In the Bed of a Duke Read Online Free PDF Page B

her eyes. He forced himself to focus on what had first started the clash between them.
    “What are you doing with MacKenna?” he repeated, this time, keeping his voice civil.
    “That’s my business,” she replied, equally cold, her fist still holding that damn knitting needle as if she would come at him.
    “Miss Cameron, I’m not accustomed to people not answering questions when I ask them.”
    “You can go to the devil,” she said.
    She was so graceful in her curse that instead of being offended, Phillip caught himself chuckling. “It seems I already have,” he admitted, reaching for his beaver hat, only to discover it had been crushed during their tussle. He slapped it into shape, put it on his head, and pulled the wide brim low over his eyes. It was an effective way to shut her out.
    So what if he’d wanted to bed her? He stretched out his legs, uncaring if he took up all the foot room in the coach. He needed sleep. Hours ago he’d stopped in an inn to snatch anap, but his busy mind had prevented him from relaxing. However, the swaying of the coach and a sense that he was closer to his destiny eased his fevered brain a bit.
    As he had done a hundred times, perhaps thousands since he’d started this trip, Phillip reached inside his coat and touched Nanny Frye’s letter. He needed the physical reminder of why he was making the journey. He was tempted to unfold it and read it again. He knew the words by heart, only now, after repeated readings and his being closer to his goal, they took on legitimacy.
    He rode in MacKenna’s coach with a woman who had just cause to hate him. Could it be possible that she knew the contents of the letter? That she was in league with the devil?
    Phillip knew Miss Cameron still watched him closely. He could feel her scrutiny. Good. He wanted her wary of him.
    As for him, the answers would come soon enough. They were both traveling the same road. Right now, he needed a few moments’ sleep.
    But God help her if she was part of the machinations behind this letter.
     
    The last thing Charlotte expected the duke to do was fall asleep in a blink.
    He was snoring after a feel, a pat, and a jolly good kiss.
    Whereas she was tense, angry, and ready for a fight. If his goal had to been to completely humiliate her, he’d met it.
    Hot tears burned her eyes. She forced them back. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Besides, if she hadn’t let herself cry over Thomas all those years ago when she’d been younger and more innocent, she wouldn’t do so now over this arrogant, selfish, spiteful worm of a duke.
    She was glad Miranda had jilted him.
    And to think she herself had once dreamed of marrying a duke. She’d imagined them to be the noblest of the noble.
    Of course, that was before she knew how the ton treated those it felt were inferior. Growing up, listening to her mother’s stories of her “come out” and the parties she attended, Charlotte had believed there was no greater place on earth than London.
    Now, she knew differently. The ton looked down their noses at her, and always would. They laughed at her accent, her ingenuousness, and every one of her family’s misfortunes.
    Her one saving grace, as far as she was concerned, had been that she’d stood up to Colster. All of London, of England, bowed and scraped to him, but she had faced him in front of everyoneof importance. No matter what they said about her, she’d reclaimed a bit of her own.
    She wasn’t so confident of that now. Convinced he truly slept, she picked up her knitting bag from the floor where it had fallen and started to put the needle back. Her hand shook…but not from fear, or even from anger.
    No, what unsettled her was his kiss. It had shaken her to her core. Her legs still felt weak and, in the deepest, most secret female recesses of her body, something had been awakened. Something that she’d not known had existed.
    That wasn’t true. From the first moment she’d laid eyes