Page 29 of The Devil's Accidental Duchess
Her persistence was not welcome, least of all tonight.
When he did not immediately respond, she added in haste, “But of course, I understand what we both agreed on. I know it was temporary until we both felt better. Still, that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy one another whenever the mood strikes.” She smiled. “I am in such a mood tonight.”
“Mary,” he said in a harried, tight voice, “Iam not. What we enjoyed together was a fine thing, a timely thing, but youmustforget it.”
“Your Grace, that will be hardto do,” she murmured, biting her lip, stilltrying to seduce him despite his rejection.
He supposed he should have known better than to take her word for it, when they were briefly lovers, that she would go back to the way things were without protest.
As she moved her hand to the fastening of his trousers, he caught her wrist and met her sultry gaze with a cold, hard stare.
“I am grateful to you for your companionship during a troublesome time, Mary, but do not test me,” he warned. “It would be best if you kept your distance from now on.”
He had tried to reason with her before, and ordinarily it worked, but there was something different about her tonight. A greater determination. A sense that she did not want to take ‘no’ for an answer.
She gave him a wounded look. “Your Grace, if I?—”
He raised his hand, cutting her off. He was running out of the patience required to indulge her. “It is late, and the night is cold. You should head back to your room. And donotthink to come knocking on my door again.”
It was not his intention to be unkind, but he did not want this to become a problem. Theirs had been an affair of venting frustrations and vexations, a means to unburden themselves of unwelcome anger and grief, channeling it into passion instead of something worse.
He was beginning to wish he had never invited her in when she had knocked on his study door with an indecent proposal shortly after his return from war, shortly before his father was put in the ground where he belonged.
She had been mourning a broken engagement. He had been tormented by his father’s ghost. Two angry souls seeking solace in each other, both agreeing that it would just be for a short while.
Mary smiled tightly. “As you wish, Your Grace. I wouldn’t wish to be an inconvenience.”
She bobbed a curtsy and turned away, her footfalls heavy with dejection.
Philip sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. What was wrong with him tonight? A woman was practically offering herself to him on a silver platter, and he felt absolutely nothing,save for maybe some mild frustration, and not of the titillating kind.
But you had no such problems with Lady Selina earlier,the voice in his head taunted him.You wanted nothing more than to pin her to the wall and devour her.
He groaned and ran his hand over his face to brutally scrub away his filthy thoughts. Drag his mind from the gutter, if needed.
None of it worked.
He wanted her just as much as he did when he had her all but cornered against the glass wall, her warmth searing him like the sun beating down on the desert. Mary’s advances might have dampened his lust, but it was back to roaring as soon as his thoughts turned to Selina.
He needed to get away from this place. Get away fromher. If only for his sanity.
The fearsome Duke of Ashbrook, Rakehell of the Ton and Defiler of Innocents, running from a young lady barely out of the schoolroom.
Entire ballrooms all across London would be in shock if they heard of it. Gambling halls would erupt in collective laughter. Zachary would never let him hear the end of it.
And through it all, his father must now be spinning in his grave upon learning that his only son was intent on marrying the daughter of his archnemesis, if only to spite him well into the afterlife.
Misery loved company, and if Philip could make his father any more miserable than he most probably was in hell, then he was more than up to the task.
A knock at the door interrupted Selina’s attempt to see how long she could hold her breath in a basin of ice-cold water. An attempt that had nothing to do with trying to cool her duke-induced fever.
“Who is it?” she asked tremulously.
Not him. Anyone but him.
“It’s me,” came Lizzy’s marginally more welcome voice.
“Just a second!” Selina grabbed a cloth and patted her half-numb face. “Come in!”
