Page 93 of The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke

“Well, it’s to your credit, believe me, that you are not familiar with her establishment. Oh, Adrian. She owns a School of Venus.”

He burst into unrestrained laughter.

“Listen to you,” she said in a disparaging voice. “That isn’t even all of it.”

He sobered. “There’s more?”

“Yes, and it’s so disturbing. Charlotte has expressed a wish to become a writer.”

“That sounds harmless enough.” He waited a moment. “Doesn’t it?”

“Not when she wishes to chronicle the social history of the Boscastle family,” Emma said as if he were supposed to have read her mind. And Charlotte’s letter.

He whistled, then said, wisely, or so he thought, “I don’t know what to say.”

“I’ll say it for you,” Emma said, her color rising. “There are some social histories that should remain secret. There won’t be a single chapter, nary a page—a paragraph—that does not detail some scandal.”

He glanced up guardedly at the sky, then back at her. Her delicate ears and nose blushed pink from the wind. Her strawberry blond hair had uncoiled from its chignon. She looked a little wild. How he loved his wife. How glad he was to be done with a life of fighting and fevers and wandering about. His future would be breeding a family, perhaps horses, and he would stuff himself every winter on Christmas pudding with a woman who made him wear his coat to keep him warm.

“Let’s have a look at the lodge,” he said on impulse, taking her hand. “Cedric mentioned it’s in dire need of repair and is being used as a barn.”

She wrinkled her nose. “A barn? Oh, I don’t—”

“It’s going to rain, Emma,” he insisted. “Can’t you feel it in the air?”

“No.” she said, lifting her brow. “And I don’t see a cloud in the sky, either.”

“That’s because you’re too short to see as high as I do.”

She laughed indignantly. “Toplofty, are we, your grace-to-be?”

Toplofty and a lord of temptation.

Several minutes later he’d lured her into the lodge that overlooked the lake. As she was dutifully taking tally of the bolts and beams that needed to be replaced, he advanced on her from behind and gently jostled her onto a bed of straw. It wasn’t a fair fight. The woman was half his size, and his motives were inarguably impure.

“What are you doing?” she said in dismay. “I can’t go back to the house with hay in my hair.”

“I’m the lord of the manor,” he said in a gruff voice. “And you’re to do what I say.”

“And if I refuse?” she asked breathlessly, sprawled out under his shadow.

He frowned. “I might have to spank your soft white backside.”

“As if I’d let you,” she said, laughing.

He pinned her beneath him. “As if you could stop me.”

He settled down and kissed her, his bare hand slipping under her skirt. “Are you an obedient or disobedient servant? There’s a vast difference.”

“That depends on whom I have to disobey.”

“Obey me.”

She laced her arm around his neck, smiling wickedly. “Only if you promise not to tell the master about this.”

He cupped one cheek of her tempting backside. “We’ll keep it our secret, sweetheart. But you can’t let on to your husband, either.” He closed his eyes, swallowing a groan. “My God, Emma—”

She went very still, whispering, “It isn’t my husband we have to worry about. Adrian, let me go. There’s a man standing in the door. We’ve been found.”