Page 21 of The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke

As if nice manners could mend all the evil on earth. Could she mend a man as broken in soul as he? No woman had ever tried. His dark reputation had attracted the ladies in droves. Emma, on the other hand, had disapproved of him from the moment they met.

She was a Boscastle, one of those spellbinding souls who burned with vitality and purpose. That alone would be enough to explain her irresistible appeal. His best friend, Dominic Breckland, had lost his heart to Chloe Boscastle at the lowest ebb in his life. Fortunately, Dominic had also had the good sense and good fortune to marry her. But the whole bloody lot of them broke hearts as unwittingly as other people breathed. Which answered the question of why he’d felt compelled to defend Emma in the first place.

Still, that hadn’t given him the right to seduce her. She had merely been fulfilling some sense of obligation for what he’d done today. Made a cake of himself and gotten crowned by a Chippendale chair into the bargain. Emma Boscastle might conceivably be able to heal his injury, but all her propriety couldn’t fix the complicated pain of his personal affairs.

He breathed out a sigh. What if she could put him to right? Wouldn’t that be a feather in her cap? It was impossible, of course. No one could undo what he’d become. He’d been raised to better, aspired to worse, and there was no denying his manners had slipped over the years.

One had little need for etiquette in his past profession, in the dark, dirty places where he’d fought and loved. But a levelheaded woman like Emma was a different matter altogether, and he’d relied on his wits alone too long in this sorrowful world not to claim a treasure when he saw it.

Chapter Five

Disgraced.

Emma had disgraced herself. There was simply no one else to blame. True, she had not asked Lord Wolverton to come to her defense today. But neither had he insisted she rush to his rescue, either. Or into his arms.

Those strong protective arms that had anchored her to his magnificently built body. She’d been married for years and had never known a need so keen, so deep reaching that it overcame her judgment. Had she felt sorry for him? Or for herself? With a few simple words he had dismantled her emotions. To think that her brother or his wife might have walked in, and she would have had to explain that—that she had come close to sleeping with a stranger, peer of the realm or not. She lifted her hand to her heart. She wasn’t sure whether she ought to pay penance or do something unspeakably wicked like…stand at the top of the stairs and bellow a few swear words. She whispered them instead.

“Damn. Damnation.”

What had come over her? She wasn’t the one who’d been hit on the head.

However, she was the one who had let herself be half seduced by a man of his appalling reputation when no other man had managed to steal as much as a kiss on the cheek from her in years. Not even that Sir William, whose shabby behavior made her feel unwholesome and—Adrian’s love play had left her feeling vulnerable but not violated. Upon escaping him, she should have experienced any number of appropriate reactions.

But not this sparkling invigoration, this sense of Sleeping Beauty awakened after a hundred years of dormant desire, of being swept up into the stars, of walking…

“The hallstand, Emma,” a familiar masculine voice warned behind her. “Watch where you’re walking. We don’t need another invalid on our hands.”

A guilty blush pinkened her face at her brother’s gentle reprimand. “Well, who moved it, then?” she demanded, laughing shakily.

The intelligent blue eyes of her second eldest brother, Lord Heath Boscastle, studied her for a moment. Of all her family members he was the most protective and perceptive. And there was certainly something for him to perceive if he looked deeply enough. “No one. The hallstand has always stood there. Are you sleepwalking, Emma?”

“Of course not. It’s my habit to check on the girls before bed every night.”

“I know,” he said in amusement. “However, they sleep in the other wing on the floor above. As they have ever since they arrived here.” His gaze drifted past her to Adrian’s door. “I thought you might be on your way to check on Wolf,” he said in a casual tone she knew better than to trust.

Wolf. She cringed inwardly at the too-apt sobriquet. Spying in the military had refined Heath’s instincts. She would absolutely die if he guessed what had just happened. She could not understand it herself. Pray God Adrian was a man who kept his promises, or, well, she cringed to imagine the repercussions.

As calmly as she could, she answered, “I did check on him, naturally. One feels a sense of responsibility when a man has been incapacitated on one’s behalf.”

His lips thinned into a hint of a smile. “Incapacitated? I think he could have been struck by an entire table and still survive. But I am curious, Emma. Just how responsible for his well-being do you hold yourself?”

This was the test. The trial by Boscastle torture. Heath’s blue eyes boring into one’s inner thoughts like a tomb-raider exhuming a book that held the secrets to the universe. He knew nothing. How could he know?

Furthermore, she was a grown woman, not a debutante, although until this moment she’d never had cause to lie to her family. “I hold myself responsible in the extreme,” she replied, her voice unwavering, her regard challenging him to make more of it at his own peril. Brother and sister, they stood as equals on the Boscastle sibling battlefield.

“In the extreme. Interesting choice of words, Emma.”

“Would you expect any less of me?” she inquired in an even tone that gently sent the ball back into his court.

He hesitated. “I cannot recall a similar situation in the past by which to judge you.”

“Surely you know me well enough to realize that my duty to obligation will always be met.”

He stared down at her with such tender intensity that she was tempted to throw herself into his arms and plead for understanding. For guidance. And if he’d probed any deeper, she might indeed have been brought to that humiliating pass.

But Adrian had given his word that no one would ever know. Their secret. Their shared sin.

Heath’s voice penetrated her reverie. “The line between obligation and inclination often becomes blurred, and if one is not looking up—”