Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

T he music for the next dance began.

Celia didn’t know what to do as the Duke of Hardbridge tied her dance card back around her wrist. He was surprisingly gentle with the ribbon, the material just caressing her skin.

“The music began, lass,” he said, his voice as deep as she remembered it being that first night by the lake.

She nodded slowly. He held out his hand to her, and Celia took it woodenly.

She knew a gentleman somewhere would be irked, but what else was she supposed to do? She could make a scene. As she was known for being bold and reckless, it probably wouldn’t harm her reputation, but for some reason… she didn’t.

She wanted to know how well the brutish-looking Highland Duke could dance.

They took their places in the middle of the dance floor as it became clear what sort of dance it was.

A waltz.

They bowed and curtsied to one another, with Celia very aware of the way the Duke watched her as he bowed. His eyes never left her gown.

As the music grew in speed, he stepped toward her, offering her his hand. Even before she had taken it, his other hand landed on her waist, drawing her forward.

There was something in the firmness of his touch that made her take his hand that little bit quicker.

He led with determination and clear precision, his eyes never leaving hers as he spun them around the dance floor.

“If we are to spend all evening dancing, we must at least talk,” she murmured to him, her voice drowned out by the music.

“Ye are not a fan of silence?”

“Not when you are staring at me like that, no.”

“And here I thought ye rather liked the way I looked at ye, lass.” His hand slid further across her waist and onto her back.

For a second, she could not think of what to say in reply. She thought only of that touch and the way he moved his hand to pull her nearer to his body. She now had to crane her neck to meet his gaze.

“Aye, at least ye don’t deny it.” He chuckled.

“I am truly beginning to hate you.”

“Aye, I can tell that too, lass.” He bent an inch toward her as he directed her around another couple, avoiding a collision. “That’s why ye closed yer eyes the other night, wasn’t it? When ye and I nearly?—”

“Enough.” She leaned a little back from him. “Lesson one if you are going to catch a wife from the ton, Your Grace—do not cross the boundaries of intimacy before you are married.”

“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.

Then the music came to a stop.

The Duke halted their movements, though he didn’t release her right away. Celia feared that she was rather too obviously reluctant to let go of him too, her fingers trailing over his shoulder and across his palm.

All at once, they both moved fast, bowing and curtseying as the others in the room did.

“Meet me on the terrace,” the Duke said as he stood straight.

“I do not follow any man’s orders,” Celia insisted, jutting her chin.

“Then do it out of your own curiosity.”

With those final words, he turned on his heel and left her there.

Celia found she could suddenly breathe deeply again. She turned on the spot, looking around her, but everyone else in the room was too busy with their own business to have noticed where the Duke of Hardbridge had gone. Even her sister was deep in conversation with Xander.

Celia checked one more time, but when no one looked her way, she crept toward the door that led out to the terrace.

It would hardly be the first time I met a man in private.

Though that’s all it had ever been. She reminded herself of this as she slipped out the door. She might be rebellious, but she wasn’t scandalous, and she wasn’t about to lose her common sense now.

As she stepped out onto the terrace, she found him standing in the very middle, waiting for her, his arms folded in such a way that his strong muscles were obvious through the shirt sleeves.

Goddammit, why does he always have to stand in such a way that makes me go weak at the knees?

She shut the door behind her, not wanting anyone to witness their conversation. Maybe he thought she came out of curiosity, but she had come for a fight.

“What are you doing?” she said, approaching him but being careful to keep at least a yard between them. “You asked for my help, and now you dismiss my suggestion like that? You wouldn’t even look at Lady Alicia.”

He didn’t answer but raised his eyebrows again, half his face bathed in the orange candlelight filtering out of the ballroom windows, the other half shrouded in darkness.

At that moment, she was willing to say anything to hear that deep voice again, provoke him, belittle him, enrage him, just as long as he kept looking at her like that and spoke in that honeyed baritone.

“And you can’t ruin my dance card like that.”

She took another tiny step toward him, still keeping some distance between them but standing close enough to make sure she had his full attention.

“All those men…” he spoke at last, prompting her to inhale sharply. “Ye really want to dance with them? Do ye enjoy dancing with them, sweetheart?”

“That’s… that’s beside the point,” she stammered. “And I told you to stop calling me that.”

“What? Sweetheart?” he whispered, that deep voice enveloping her as he leaned toward her tauntingly.

“Yes. Stop it.”

“Why dance with them? Ye evidently don’t enjoy it. Ye just avoided the question.” He gestured toward her. “So, why do it?”

“Because it’s expected. It’s what men think they can do, isn’t it?”

“Do what?”

“They order us around and expect us to say yes and do as they want. If I don’t want to embarrass my mother completely with my rebellion, then I might as well follow a man’s wishes and dance with him. He won’t be making me follow any other orders,” she said simply, surprised at just how honest she was with him.

“Oh, sweetheart, it’s not really about that, is it?” He actually smiled. The sight of it was infuriating.

“I said, don’t call me that,” she growled at him.

“I don’t think the problem is someone telling you what to do. I think the problem…” He paused and stepped toward her.

She was not prepared for his touch, but neither did she stop it.

His hand slid around her waist, and she inhaled sharply.

“The problem…” He paused again, making her wait on tenterhooks for what he was going to say. “… is that no one has given ye a reason to obey them, have they?”

“You arrogant?—”

“Want that reason, lass?”

“Enough!” she protested, but he was leaning toward her again, that smile curving his lips.

“One taste, one reason…”

“I hate you.”

“No, ye don’t. Sweetheart.”

He was too close now. It was too much to refuse. She wanted to hate him, but she couldn’t. When his hand slipped down to her hip and drew her forward, something broke between them.

He moved his lips toward her own, but she didn’t pull back. When he kissed her, she rose on her tiptoes, ready and waiting to feel his lips on her own.