I Spy a Duke Read Online Free PDF

kicking up gravel.
    She made the mistake of meeting Abermont’s gaze after the lad’s swift departure. All rational thought departed. Instead, she wanted to run her hand up the smooth superfine of his coat to ascertain if his arms were truly as muscular as they looked.  
    “Miss Loren,” he said again, and in that moment she simply wanted to hear him say her name, over and over again.  
    She took another deep breath and regretted it. The air around them became charged, somehow thick with the very scent of him, pine and leather. He stepped toward her. Then again. He was so close to her now she could see the individual flecks of gray in his eyes. His buckskin breeches and black coat complemented his strong, athletic physique, and she could not help but remember all the times she’d watched him play tennis from the window in the nursery. Heavens, his broad shoulders filled out his coat far too well.  
    She swallowed. If she reached out her hand, her palm would rest easily on his chest. How she wanted to know if his muscles underneath the silk of his waistcoat would feel as hard as she’d always imagined.  
    “I was just—” No, that wasn’t right. Nothing was right when he stood here like this. It was all highly improper.  
    She stepped back from him, willing her capricious heart to stop pounding so swiftly. She should say something. Break the tension. Last night, she’d had a clear objective. Bandage his hand. Get information. He’d seemed to respond to the woman who knew how to take charge of a situation. The same woman she’d been when Evan was alive. Competent. Capable. Fierce.
    Blast it all, she could be that woman again.  
    “Good afternoon, Your Grace.” There. She’d managed to keep her voice level. That was something, at least.
    “I saw you outside from the window in my office. I wanted to thank you for bandaging my hand last night.” He held up his hand, showing her that the wound was but a scratch now.  
    “It was no trouble at all.” Her brows wrinkled as she examined his hand. “Just as I thought. The cut wasn’t deep, so it should heal up nicely.”
    “Thanks to your expert bandaging. Shall we take a walk?” He extended his arm to her, motioning to the path in front of them.
    Her uncle had always said not to refuse dukes, but Uncle Timothy had spent a large part of his adult life thoroughly foxed, so Vivian didn’t trust his opinion. How could she possibly focus when she was touching Abermont? When he stared at her so, as though his attention was completely upon her—as though they were the only two people in this garden, in this house, in this world.  
    But it was not as if they were truly alone. The estate buzzed with activity. A few paces to the right, a gardener tended to the rose bushes, while another pruned the trees. Everywhere she turned, someone else was near. Those were fears for nonsensical gels, not ape leaders like her.
    She accepted his arm, her gloved fingertips barely brushing against the sleeve of his coat. A minimal touch that should not have resonated through her body as it did. Dash him and his infuriatingly good looks, the likes of which could make a woman on the cusp of spinsterhood believe in flights of fancy again.
    Abermont slowed his ground-devouring strides to match hers. “I trust you are well today, Miss Loren?”  
    The duke had asked her this very same question at least twenty times in the past, whenever she saw him in the nursery. Before, she’d wondered if he really cared about her response.  
    This time, however, was different. His head tilted toward hers. His tone lacked distance; he spoke to her as though she were his peer. Maybe last night had begun a new bond between them, one forged in the sad kinship of mutual grief. Fitting, when the loss of Evan was one of the few things she’d been honest about in the last six months.
    “I am well enough,” she said. Though the emotional quality of her life left something to be desired, she had ample