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“Really, Lincoln.” Lady Margaret’s expression was scandalized. “It is most improper of you to enter a lady’s bedchamber without so much as knocking first. If you had, I might have been able to inform you that Evie is still taking her bath.”
“Thisparticular lady has yet to earn my consideration, under any circumstances.” The duke answered Lady Margaret, but his challenging gaze remained fixed on Evie.
She narrowed her eyes on him. “I stand by my previous statement: I do not like anything about you!”
* * *
Hunter had every reason to return this young woman’s dislike, but one glance at her naked body beneath the bathwater, as well as the immediate stirring of his cock, had told him that he had not been mistaken earlier, his desire for her having deepened in the short time they had been apart..
It was beyond irritating to acknowledge this unwanted attraction toward her. But he knew that if Lady Margaret were not also present, he wouldn’t have been able to resist lifting Evelyn—Evie?—from the bathtub and carrying her over to the bed, where he crushed her beneath him as he ravaged her with his lips and body.
And this was after he had stroked and pumped his cock to release in the privacy of his own bedchamber not half an hour ago!
“Indeed, I stand byallmy previous statements in regard to you,” Evie added scathingly.
“That is no way to talk to His Grace, Evie,” Lady Margaret rebuked softly. “But, as I have already stated”—she turned to Hunter—“she is quite correct in her admonishment.”
His mouth quirked in a derisive smile. “If I had bothered to knock, I would not have overheard the…candor of your conversation. What?” he demanded after Evie gasped.
She avoided meeting his gaze. “How much of our conversation did you overhear?”
Not enough, if that blush in her cheeks was any indication. Making Hunter curious to know what Evie and Lady Margaret had been talking about before he entered and heard her statement of not liking him.
“Never mind that for now,” Lady Margaret dismissed briskly. “Lincoln, I really must insist that you leave this bedchamber immediately.”
His jaw tightened. “Madam, all of the Lincoln Grange estate belongs to me. This bedchamber is inside the main house on that estate. Which means it also belongs to me.”
“But not the people in it!” Evie, seeming to lose all patience with him and the conversation—and no doubt because the water was becoming cold—now rose abruptly to her feet, wrapping the damp towel about her as she did so.
Despite her lack of clothing and otherwise unkempt appearance, Evie somehow managed to look magnificently regal as she held the towel in place and stepped carefully over the side of the bathtub to stand on another towel hastily thrown on top the rug by Lady Margaret.
Regal and yet sensually alluring too.
Evie’s hair was drying in dark ringlets about her face and falling silkily down the length of her spine. Her neck was long and slender, her shoulders and the tops of her breasts creamy smooth above the towel. A towel that finished abruptly just above her bare and shapely knees, revealing silky limbs and delicate feet.
Hunter could so easily picture her looking similarly disheveled after the two of them had made love together.
Thoughts which he should not be having about this particular young lady, let alone physically responding to.
His chest felt so tight, he could hardly breathe, and his cock was a hard and aching throb inside his pantaloons. “I believe you are to remain my ward until you reach the age of one and twenty,” he reminded harshly.
“Unless I marry first,” she came back defiantly.
“It would take a strong man, or a very stupid one, to want you for his wife!”
“Bastard!”
“I believe my father was married to my mother at the time of my birth, even if he did in later years make the mistake of taking your mother as his mistress.”
“They loved each other!” she defended.
“Did they? Or was your mother as much of a siren as you obviously are?” His gaze raked over her mercilessly from her disheveled hair to her bare feet.
“Get out!” She kept a tight hold on the top of the towel with one hand as she lifted her other arm and pointed an imperious finger toward the open bedchamber door.
Magnificent or not, Hunter had never been treated with such dismissal as the way in which this young lady spoke to him. “Lady Margaret, would you leave us, please.” His gaze remained on Evie despite his having spoken to the older woman. “I believe my ward requires another lesson in how to address her elders.”
“And betters?” Evie challenged.
