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“There’s a but. How could there not be?”
“Just hear me out. I had a realization about the twins today. You think of the children’s life in France as squalid, dirty, and regretful. When they think of it as freedom. They may have been poor, but they were happy. They were free to be themselves, to explore their talents, they lived with the wide sea and the wide blue sky.”
“But they didn’t have enough to eat.”
“Yes, but they had their nurse, Amina, who let them roam freely. And they had the seashore where they were happy entertaining the holiday-makers.”
“England has seashore.”
“Your Grace.” She laid a hand on his arm. Instinctively, he flexed his bicep again.
“Ever since they arrived here in England, they’ve been told they’re bad. That their very existence is somehow wrong and shameful.” She met his gaze, her blue eyes blazing with molten iron. “Please don’t box them in with too many rules. Please don’t clip their wings.”
“If you’re suggesting that I should have let them continue reading palms in Hyde Park—”
“No.” She squeezed his arm. She was standing very close.
He could smell her delicate floral scent, even here in the foundry, where it always smelled of sweat and coal smoke.
“That’s not what I’m suggesting,” she said, her eyes earnest. “Only let them be children, Your Grace, instead of symbols of your venerable dukedom. Let them make mistakes. It’s how we learn. How we grow.”
He placed his hand over hers. So soft, her skin.
So seductive, her scent.
“You must have had a very repressive childhood, Miss Perkins. You speak as one who chafed against a great many rules in her day.”
“I had a very pious childhood with stern dictates. I was told that I was inherently sinful. That God was a wrathful God, and he would smite me down if I misbehaved. If I—” she lowered her eyelashes “—indulged my carnal nature.”
Sweet Lord. She must be a clergyman’s daughter. It was always the vicar’s daughters who had the most to rebel against.
Her words saturated his mind with the need to show her that carnality was actually a very good thing.
His hand still covered hers. He wanted to cover her with his whole body, push her up against a wall. Ride with her faster than a speeding steam engine, racing to a shattering release.
“Why did you bring me here, Your Grace?” she asked with a saucy look in her eyes.
“To impress upon you the importance—”
“No, no, that’s why youthinkyou brought me here. Why did you actually bring me here?”
“I suppose I was somewhat... heated.”
“Yes. You were irate with me. Why else?”
“I give up, why did I bring you here?”
“You’re not going to admit it?”
“Admit what?”
“The real reason why you dragged me here, away from your house, away from your children. Why the door is locked. Why whenever I touch your arm it’s bulging and hard as steel.”
“Er...” Something else was hard as steel. And it wasn’t his bicep.
“Just admit it,” she insisted.
“I don’t know what you’re driving at but—”
