Page 90 of The Duke's Counterfeit Wife

He turned back to the dresser, his movements stiff and economical, and slipped the dagger into a sheath at the back of his belt. “Aye.”

Aye? He did always sneak about with a knife?

She remembered the way he’d pinned her to the wall thinking she was a housebreaker, and her heart began to thump louder. He’d carried a knife that night too. Slowly, she raised a hand to her neck, pressing the pads of her fingertips to the hollow at the base of her throat.

He was dangerous.

He was unpredictable.

How could she possibly love him?

Love was a ridiculous construct, nothing more than a chemical reaction to lust, a biological urge to mate and continue the species. If love was real, it would be foolish indeed to look for it with a man who growled more than spoke, glared more than smiled, and had an alarming past he didn’t talk about.

A man who even now was stripping out of his dark clothes.

A man whose body made her itch to touch him, to be touched.

A man who’d been gentle when he’d shown her how to be loved.

She hadn’t told him that had been her first time receiving pleasure. She should have told him that.

She would.

“Griffin?”

He grunted. Of course he grunted, would it kill him to speak in sentences? He was focused on his buttons.

“I…wanted to tell you something.”

“Is that why ye’re here, Flick?” Griffin didn’t look at her, but yanked his shirt from his shoulders, revealing that achingly imperfect stretch of skin. His movements, when he removed his knife-belt, were equally economical. “Or did ye want to hear details of the elephant—I mean, the investigation?”

Well, now that he mentioned it… “Did you learn anything tonight?”

“Not a God-damned thing.” He hid the belt in a drawer, then dropped his trousers. Felicity didn’t look away. “I picked apart Peasgoode’s study—or rather, Ian’s. It’s clear they share the burden of the estate. I went through every drawer, ever ledger I could find—”

“Did you make it look as if a thief had been through?”

The look he shot her—standing there in his stockings and smallclothes, fists on hips—bordered on mortally offended. “Nae one will ever know I was there, Flick.”

She hid her smile. Confident, wasn’t he?

“If there’s evidence linking Peasgoode to Blackrose, I cannae find it.” He blew out an exasperated breath and dragged a hand through his dark hair, causing the strands to stand up adorably. “I was sure it would be in his study. I’ll have to check his chambers tomorrow.”

Her eyes widened. “That will be dangerous, will it not?”

“Aye, but I ken the Duke’s movements now. He’s no’ in his rooms during the day—and neither is Ian. If it’s there, I’ll find it.”

Felicity pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. “Perhaps they are just very good at hiding it. Or perhaps he is not the one who has been in contact with Blackrose?”

Griffin was already shaking his head as he unsnapped his socks from their garters and pulled them both down. “If someone is sending Blackrose packets of information, and receiving them in return, then it is someone who has the run of this place. Someone important, who has access to all the areas, and can control the mail. If no’ the Duke, then Ian. Or one of the clerks, with Ian’s permission.”

Well, it was hard to argue with that logic. Felicity had opened her mouth to offer another suggestion, when he straightened, thumb hooked in the waistband of his drawers, and turned his full attention to her.

“That’s no’ why ye’re here, are ye, Flick?”

When he tugged at his drawers, his cock—already thickening—popped free, and her attention was drawn to it. How could she not look at it? It was bobbing there like it had a mind of its own, so insistent and pleasing…

She licked her lips, and watched it grow harder.

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