Page 67 of The Duke's Bartered Mistress

“Shut up,” he breathed.

Georgia laid her hand on his forearm. “They are beautiful, Demon. Mrs. Kettel found the crate for me. I hope you do not mind me using them on this tree?”

He shook himself. “Nay. Nay, they should be used.” He turned and, with brisk movements, hung the glass ornament on a bough. “I didnae hate these.”

It was as close as he would come to an admission.

“Good, because I like them very much.”

“Ye should have them.” Before he knew what he was doing, he’d scooped up another ornament. “Why did ye no’ set this tree up in yer room?”

Georgia sent him a small smile. “Because I wanted to share it with you.”

Feckless dickweasels!

Limpid crockhawks!

Between that smile, and the way she’d held him…

Demon suspected this beauty had crawled into his heart. Absentmindedly, he scratched at his chest, the scars that didn’t quite itch any longer.

The scars she’d kissed last night.

Oh, fook.

She was going to break him, wasn’t she?

He didn’t deserve her.

Chapter 14

The garden shears were much larger than the pair she’d used to cut Demon’s hair, but they still couldn’t handle the thickest of the ivy shoots.

“You are going to have to tackle these two,” Georgia called down from the top of the ladder. “Either I am not strong enough, or these shears lack the required edge.”

Demon, who was standing below steadying her, growled, “Ye should’ve just let me do them all. Ye’re going to fall, ye daft woman!”

Clucking dismissively, she shifted her weight to the left. “I will not fall, Demon, not with you holding on to my ankles so tightly.”

In response, the blasted man slid his hold up to her calves.

She hid her smile and kept lopping.

Even here, standing in the frigid cold, wearing her warmest stockings, Demon’s touch under her heavy skirt and coat could make her shiver with excitement.

“I’m only down here so I can look up yer skirt, ye ken.”

She snipped one of the overgrown branches. “No, you are down there because I have seen your idea of pruning, and thus I have to be the one up here.”

His grunt sounded almost amused. “How many times do I have to apologize for what I was doing to that rose?”

Snip snip. “How many times? Well, considering I have yet to hear you apologize, I will answer…at least once, Demon.”

“It’s my bloody rose,” he grumbled.

Georgia shifted farther to groom the far-left reaches. “Yes, but you had no idea what you were doing.”

“I was cutting it back, just like ye’re doing.” He abruptly changed the subject. “It’s going to start snowing any minute. Are ye almost done?”

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