Page 24 of Wedded to the Scottish Duke

“Ah, I see.” He moved her with sudden alacrity, eating up more and more of the dance floor. “Ye would rather I be like the man ye were just dancing with? That scrawny fellow. The one who looked as if he might break in two when ye touched his hand.”

“Don’t belittle him.”

“It’s not his appearance I wish to belittle, but the way he took yer hand possessively. As if it was his own.”

“And you do not realize the irony in that?” She laughed forcibly, noting the way his eyebrows knitted together. “You have just tried to claim every one of my dances for the night. At least that man is soft in manner.”

“And that’s what ye ladies want? Ye want me to be soft like him?” the Duke scoffed.

No…

“I would not change you in that way,” Celia mumbled.

The words had escaped her lips on instinct. She didn’t want the Duke of Hardbridge to change in that way. He was enticing just the way he was, so why would she want him to change? Yet, he seemed to have misunderstood her. Perhaps he thought it was impossible that she would give him any sort of compliment.

“Oh, aye, it’s in other ways ye would change me.”

“That’s not what I?—”

“I bet ye that a man like that doesn’t know how to make a woman moan.” He leaned forward, practically whispering the words in her ear as he steered her around the edge of the dance floor.

She held tighter onto his shoulder, not wishing to be lost in the sheer strength of his movement.

“Moan?” She laughed at the idea. “Well, you have certainly made me groan since I met you.”

“Is that so, sweetheart? And I wasn’t even trying to seduce ye?”

“I meant groan in frustration!” she protested, but he had adjusted their stance a little, his grey eyes looking down at her, his lips dangerously close to her own. She had to jerk her head back to increase the distance between them. “You are an awful man.”

He raised a single eyebrow in challenge.

You are!

Yet, her hand seemed to grip his shoulder tighter.

Despite all she had been told about pleasure, what she should expect, how it could feel, she wanted to know exactly how it would feel now… She wondered if there were things she didn’t know, perhaps things the brutish Duke had experienced that she had never heard about in the back of the painter’s studio.

“I’ll be glad to be rid of you,” she lied. “Glad to see you married to someone else, so you’ll stop trying to prove to me that you could seduce any woman at the drop of a hat.”

He furrowed his brow a little.

“No need to delay though, for I have heard of a young lady desperate to marry.” She smiled triumphantly and then gripped his shoulder and hand tighter, trying to make him slow down. “Over there. Lady Alicia Newton. She needs to marry, and quick.”

She had heard it whispered earlier that day when the other ladies had returned from the picnic. Even Lady Arundel had vowed to Lady Alicia to help her find a husband.

It is the perfect opportunity to see him married, and fast.

“Why won’t you look? She’s just over there.” Celia nodded in Lady Alicia’s direction again, yet the Duke didn’t take his eyes off her. “She’s really pretty.”

“Is she now?” He sounded uninterested.

She was shocked—she’d been so certain that her news would pique his interest.

“Look!”

“I do not care what my bride looks like.”

“Just as long as she has a good dowry, right?” Celia challenged.

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