Page 13 of The Devil's Accidental Duchess
“Oh, goodness! I thought we were going to get caught!” Lizzy threw her arms around Selina, nearly bowling her over in her excitement. “Oh, I am so happy! Absolutely elated!”
“And insane!” Selina looked at her friend incredulously. “Do you have any idea what all this means?”
“It means that you are about to become my sister!” Lizzy crowed gleefully. “We are going to be family!”
“Yes, but that means I have to marry your brother first!” Selina hissed in a voice low enough that the man in question would not hear.
Lizzy waved the remark away. “That is nothing. That is a mere practicality. This is a happy day, and I shall not let you convince me otherwise.”
She grabbed Selina and hugged her again, before she broke away to dance a little jig of excitement right there on the drive.
Selina rolled her eyes at her friend’s antics. Perhaps having a pistol pointed in her general direction had somehow addled Lizzy’s wits.
“That is what you get when you do not think your actions through,” a low, deep voice whispered into Selina’s ear, so soft it could have been the breeze.
Except that the breeze was not as warm. Nor did it send tingles down her spine to her toes, or make her want to melt like chocolate left out in the summer sun.
No, it was simply Philip St. Maur, the Duke of Ashbrook.
The man who was to become her husband.
Turn away, you idiot. Turn away before you do something absolutely stupid in front of your sister.
Philip took out his pocket watch and pretended to look at the time, making a show of being displeased by what he saw before he whirled around and headed for the front door.
He had just gotten himself a betrothed—and one who seemed to get along with his sister much too well for his liking. Lizzy was a handful enough on her own, but with a companion? They could unleash hell on earth.
And it was not just that, oh no. Philip might have trusted himself to handle one meek and miserable bride if, say, he had found himself in an arranged match, a thing of convenience. But this wayward bride was a different story. He found her much too attractive at first glance. Amusing at the second. And he had not yet explored what a third glance might evoke.
He shuddered to think what might become of him the more he made her acquaintance.
“Oof!”
He frowned as something soft and warm collided with his back. He turned around—instinctively, of course—to catch a flurry of skirts and a face that was turning a most becoming shade of pink. Selina’s body, flush against his, was enough to inspire the very devil in him.
It was almost impossible to rein in his wayward thoughts as he sought to hold her that little bit tighter, that little bit closer, until there was nothing but irksome fabric between them.
“Your Grace!” she cried.
Philip bit back a groan at the sound of that startled, feminine gasp. It did not help that he could feel the corresponding rise of her chest against him.
“Lady Selina,” he replied with a smirk.
Her cheeks shifted through the entire palette of pinks, light to dark, and he found each one lovelier than the last.
Control yourself!
What the hell was wrong with him? Was he tryingto cause himself more trouble?
She wiggled a bit more in his arms. “I think you may unhand me now, Your Grace.”
Did he really have to? He could keep her there for an indeterminate number of hours, really. She was his betrothed now, for all intents and purposes. Why, even her father had said that they should “get to know one another better,” and Philip had an idea or two.
But his sister was also eyeing them suspiciously, and Lizzy being suspicious never boded well for anyone. Him, particularly.
He released Selina with a sigh. “I suppose I must.”
“Yes, you must,” she responded, stumbling back a good couple of steps. “Why did you do that, Your Grace?”
