The Devilish Duke Read Online Free PDF

he said. “Because I was better than Tewksbury.”
    She poked at his chest. “It was more than that.”
    “Well enough. I was much better than Tewksbury.”
    “You’re being silly.”
    “Perhaps.” His expression grew solemn, and he smoothed her hair away from her face. All the while, he watched the progress of his fingers, avoiding her gaze. “Let’s start with my first wife.”
    “Was she very beautiful?”
    “Ah, Louisa,” he said. “She was the very image of a duchess. Perfect in every way.”
    Quite in contrast to Rosalind. She might be on the path to being a wife, especially when it felt so good to step into his embrace. She still had to learn to act as his duchess.
    “She could speak three languages, play the piano, draw. She knew everyone’s station and exactly how they should be treated. She ran this place better than Buckingham Palace,” he said. “We only had one problem.”
    “She didn’t give you an heir.”
    “That was a small part of it.” He took a breath. “She hated the marital act. Absolutely loathed it. She couldn’t bear to have me touch her.”
    “How could that be?”
    “You couldn’t understand, and that’s the beauty of you.” The light in his blue eyes softened as he studied her face, drawing a knuckle along her jawline. “I don’t know what perverted her. Women are taught such nonsense about their own bodies.”
    She had to smile inwardly at that. Whatever she’d learned about the sins of physical intimacy, he’d untaught her since the afternoon of their wedding day.
    “Louisa accepted that she had to give me an heir, so she surrendered herself to me as a virgin sacrifice,” he said. “Deflowering her was pure hell.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “For both of you.”
    “She did her duty, though. She lay there like a block of stone as I slaked my lust inside her.”
    “That’s terrible,” Rosalind said. “She couldn’t have called it that.”
    “Something her mother told her. Heaven help her father.”
    “So, what happened?”
    “She conceived finally. After that, I never had to touch her again.”
    Rosalind stood, watching him. By now, she knew him as intimately as one could another human being, and yet she didn’t know him at all. How odd that he could be so familiar and so foreign at once. His scent surrounded her as she slept. She sensed every time he came into a room. And yet, what could she understand of what went on behind those blue eyes?
    “She died in childbirth. The child only survived for a few days after,” he said.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “I wasn’t. It was a girl. I would have had to start all over.”
    “You can’t mean that.”
    “I do. Or at least, I did at the time. I was so angry at everything and everyone.” His large hands still on her hips, he shook her lightly. “So, I determined I’d never have another frigid wife. And that brought me you.”
    “Me?” She stared at him in wonder. “I hadn’t had anything more than a few kisses.”
    “The way you walked gave your passionate nature away.”
    “The way I walked?” she repeated. “How could that tell you anything?”
    “I have a friend who’s a terrible rake.”
    She lifted a brow. “A friend?”
    “You doubt me, little wife?” he said. “His name is Thornton. I was at school with him.”
    “And what did your friend Thornton, the rake, tell you?”
    “Thornton always used to say that you could tell by a woman’s walk if she liked to fuck.”
    “Fallon!”
    “Don’t be shy. That’s what we do.” He kissed her again, and this time he let his mouth linger on hers for a moment. When he pulled away, his eyes had a wicked twinkle to them. “As I rode near your house or in your village, I’d watch your energetic stride. I’d imagine all that energy in my bed, and I’d get hard sitting on my horse.”
    “You couldn’t have.” And yet, he certainly could have. She’d felt his gaze on her more than once, even though he’d look away if she lifted her chin