Page 68 of If the Duke Demands

She shook her head at his naïveté. “Your father was a duke. Did he outrank your mother?”

He paused, the negative answer on the tip of his tongue. Then he admitted the truth with a lift of his brow. “Touché.”

When he reached to unbutton his waistcoat, she sat up. The cashmere throw slipped to the floor at her feet. “Do you need Barlow to undress you? Should I wait in another room—”

“No.” He held her gaze, then his shoulders slumped as the weight of the title, the fortune, and the family’s reputation slid away and left him nothing more than a man beneath her soft eyes, if only for the night. At that moment, he knew exactly what she meant earlier at the lecture about wanting to be with only the man and not the duke. He answered gently, “I want you right here.”

Slowly, she sat back and watched as he unbuttoned his waistcoat, her eyes following each movement of his fingers. His heart raced beneath her close scrutiny as his blood began to heat. Who knew simply letting a woman watch him undress could be as much fun as undressing her? But that was Miranda’s doing, all right. The woman had inverted his world.

“I didn’t expect to see you tonight,” he admitted quietly as he slipped off the waistcoat.

“I didn’t expect to be here, either. But I couldn’t settle down and sleep. I kept thinking about you and what I said to you tonight at the lecture—I regret it.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for.” He shouldn’t have surprised her at the lecture like that. But he couldn’t help himself. As long as there was a possibility that she would say yes to being with him tonight, he’d had to try.

And thankfully, he’d succeeded.

“I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep,” she continued, “unless I spoke to you tonight to tell you that.”

He fought down the smile of pleasure that threatened at his lips. “Have you been waiting here long?” He pulled loose the linen shirt tucked into his trousers. “Looking like that.”

His gaze roamed over her, enjoying the deliciously comfortable and oddly arousing sight of her. He should have been angry to find her here wearing her nightgown. Had she been wearing a regular muslin dress, he could have managed some kind of excuse for her presence if they were found together. But in that—scandalous. Yet he grinned, finding a new appreciation for her sense of impropriety.

“Two hours,” she answered.

Guilt tightened his gut as he pulled the shirt off over his head. “If I had known, I would have returned sooner.” Hell, he never would have left.

“It’s all right,” she whispered, her eyes shamelessly drinking in his bare chest and the flat ridges of his stomach. “It gave me time to read.” She pushed the glasses into place on her nose in order to see him better.

He laughed at her eagerness, his chest warming with affection.

He approached her then, carefully removed her spectacles and set them on the fireplace mantel, placed both hands on the chair arms on either side of her, and leaned in for a soft kiss. Her lips parted beneath his with a welcoming sigh.

Home, he thought as contentment fell through him. She felt like home…

Pulling away, he sat on the floor at her feet and tugged off his boots, then leaned back against the chair, his shoulder resting against her leg, and closed his eyes. “That’s better,” he murmured when she reached down to brush her fingers through the hair at his temple.

“Which,” she whispered when he rested his head back against the chair cushion, “being undressed or me combing your hair?”

“Yes.” He turned his head and placed a kiss against her palm.

She laughed lightly, and the comfort of the soft sound soothed him. How had he managed these past two years without her? And dear God, what would he do without her once they returned to Islingham? Already the pain of separation ached in his bones. And his heart.

Leaning forward, she reached down to place her hands on his shoulders and massaged at the knots in his muscles. “Did you have a good time at Boodle’s?”

“No.” He hung his head forward to give her access to his shoulders, enjoying having her hands on him in even so innocent a touch. Her kneading fingers felt wonderful, and he knew he could easily grow used to such spoiling. “But Quinton and Robert had a marvelous time.” They still were, in fact. Quinn hadn’t lied. The way those two were carrying on tonight, they would be there until dawn.Good.

“That doesn’t surprise me.” She pressed her thumbs along the vertebrae in his neck and released the tension he carried there. “You’re so different from them, you always have been.” She lowered her head to bring her lips close to his ear, and a hot shiver of longing curled down his spine. “You were always the serious one, even as a boy. Even when I first met you, when you must have been fourteen or fifteen, you seemed so much older.” Her hands stilled on his back as she asked, “Why are you so different from your brothers?”

“Because someone had to keep those two from killing themselves.” He reached for her hand, drew it down over his shoulder, and kissed her fingertips.

When she didn’t laugh at his teasing, he tilted his head back to look up at her. Concern darkened her pretty face, and it pained him that she should be so worried about him. He didn’t dare let himself consider that her feelings for him might go beyond friendship. He couldn’t. Not without hating himself for never being able to return those affections.

“Because I was the firstborn,” he admitted, saying aloud to her what he’d never uttered to anyone else in his life, not even to his parents. Yet confiding in Miranda like this was easy, and with each word of his confession, his shoulders lightened. “Because I knew that I was the heir, that someday I would be responsible for the title, for Chestnut Hill and the estate, for my family’s well-being.” He reflected soberly, “If a man cares about his family and his reputation, the responsibility of all that changes him.”

He knew plenty of peers who cared nothing for their families nor the estates they owned. They were spoiled and arrogant men who spent their days wasting time on one frivolous pursuit after another and their nights whoring, drinking, and gambling away not only their fortunes but the inheritance of their progeny. He would never allow himself to be one of them.

“Everything he does, every decision he makes, it all has ramifications not just for himself but for those he loves. And the weight of that…” He shook his head, unable to articulate the heaviness that constantly plagued him and always would, the knot in his chest that never seemed to ease, the responsibility he felt not just for his family but every one of the villagers and tenant farmers on Trent land. Oddly enough, except when he was with Miranda. “It wears.”