Page 39 of The Duke’s Caught Bride

“Whatever the circumstances of this marriage, you are my wife,” he said. “We are family. And I have not treated you as such.” He paused. The lamplight caught the line of his jaw, the shadow beneath his cheekbone. “I have been… discourteous. I told myself that distance was a form of decency, and I was wrong. I apologize.”

Alice’s throat constricted.

“There is another matter,” Kenneth added. His voice had roughened, the way it did when the words cost him. “The runner has produced nothing. I intend to hire a private investigator, a man I have used for estate matters. He is thorough. He will not stop until Rachel is found.” He turned to face her. “I should have done this weeks ago.”

Alice swallowed. “Kenneth.”

She was not entirely certain who moved first. One moment, she was sitting across from him; the next, she was in his arms, drawn onto his lap. She went willingly, her knees settling on either side of his thighs, the green silk bunching between them.

His arms tightened around her, and their bodies pressed together, the heat between them turning into a raging fire that shot down to the apex of her thighs.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “For trying to find her. For defending me. For all of it.”

She tilted her head back. His face was very close, his eyes dark in the dim carriage and fixed on her mouth. The raw, hungry look in them stole her breath.

He leaned forward and captured her lips with his own.

The kiss consumed her.

The taste of him flooded her senses, port and warmth and a need that matched her own in its ferocity. His hand moved from her back to her waist and pulled her against him, and she gripped his shoulders and kissed him back with a desperation that frightened her.

His tongue swept across her lower lip, and she opened for him. The sound that escaped her throat was low and involuntary and seemed to undo whatever remained of his restraint.

He groaned against her mouth, a vibration she felt in her teeth, and his hands tightened on her waist.

His mouth left hers and traced a path along her jaw, down the column of her throat, to the hollow at its base where her pulse hammered. Her fingers tangled in his hair, pulling the dark curls, and he made a sound against her skin that sent heat to the pit of her stomach.

His hands roamed across her back, her ribs, the curve of her hips through the silk. He traced the underside of her breasts through her bodice, and she arched into the touch, a gasp escaping her that the carriage walls could not contain.

She pulled at his shirt, felt the linen come free of his waistband, and her fingertips found warm skin above his hip. He hissed through his teeth, and his hips shifted beneath her.

She trailed her lips over his throat. Tasted salt and cedar. Felt the vibration of his groan beneath her lips. His hands slid to her thighs, gripping them through the silk, and she rocked against him and heard the sound he made, low and guttural and stripped of every pretense he had ever constructed. She could feel his hardness pressing against her center.

Then his hands stilled.

Alice felt the change before she understood it. The gradual cessation of movement. The tension returning to his shoulders. The shift in his breathing from ragged to controlled, each inhale deliberate, the disciplined respiration of a man reassembling himself piece by piece.

His hands circled her waist, before he gently lifted her from his lap and set her on the seat beside him.

She looked at her hands in her lap. The green silk was creased where his fingers had gripped it. She smoothed the fabric.

No. She would not endure another rejection.

“It is late.” She kept her voice level. “The evening was charged. The wine. The confrontations. It clouded our judgment.”

“Alice.” He lifted his head. “I did not mean to⁠—”

“Goodnight, Your Grace.”

The carriage had stopped. Alice reached for the door handle before the footman could open it from outside, descended into the cold night air of Bearmoor’s gravel drive, and walked toward the castle without looking back.

She climbed the stairs. She walked the corridor. She entered her chamber, closed the door, and turned the lock.

She undressed alone. The green silk fell, and she stepped out of it and pulled the nightgown over her head, feeling the cotton settle against her skin where his hands had been.

Her hips, her waist, her ribs, the underside of her breasts—every place he had touched now burned with the humiliating heat of wanting and being found lacking in return.

With a sigh, she climbed beneath the cold sheets and pulled them to her chin, staring at the canopy. Lady Ashton’s words echoed in her mind.