at her, bemused. ‘You asked me to do something drastic to get rid of him, so I did.’
‘I meant by using your height...’ She flapped her hands at his face. ‘Or your menacing looks to intimidate him!’
‘Then you might have been a bit more specific in your instructions as neither of those things sounds particularly drastic to me.’ He stood too, revealing the full extent of that impressive height as he towered over her, and had the nerve to look drunkenly offended by her anger. ‘Although I think my method was arguably just as effective and probably quicker.’ Then offended turned to smug as he folded his arms, looking every inch the conquering hero after a bloody ancient battle. ‘It worked a treat though, didn’t it? Your drooling hound is gone.’
‘But I got ravished in the process!’
‘If you consider that a ravishing, Hope, then clearly you are more nun-like and pious than I first thought.’ It was the pitying expression that fired her temper but it was his next ungentlemanly comment which unleashed the full force of it. ‘But I couldn’t help but notice you’re not quite pious enough not to have thoroughly kissed me back.’ The wolfish smile dared her to deny it.
She saw red.
Then white.
Lunged, and with one well-aimed and furious push to the centre of his annoyingly solid, broad chest, sent him tumbling on his smug behind backwards into the pond with a hugely satisfying splash.
Chapter Two
It appears that, while deep in his cups, the newly minted Marquess of Thundersley decided to go for a midnight swim last night. Or at least that is what he told one of my sources when he was discovered dripping in the Earl of Writtle’s ornamental fountain. Miss H. from Bloomsbury was also seen fleeing the garden only a few moments before, apparently in the highest of dudgeons. Coincidence, Gentle Reader? I think not...
Whispers from Behind the Fan
May 1814
‘There you are, Lucius!’ He winced at the sound of Abigail’s voice. ‘I’ve been looking for you all day.’ Which was precisely why he had hidden himself in the music room to read his mountain of unwanted correspondence the second he had returned home, despite his inability to play any instrument. ‘You missed dinner.’
On purpose.
Because he had been avoiding her like the plague and for damn good reason.
He smiled politely at his half-brother’s widow, dreading what was likely destined to be one of the most toe-curling and awkward conversations of his life. ‘And now you’ve finally found me. Did you seek me for any particular reason?’
Please let it be to apologise for your hideous suggestion from last night!
The suggestion which had left him reeling and reaching for the champagne the second he escaped the suffocating confines of the opulent Thundersley carriage, then downing half a bottle so fast he’d ended up on his arse in a pond within an hour of arriving at the damn ball.
She smiled, perching her skinny bottom on the chair opposite, and gestured towards the newspaper next to the remaining pile of unopened letters on the table. ‘I see you made the gossip columns again...your poor valet spent the entire morning trying to get the algae stains out of your waistcoat.’ Clearly they were going to run the gamut of painful small talk before she got to the point.
‘I warned him cream silk was a bad idea.’ As indeed was a valet. Luke had never had a battalion of servants. In Cornwall, they’d made do with their formidable cook-cum-housekeeper, a maid, one ancient, belligerent gardener and his mother’s loyal nursemaid Clowance. ‘I’ve never been very good at keeping clean.’ Perhaps if she realised he was filthy as well as uncouth, he’d put her off him. ‘I am not the least bit like Cassius—I like to get my hands as well as my clothes dirty.’
