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“My services are more expensive than that,” she teased softly, reaching for him again. He met her, kissing her until she felt as though the world had slipped away—everything gone except Henry, smelling like mint and soap and rosemary.
Finally, he pulled back, pressing his brow to hers as they both panted their pleasure and he whispered a wicked curse before asking, “How is it possible that you haven’t been won, Adelaide Frampton? How is it that you are here, ripe for me, making me ache and aching for me, in return?”
She placed her hands on top of his, where he held her tight. “No one has ever . . .” She searched for the words.Wanted me. Come for me. Wooed me. Won me.She couldn’t say any of that, obviously. It would make her seem... needing.
She was needing. She needed him.
She pushed the thoughts aside and finished the sentence. “...noticed me.”
He shook his head, slow and certain. “You’ve said that before. That you are not noticed. It is not true.”
“I prefer not to be noticed.”
His brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Because if no one notices me, they won’t notice that I don’t belong.” She gave a little laugh. “Of course that’s silly, isn’t it? I don’t belong. Not in Mayfair. Not at your dinner parties where everyone laughs when husbands insult their wives. Not at your balls where people go out of their way to ignore the outcasts. The ones who aren’t beautiful. The ones who are aging. The ones who never quite got the hang of the quadrille.” She looked to him, feeling that she ought to confess, “I’m not good at the quadrille.”
“I don’t care.”
“Of course you do. You notice every imperfection. You told me once that Ioversteppedwhen I was the only person in the room to defend Lady Coleford in her sitting room when her husband was a monster.”
His sigh was full of frustration... and contrition. “I did.”
“I wasfurious.”
He nodded, his lips curving in a half smile. “You were. It was magnificent.”
“You should not underestimate the power of a woman’s fury, Duke.”
With his thumbs, he raised her chin, and he pressed a kiss to the soft underside of her jaw. “I have seen you atwork, Miss Frampton. I do not for a moment underestimate you.”
“Do you know that when I left that evening, I immediately went looking to fill your file?”
Another kiss, this one lingering, made better by the way he finished it by whispering at her ear, “I can respect vengeance.”
She clutched his forearms, her words going to breath. “I wanted to destroy you.”
Another kiss, lower, where her pulse pounded. The swipe of his tongue, and then he lifted his head and looked her deep in the eyes. “I did it to protect you. To keep you unnoticed. If that man—if any of these men you loathe—with good reason, I would add—ever noticed you... Adelaide, don’t you see what would happen?”
She’d seen what bad men could do with their lack of conscience. Had spent years fighting them when the world turned away from their behavior. “I can hold my own, Duke.”
He nodded. “That much I know. But you shouldn’t have to.”
“I’d rather speak than be silent. I’d rather fight than be protected. But you forget, Henry, that it’s not my speaking that gets me noticed. When a woman speaks too loudly, fights too passionately—that is when she goes unnoticed. They would rather shun me than hear me.” She paused. “They’d like me to shut up and dance the quadrille.”
“Hang the quadrille.”
“I would wager all I have that you are excellent at the quadrille.” When he did not answer she said, “Aren’t you?”
“Adelaide.” He gave a little laugh, as though she was being silly. And maybe she was. Maybe she was irritable.
Or maybe it was frustration, and she was simply reminding herself that there was no future for them. And maybe she needed that. “Aren’t you?” she repeated.
“Yes. I am good at the quadrille.”
“There, you see?”
“I assure you, I do not. But I also do not care about the quadrille, because it has nothing to do with being noticed. Shall I tell you why?”
