Page 44 of A Scandalous Kind of Duke

Yet barely four strides later, the youth was once more trotting at his side. Again Leo stopped, rested both hands on his walking stick, and sighed.

Macey released a nervous laugh. “Honestly, Your Grace, I was walking home too, and our paths are the same…”

Leo said nothing.

“But I’ll just, er, pause here a moment, shall I? And maybe, uh, choose a different route?”

“Good lad.”

Leo kept walking, mercifully free of hangers-on. Unfair to judge the boy so harshly, given his own mistakes at that age. He still carried those mistakes with him. Hence his embarrassing overreaction with Juno the day before.

He had been unkind to her, unnecessarily so, driven by his panicky, youthful fear that desiring her would mean losing his head over her again. An apology was in order. Surely it would do no harm. A five-minute call to apologize and then—

Oh, how right she had felt in his arms, how perfect her mouth had tasted under his and the warmth of her skin under his hand—

He smacked a gatepost with his walking stick, as if bludgeoning the memory. This was precisely the kind of temptation he had sought to avoid by insulting her and turning her against him.

Calling on her would be a mistake, he reminded himself, as his legs carried him onto the square where his house lay, and he would make no more mistakes because he would never see Juno again.

Only to see her coming down the stairs from Lord Renshaw’s front door.

Leo stopped short.

Not possible.

There was no way the female figure in the plum-colored pelisse and straw bonnet could be Juno. It must be some other woman, who just happened to have a similar figure, and similar hand gestures, and a similar way of moving. And a companion who was very similar to Juno’s lodger, housekeeper, and sometime chaperone, Mrs. Kegworth.

Sainted stitches. First the dream, then this. Juno could have no earthly reason to set foot in this part of town, let alone visit Lord Renshaw, of all people.

Until the woman turned his way. She, too, stopped short. Shock rippled through him, galvanized by wonder, panic, rage, delight.

“Juno,” he breathed. She would smile at him, warm and welcoming, and he would toss her over his shoulder and haul her up to his bedchamber, and there they would laugh and chat and make love until the rest of the world disappeared.

He wanted her. He wanted Juno Bell as he wanted nothing else, and a thousand cold baths and hard exercise and dull breakfasts would never make that wanting stop.

CHAPTER13

Juno had arrived at Lord Renshaw’s house with renewed optimism.

Sometime during the previous night’s diversions, between playing parlor games and dancing a reel, a simple plan had formed: She would seek permission to assess whether her Pandora painting was ready for varnishing, and hope to deal with a bored housemaid who neither knew nor cared that the painting would not need varnishing for months.

With good cheer, she had gathered up Mrs. Kegworth and climbed into a hackney cab for the journey across London, fortunate to get a driver who knew on which grand, elegant square Lord Renshaw lived.

Only for her plan to fall apart with a single poke from the earl’s secretary.

“If someone were here to vouch for you, Miss Bell, it might be a different matter,” Renshaw’s man repeated, not unkindly. “But I cannot allow a pair of strange women to enter his lordship’s house to inspect a valuable piece of art without proof that you are, indeed, who you say you are. If Mr. or Mrs. Prescott had accompanied you, or even Sir Gordon or Lady Bell…”

Bother and blast. The man was being courteous, and not at all unreasonable. Reluctantly, Juno admitted defeat. She was just taking her leave when an elderly man entered and said, in affable tones, “There you are, Eccles. Who’s our guest?”

Juno’s stomach sank. It was the earl himself.

“This woman says you bought her painting from Mr. Prescott yesterday,” said the man called Eccles.

“Ah, yes.Pandora Trapping Hope.” Lord Renshaw smiled pleasantly at Juno. “An excellent piece, excellent. Recommended by Prescott himself, you know.Andby an English artist. Do you know the artist, young lady?”

“I am the artist, my lord.”

Mr. Eccles said, “This is Miss Juno Bell. She is niece to Sir Gordon Bell.”

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