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“I really don’t think you should mention ‘God’ in a vicarage,” she said, fighting a mortifying attack of shyness.

When he looked at her, she felt voluptuous. They were so close now that their breaths intermingled. Then he turned and reached the door in one large stride, shut it quietly, and returned to her side. “Just for a moment,” he said.

A lifetime spent thinking that she wasn’t as beautiful as the Wilde sisters, versus the utter conviction in Devin’s eyes? She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him a tiny bit closer until their lips slid together and their tongues danced past each other in a dizzying caress that made her feel hazy.

His large hands were clamped on her hips again, making certain she was steady. Her stomach clenched, but for a very different reason than was customary. She nestled toward him, dropping one hand to his chest to feel his heart beating.

With a murmured word that she didn’t understand, he deepened their kiss. Viola pushed away thought and clung to him, learning the music of kisses, the give-and-take of tongues, the way the thump of his heart sped up under her hand, the tension of his body, as taut as the strings of a violin.

His tongue invaded her mouth again and she had the sudden instinct to suck on it, so she did, and he let out a raw groan and all ten fingers tightened on her hips. She was busy learning, busy taking stock, and thinking about how it felt, and how his grip made her blood feel as if it was scorching—

When the door opened, she didn’t even register the sound.

Chapter Seventeen

“Well, I never!” Miss Pettigrew squealed.

Devin raised his head reluctantly, looking down into Viola’s flushed face and feeling a deep certainty that echoed in his bones. Her eyes were round with shock, and she looked utterly mortified.

His fault. He had shut the door. No matter that she’d bid him to do so, he was a gentleman, supposedly. Yet he had kissed her the way a man kisses a mistress, not a proper young lady. Theirs had been no docile peck on the lips: It was the forerunner to what he felt certain would be the best lovemaking of his life.

Raucous, sweaty, noisy lovemaking.

Viola looked as if she might explode with embarrassment. Her lips were swollen with his kisses, and he didn’t want anyone in the world to see that, other than him. Anger at the invasion began to march up his backbone.

He straightened and turned his head. “Excuse me,” he growled.

The vicar’s fiancée stood in the doorway, hand on her heart, eyes hard. For a moment, he had a flash of sympathy for Marlowe, not that he had the faintest intention of allowing Viola to sacrifice herself at the marital altar.

Behind Miss Pettigrew’s shoulder stood her mother and Lady Knowe, whose face was utterly composed. But she had a stern fury in her eyes all the same.

“Oh, no,” Viola breathed.

“I believe our courtship has just been curtailed.” Devin turned his shoulder to their audience and held her gaze, saying quietly, “You may jilt me later, if you wish.”

He dropped a kiss on her lips, picked her up, and put her gently on her feet. “I’d like you all to be the first to know that Miss Viola Astley has agreed to become the next Duchess of Wynter. My duchess.”

Miss Pettigrew still blocked the doorway, looking at him with seemingly genuine horror in her eyes, but Lady Knowe deftly nudged the lady to the side and strolled in.

“I told the duke after you asked for my niece’s hand yesterday that Viola would never be able to resist you.”

At his shoulder, Viola made a small sound, akin to a gasp. She knew Devin hadn’t yet spoken to her stepfather. It stood to reason that she wasn’t very good at deception; her eyes were too expressive. Luckily, it appeared that Lady Knowe was a master.

Devin wrapped his hand around Viola’s. “Within five minutes of meeting Viola at the Lindow ball, I knew that she would be my duchess. It took me longer to convince her than I imagined.”

“Your efforts to convince her were not worthy of a lady,” Miss Pettigrew hissed, her lip curling. “The door was closed, you were unchaperoned, and we all saw where your hands were!”

Devin could feel rage rising in his chest, and he took a deep breath. He had promised himself as a boy that he would never behave like his father. But now fury boiled up inside him, as poisonous as stewed foxglove.

Words were lining up behind his teeth, but he forced himself to remain silent. He never spoke when he was angry. It was the habit of a lifetime, a desperate technique adopted to avoid turning into his father.

Miss Pettigrew’s eyes were bright and sharp, and she seemed to have swelled above the waist like a bantam rooster scratching the dirt.

“Daughter,” her mother said, “you forget yourself.”

“I haven’t forgotten myself,” Miss Pettigrew spat, crossing her arms over her chest. “Earlier they kissed on the street, in the broad daylight, and His Grace just referred to her by her first name.”

Lady Knowe fixed the Pettigrews with a stare that suggested they were night-grown mushrooms that had made an unwelcome appearance on the lawns of Lindow Castle.