Page 57 of If the Duke Demands

Miranda looked down solemnly into her chocolate. It wasn’t romance that had caught her tonight but a stodgy, old duke. One who proved to be not so stodgy nor old after all.

Her heart sank. The worst part—oh, the very worst part!—was that she couldn’t even blame her recklessness on simple lust, because it was being with Sebastian that had made it so wonderful. Being with an intelligent, witty, thoughtful man who for a few precious moments tonight had stopped being a duke and had simply been himself.

“So itwasa romantic encounter, then.” Caught up in the excitement of the secret, Josie set her chocolate aside. “And the man?” she pried without daring to name anyone, although Miranda could tell from the gleam in her eyes that she suspected Charles Downing. “Do you like him?”

“No,” Miranda denied quickly. “I mean, yes—no!” Oh, she simply couldn’t think straight! She groaned softly in frustrated confusion as she hung her head in her hand. “I don’t know.”

Josie sat forward on the edge of the settee and lowered her voice. “When you kissed him, did he make your toes curl?”

Oh, Sebastian did so much more than curl her toes! He’d set her entire body afire, in a way she was beginning to suspect no other man could have done. “Yes,” she admitted. Then, she added hesitatingly in a whisper, “I think…I might have curled his toes, too.”

Josie beamed. “Ah, so he likes you!”

“No.” Sadness flashed through her, adding to the confusion of emotions already swirling through her like a tempest. She wasn’t naïve enough to believe that he did. Not the way Josie meant. Because even after all they did tonight in the carriage, even though Sebastian admitted that he wanted her, he’d also been very clear that he would never let himself have her. Not the proper duke in search of his perfect duchess. But for one impossible moment tonight, when she was coming apart in his arms, she wished he could have been just a man.

“I see,” Josie murmured gently, a world of sisterly sympathy in those two words. She pressed gently, “Does he know how you feel about him?”

“Oh no!” She would be mortified if he found out! “I could never tell him.” Especially when she wasn’t certain herself exactly what she felt. And especially when she was certain that he would look on her with pity if she did.

“But how will he know if you don’t tell him?” With her eyes sparkling at the prospect of playing matchmaker, Josie shrugged casually. “And what do you have to lose?”

“My pride.” Miranda heaved out a deep sigh.

Josie smiled gently at her. “I don’t think—” The sound of the front door opening downstairs reached them, interrupting their conversation, and her smile brightened. “Thomas is home.”

Their private moment was over, and Josie rose gracefully to her feet, to be able to welcome her husband home. The look of love that flashed across her face at hearing her husband returning to her made Miranda’s heart ache fiercely with jealousy. Would she ever know that kind of deep love and affection? The kind of love in which her husband not only loved her but completed her?

Miranda set down her cup and moved to the door, excusing herself for the night. She wanted nothing more than to pull the covers over her head and not crawl out of bed until August.

“Miranda?” Josie called out to her to give her one last piece of sisterly advice. “If you really like this man, then you need to tell him how you feel. I know that showing your heart to another can be scary, but you shouldn’t pass up this opportunity. You need to ask yourself which you’d rather have—your pride or a chance at love?”

She thought of Sebastian and bit her lip. Which indeed?

CHAPTERELEVEN

With a groan of frustration, Sebastian punched angrily at his pillow and rolled onto his back to stare up at the high canopy of his bed.

Miranda Hodgkins…Christ.

He’d gone mad. That was the only explanation for what had happened in the carriage. The woman had frustrated him to the point that he’d ceased all rational thought and restraint, pushing him right to the snapping point. And beyond.

Somehow, when he wasn’t looking, Miranda had grown up and become a woman. A very ripe, delectable temptress who knew exactly how to drive him into a frenzy the way no other woman ever had. Yet what angered him the most, what still made his blood run hot thinking about the encounter even now hours later, was knowing how completely wrong for him she was but wanting her anyway. In every way. And not just physically.

Thatwas the part that stirred the most frustration inside him. Oh, she was pretty, all right, especially when she gave him that expression of innocent seduction when she bit her lip as she looked at him. But he’d been with women far more beautiful than Miranda, and none of them affected him the way she had. No, with Miranda it was more than physical attraction. She possessed a vitality and spirit that drew him, most likely because he had so little of that himself these days. When he was with her—when it was just the two of them together laughing or discussing poetry, debating politics, or simply walking silently together through the park—then he wasn’t the Duke of Trent. Then he was simply Sebastian. And he was happy.

He longed for that—to have all of her with him, in every way. Ways he simply couldn’t have as a duke. Including in his bed. And not just for one night.

Madness!

He rested his forearm over his eyes. Whatever caused this insanity—that unruly hair that couldn’t make up its mind whether to be red or blond, her laugh that always poured out of her at exactly the wrong moment, the way the stubborn gel stood up to him when most men had the good sense to be cowed, how she could infuriate him on the turn of a single word or make him laugh just as quickly—in the morning, he would put an end to it. They would come to an understanding. He would apologize; he would calmly explain that what happened between them could never happen again, that it had been a mistake—

A mistake?He laughed bitterly at himself. Wasn’t that how he’d gotten into this situation in the first place? Heaven only knew what would happen if he told her that a second time.

Even now as he lay staring into the darkness, the guilt gnawed at his gut. He’d been a cad, nearly ruining her—twice now, in fact—when he knew damned well that he could never marry her. He needed a suitable wife and duchess, one his father would have approved of. Certainly not the orphaned niece of a tenant farmer whom society would never accept. And that sent stabbing up inside him the worst guilt of all—because he knew his responsibility to his rank and to his family, knew that if he ruined her it would make it difficult for her to find a husband…yet selfishly he still wanted her and the happiness she could bring.

He was so tired of being Duke of Trent, so tired of the burdens he carried, so tired of wondering if he were living up to his father’s expectations. But when he was with Miranda, he could be himself. Not a peer whom everyone depended upon and whom everyone looked to for respectability, leadership, perfection…

But hewasTrent. Always would be. And there was no help for it.