Under A Duke's Hand Read Online Free PDF Page A

looked up and his eyes bored into hers. He
was so close she could smell the scent of his shaving soap and
starched linen, but all she could think of was the meadow, the
smell of the flowers, and the lake, and his lips upon hers. She
lowered her gaze and sank into a curtsy. Please, oh, please
don’t say anything. Humiliation made her flush with agonizing
heat.
    She prayed everyone would think it
nervousness, or shyness. Must he stare at her so? He was every bit
as guilty as she. He was the one who had asked to sketch her, and
then pulled her into his lap in that carelessly flirtatious manner.
Oh yes, she was aware what sort of man he was, and he knew it.
    But he knew her secrets too. God help her,
she had spouted lies and behaved like a common harlot, even
allowing him to spank her bare bottom. Would she be the ruination
of all her father’s plans? Would the duke reject her? She thought
she might faint, waiting to hear his next words. I don’t think I
want her after all , or some other more subtle and political
words that would invalidate their betrothal. It seemed an hour
before he raised her from her curtsy and released her hand.
    Then he smiled at her, a smile that said a
thousand things. A smile that said no, I won’t tell , at the
same time it said, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
    And oh, she was mortally ashamed.

    * * * * *
     
    Aidan offered Miss Guinevere Vaughn his arm
as Lord Lisburne invited the company in to dinner, the company
being the brawny old war hero and his seven hulking, dark-haired
sons with their plump country wives. And Rose, of course, his
luscious village maiden.
    She trembled, perhaps afraid of some
reprisal, even though he was the one who had seduced her in the
meadow. Who had preyed upon her, to put a finer point on it. He was
ashamed to have done so, now that he knew who she was, then more
ashamed that he thought it all right to do such things to a nobody
with pretty hair and an alluring figure, but not all right to do to
his future wife.
    I’m a good girl , she had cried. Thank
God he’d taken her at her word, and not tupped her on the grass the
way he’d wanted to. When he glanced down, he could still see the
blush upon her chest and the tops of her breasts.
    Don’t gawk at her breasts, you monster.
    Aidan had behaved monstrously toward her in
that meadow. He knew it, but it was one of those things a duke was
privileged enough to forget, unless the victim in question turned
out to be one’s future wife. She had only to say a word of their
illicit dalliance, and he’d be skewered into a thousand pieces by
her hoary father and brothers for insulting her honor.
    “They mustn’t know,” he said to her in a
quiet voice.
    She raised her head. Her gaze met his, those
otherworldly green eyes that had haunted his dreams the night
before. “Why didn’t you say who you were?” she asked in her musical
Welsh accent. “Why didn’t you tell me your real name?”
    “Why didn’t you tell me your real
name?” he retorted. “And why were you wandering about that
meadow?”
    “I wasn’t ‘wandering about.’ I went there for
solitude and privacy. You’re the one who intruded on my peace, and
accosted me.”
    “I hardly accosted you. You behaved like a
trollop.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “If I did, then so did
you.”
    Oh, to spank this Guinevere Vaughn. A real
spanking, not the playful smacks he’d dealt her in the meadow. She
deserved it. She had been unfaithful to him...with him... Which,
come to think of it, made everything rather difficult to sort out.
He had no moral high ground from which to reproach her, but he did
so anyway.
    “I hope it’s not your general habit to dress
as a servant and go about flirting with strange men,” he said.
    Her mouth fell open. “I wasn’t dressed like a
servant. Those were my riding clothes.”
    “You don’t mean to tell me you weren’t in
disguise? Why, that ill-fitting bonnet, and that decrepit
horse—”
    “That horse is beloved to