One Dance with a Duke Read Online Free PDF Page B

easily. Their boots landed in the flowerbed with a soft squish before they rounded the hedge and disappeared the same way they’d come. Morland went next, stepping over the rail one long leg at a time.
    He directed Amelia to sit on the balustrade, then to swing her legs across. She did so, in rather ungainly fashion. A fold of her gown became tangled in the closure of her slipper, and that made for some seconds’ delay. At last freed, she prepared to slide down from the rail. It was only a few feet to the ground.
    The duke stopped her.
    “Allow me,” he said, placing his hands about her waist. “It’s muddy here.”
    At her nod of assent, Amelia found herself in those powerful arms for the second time that evening. Lifted effortlessly from the balustrade, swung over the flowerbed, and deposited on the raked gravel path. Gently, this time. Surely she was reading far too much into it, but she couldn’t help but imagine he was making amends. Offering an unspoken apology for his brutish behavior in the ballroom.
    “Oh,” she said, swaying a bit as he released her. “Thank you.”
    “Thank you,” he replied, laying a hand to the coat pocket where he’d placed her handkerchief. “For earlier.”
    “We needn’t speak of it. Are you well?”
    “Yes.”
    Together they followed the path the other men had taken, walking alongside one another. He did not offer his arm. He did, however, point out a toad in the path an instant before she would have stepped on it.
    As they rounded the front corner of the house and approached the paved driveway where the carriages and drivers sat waiting, he spoke once again. “What does it stand for, the C?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Your initial.” He patted his pocket again.
    “Oh.” Understanding dawned. “Claire. It stands for Claire. Amelia Claire.”
    He nodded and walked on.
    Amelia purposely fell behind.
    Ninny, ninny
. They passed a piece of bronze statuary, and Amelia longed to bash her head against it. What an absolute muffin she was. He’d asked her a question once. She had to answer it
three times?
“Claire,” shemimicked quietly, adopting the voice of a parrot. “It stands for Claire. Amelia Claire.”
    She recognized, and rued, the giddy flutter in her belly: infatuation. It could not have happened at a worse time. Nothing good could come of it. And of all the gentlemen in London, this one? She hadn’t been exaggerating in the ballroom, when she’d told him he danced divinely and was undeniably handsome. Nor when she’d confessed an unchaste longing to touch his dark, curling hair. And he really did lift the hairs on her neck. True, all of it true.
    He’s horrid
, she silently told herself.
Loutish, arrogant, insufferable! He refused to release Jack from debt. He insulted you. He bodily hauled you from a ballroom and then offered you money to just please go away! And for heaven’s sake, you are on your way to tell Lily Chatwick her twin brother is dead. You are a depraved, deranged woman, Amelia Claire-Claire-Claire d’Orsay!
    It was just … something about those few unrehearsed moments, when a strange rustling in the hedge made them forget debts and insults and act on instinct alone. And she’d rushed to his side with her treasured handkerchief, and he’d put his body between her and the unknown. She could not escape the feeling that they’d formed an unspoken alliance and were now acting as a team.
    He touched a hand to his coat pocket again. He kept doing that. And every time he did, her knees went weak.
    Oh, Lord.
    They reached the carriage. It was an impressive conveyance. Jet-black, glossy, emblazoned with the Morland ducal crest, and drawn by a team of four perfectly matched black horses.
    The duke helped her in, closing one of his hands about her fingers and placing the other against the small of her back. Bellamy and Ashworth had already situatedthemselves on the rear-facing seat, leaving Amelia and Morland to share the front-facing