Page 45 of Tamed By her Duke

Things got, Grace would later admit, a bit…messy from there.

“What are ye doing, Grace?” Caleb growled at her when the merchant and his wife finally left them, no doubt to tell someone else about the wonders of wool. From the way she was still pressed against him, she could feel the way his voice made all of him rumble, the way it made arousal shoot through her.

“Me?” she said, drawing back just enough so that she could press her hand to her chest…which was to say, to her decolletage. He was so much taller than her that he had a direct view down her neckline from this angle. The muscles in his arm tensed in a way Grace found highly intriguing.

“I’m not doing anything,” she insisted in a decidedly breathy voice, one that, on its own, would have been enough to risk her reputation in a London ballroom.

Her reputation, she realized with a flash of delight, was something she no longer needed to fret over.

Oh, very well—she couldn’t go dancing naked in the woods or jump up on the tables and start flinging insults. Some things were bad form everywhere, obviously, and she had no desire to make a fool of herself.

But flirting a bit dangerously with her husband? That she could do—and nobody would run off to the gossip rags about it. Indeed, she could see at least three other married couples—including the Fenwicks, bless them—leaning toward one another with increasingly amorous glances as the night went on and the wine flowed.

No, none of these people would care if Grace made eyes at Caleb.

Nobody, alas, except for Caleb himself.

And her husband gave as good as he got. When they sat at their places of honor at the front banquet table, while the room buzzed with happy conversation around them, Caleb hooked his boot around the back of her calf, pulling it toward him just enough that the side of his leg pressed warm and hard into hers.

“I’m so sorry,” Grace said to Mrs. Moody, a local woman with whom she’d been conversing. “I didn’t catch that.” She hoped the woman took her flushed cheeks as due to the heat of the room.

Grace retaliated by dropping her napkin after the second course—directly into her husband’s lap. Quick as a snake, she snatched the fabric back, not quite touching him, but letting the possibility of that touch remain an implication between them.

“I do beg your pardon,” she said sweetly.

This time, Caleb drained his drink.

He waited until her back was turned, then ran a sly finger over her hip. It was Grace’s turn to need more punch after that.

By the time the meal was being cleared away and the dancing was getting ready to begin, Grace’s head was swimming pleasantly, both with the constant reminder of her husband’s proximity and the strength of that wonderful punch. She felt lighter and more cheerful than she had in ages, buoyed by the exuberant, festive energy in the air.

Just as the musicians—a quartet who looked to be mostly local men, not the polished professionals one saw in London ballrooms—struck the first notes of a country reel, Caleb clamped an arm around Grace’s arm and dragged her out a back door.

There was, Grace hated to admit, one flicker of panic as old memories threatened to resurface. But then her husband was there, big, undeniable, pressing her against the wall.

“Ye’re playin’ a dangerous game here,leannan,” he told her. One of his broad thighs pressed between hers, pinning her with her skirts.

She wiggled experimentally against him and liked the results.

“I want to dance,” she told him brightly, faintly surprised to find that it was true. She’d loved dancing, once upon a time, but her recent experiences in London had left her more of a wallflower than anything else.

Calebtsked at her.

“Ah, well, perhaps ye should have thought of that,” he chided, the note of mockery oddly appealing. “For ye’ve been buildin’ yerself up a right debt all evenin’, and I’ve decided now is time for ye to pay it.”

Was she imagining it, or had his brogue grown thicker? She wiggled some more, then whimpered a bit at the sensation.

“What about you?” she demanded, struggling to maintain her pert façade. “Have you not the same debt?”

She expected him to deny it.

“Aye, that too,” he agreed. And then he took her mouth like it was indeed something he was owed.

If Caleb was playing the marauder, then Grace was the willing maiden, the one who put up a show of resistance merely for the sport of it.

“We shouldn’t,” she whined playfully between kisses, even as her hands clutched desperately at his collar. “Someone could see.”

“Hm.” He kissed his way down her throat, the hint of stubble that was already starting to grow back in scraping pleasantly against sensitive skin. “Did ye nae think someone might’ve seen when ye gave me a glimpse straight down yer frock?”

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