Bret did not let go of Miss Burns’s arm until they had put three full rooms between them and Marilla Chisholm. Only then did he turn to her and say, “Thank you.” And then, because once was not even remotely enough: “Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome,” she said, looking down at something in her hand.
“You brought a scone?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I was still hungry.”
His fault. But surely she’d forgive him.
She glanced toward the door through which they’d just come. “I think I may have left a trail of crumbs.”
“My deepest apologies,” Bret said, “but I—”
“There is no need to apologize,” Miss Burns said, “as long as you don’t mind if I finish eating while we’re standing here.”
“Please.”
She took a dainty little bite, then said, “I thought Marilla was going to attack you.”
“Is she always so . . .”
“Forward?”
A kinder version of the word he might have used. “Yes,” he said.
“No,” Miss Burns admitted. “But you’re a duke.” She looked up from her food, her eyes large and filled with the same amusement that played across her lips. “Sorry.”
“That I’m a duke?”
“It can’t be a good thing at times like this.”
He opened his mouth to say . . .
What?
His mouth hung open. What had he meant to say?
“Your Grace?” She looked at him curiously.
“You’re right,” he said. Because as lovely as it was to be a duke, and it was—really, what sort of idiot complained about money, power, and prestige?—it still had to be said, with Marilla Chisholm on the prowl, life as a stablehand was looking rather tempting.
“I’m sure most of the time it’s delightful,” she said, licking strawberry jam from her fingers. “Being a duke, I mean.”
He stared, unable to take his eyes from her mouth, from her lips, pink and full. And her tongue, darting out to capture every last bit of sticky-sweet jam.
Her tongue. Why was he staring at her tongue?
“You needn’t worry about me,” she said.
He blinked his way up from her mouth back to her eyes. “I beg your pardon?”
“Dangling after you,” she explained, sounding somewhat relieved to get it out in the open. “And I think you’re safe from Fiona as well.”
“Fiona?”
“The elder Miss Chisholm. She’s as unlike Marilla as, well, as I am, I suppose. She has no intention to marry.”
Bret regarded Miss Burns curiously. “Does that mean that you don’t, either?”
“Oh no, I do. But I don’t intend to marry you.”
“Of course not,” he said stiffly, because a man did have his pride. His first marriage rejection, and he had not even proposed.
Her eyes met his, and for the briefest moment, her gaze was devoid of levity. “It would be very foolish of me to even consider it,” she said quietly.
There didn’t seem to be an appropriate response. To agree would be a grave insult, and yet of course she was correct. He knew his position; he had a duty to marry well. The dukedom was thriving, but it had always been wealthier in land than in funds. The Duchesses of Bretton always entered the family with a dowry. It would be highly impractical otherwise.
He hadn’t given marriage much thought, really, except to think—not yet. He needed someone wellborn, who came with money, but whoever she turned out to be, he didn’t need her right away.
And yet, if he were to choose a duchess . . .
He looked at Miss Burns, peering into her bottomless brown eyes before his gaze dropped to the corner of her lips, where a tiny spot of strawberry jam lay temptingly pink and sweet.
“You’re not going to marry me,” he murmured.
“Well, no.” She sounded confused.
“So what you’re saying,” he said with soft calculation, “is that, for my own safety, I ought to remain in your company for the duration of our incarceration.”
“No!” she exclaimed, clearly horrified by his leap of logic. “That’s not what I meant at all.”
“But it makes sense,” he pressed. “Surely you can see the wisdom of it.”
“Not for me!” When he did not answer quickly enough, she planted her hands on her hips. “I have a reputation to consider, even if you do not.”
“True, but we need not steal away from the rest, as delightful as that sounds.”
She blushed. He quite liked that she blushed.
“All I really need,” he continued, “is for you to act as a deterrent.”
“A deterrent?” she choked out.
“A human shield, if you will.”
“What?”
“I cannot be left alone with that woman,” he said, and he felt no remorse at the low desperation in his voice. “Please, if you have any care for your fellow man.”
Her lips clamped together in a suspicious line. “I’m not certain what I get out of the equation.”
“You mean besides the joy of my delightful company?”
“Yes,” she said, with an impressive lack of inflection, “besides that.”
He chuckled. “I shall be honest . . . I don’t know. The joy of thwarting Miss Marilla?”
Her head tilted thoughtfully to the side. “That would be a joy,” she conceded.
He waited for a few more seconds, then said simply, “Please.”
Her lips parted, but whatever word she’d had resting on her tongue remained there for an endless frozen moment. “All right,” she finally agreed. “But if there is a hint—even a whisper—of anything improper . . .”
“You can be assured there will not.”
“You can’t kiss me again,” she said in a low voice.
Normally, he would have pointed out that she had been doing her fair share of the kissing, but he was far too desperate for her agreement to argue. “I will do my best,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed.
“It is all I can promise,” he said quite truthfully.
“Very well,” she said. “What shall we do?”
“Do?”
“Or hadn’t you thought that far ahead?”
“Apparently not,” he said, flashing her what he hoped was a winning grin.
“We can’t just stand here all day in the old buttery.”
For the first time, Bret paused to take a look about. They were in a pass-through room, with one door that opened to the great hall, and another that was presently shut but probably led to the kitchens. There were a couple of tables, but other than that, the small chamber was mostly empty, save for a few ancient barrels in the corner. “Is that where we are?” he remarked.
She gave him a look of mild disdain. “You do know what a buttery is, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. I live in a castle.”
“An English castle,” she said with a sniff.
“It’s a castle,” he ground out. Not as ancient as Finovair, of course, but the Brettons predated the Tudors by at least two hundred years.
“You do know that we don’t make butter in a buttery?” Miss Burns said.
“We don’t make anything in the buttery,” he shot back. And then, when her face still did not release its expression of skepticism, he said, “The buttery was where one got a beer. From wooden butts.” He raised a brow. “Satisfied?”
“This was hardly a test.”
“Wasn’t it, though?” he countered. But he felt a smile approaching. It was a little frightening how much he was enjoying himself.
“We Scots are proud of our history,” she admitted.
He gazed longingly at the dried-up old barrel. “I could use a beer right now.”
“Beer? A duke?”
“Bait to which I shall not rise,” he said archly.
She smiled at that.
“I suppose you’ll say it’s too early for spirits of any kind,” he grumbled.
“Not this morning I won’t,” she said with feeling.
He regarded her with curiosity. And admiration.
“Well, let’s see,” she said, ticking off her fingers. “I was kidnapped . . .”
“So was I,” he pointed out.
“. . . thrown into a carriage . . .”
“You have me there,” he acknowledged.
“. . . groped . . .”
“By whom?” he demanded.
“You,” she said, seemingly without ire, “but don’t worry, I got away very quickly.”
“Now see here,” Bret sputtered. He had never claimed to understand the female mind, but he did understand the female body, and there was no way she hadn’t enjoyed the previous night’s kiss every bit as much as he did. “When I kissed you . . .”
“I’m not talking about the kiss,” she said.
He stared at her, flummoxed.
She cleared her throat. “It was when . . . ah . . . Never mind.”
“Oh no, you don’t,” he warned. “You cannot introduce such a topic and then not follow through.”
“In the carriage,” she mumbled. And then: “Why were you in the carriage?”
“It was my carriage,” he reminded her.
“Yes, but the rest of us were in the ballroom.”
He shrugged. “I was tired.” It was true. And bored, too, although he would not tell her that. The Maycotts’ Icicle Ball had been pleasant enough, but he’d really wanted to be home.
“I suppose it was late—” Miss Burns started to say.
“Don’t change the subject,” he cut in.
She didn’t even try to look innocent.
“The groping,” he reminded her.
Her cheeks went every bit as pink as they should. “You were asleep,” she mumbled.
He had groped her while he was asleep? “I’m sure you must be mistaken.”
That got her goat. “You called me Delilah,” she ground out.
“Oh.” He had a sinking suspicion that his cheeks were also going every bit as pink as they should. Which was to say, quite a lot.
“Who’s Delilah?” she asked.
“No one whom you would ever have cause to meet.”
“Who’s Delilah?”
This could not end well. “Surely this is not an appropriate—”
“Who’s Delilah?”
He paused, taking a good look at her face. Miss Burns was lovely with her color high and eyes flashing. His eyes dropped to her lips, and there it was again, that amazing, overwhelming desire to kiss her. It wasn’t an urge so much as a need. He could stop himself if he had to, but oh, what a sad and colorless place the world would be if he did.
“What are you looking at?” she asked suspiciously.
“Are you jealous?” he asked with a slow smile.
“Of course not. We just got through—”
“You’re jealous,” he declared.
“I said I’m not— What are you doing?”
“Kicking the door shut,” he said, just as he did so. It was a small room, and only three steps were required to bring him back to her side. “About that kiss,” he said, pulling her into his arms.
Her lips parted, just in time for his to brush gently against them.
“I said I would do my best,” he murmured.
“Your best not to kiss me,” she reminded him, her voice trembling softly into a whisper.
He nibbled at her lower lip, then gently explored the corner of her mouth. “My best, apparently, has nothing to do with not kissing you.”
She made some sort of inarticulate sound. But it wasn’t a no. It definitely wasn’t a no.
Bret deepened the kiss, nearly shuddering with desire when he felt her body relax against his. He didn’t know what it was about this woman, what mystery she possessed that made him want to possess her. But he did. He wanted her with an intensity that should have terrified him. He’d never dallied with gently bred women, and he wasn’t angling for a bride. Catriona Burns was all wrong for him, in almost every possible way.
Almost.
Because the thing was, when she was in his arms . . . No, even when she was merely in the room with him . . .
He was happy.
Not content, not pleased. Happy. Joyful.
Good God, he sounded like a hymn.
But that was what it felt like, as if a chorus of angels were singing through him, infusing him with such pleasure that he could not contain it. It spilled out through his smile, through his kiss and his hands, and he had to share it with her. He had to make her feel it, too.
“Please tell me you’re enjoying this,” he begged.
“I shouldn’t,” she said raggedly.
“But you do.”
“I do,” she admitted, moaning as his hands cupped her bottom.
“You don’t lie,” he said, hearing his smile in his words.
“Not about this.”
“Catriona,” he murmured, then drew back a few inches. “Do people call you Cat?”
“Never.”
He gazed down at her for a moment, his first inclination to declare that he would call her that. He wanted something special for her, something all his own. But it didn’t fit, he realized. She would never be Cat. Her eyes were too round, too open and honest. There was nothing slinky about her, nothing cunning or calculated.
Which wasn’t to say she wasn’t enormously clever.
And witty.
And sensible.
“Who is Delilah?” she whispered. While she was kissing him.
And stubborn, apparently.
He pulled back, just far enough to settle his nose against hers. “She was my mistress,” he said, unable to be anything but honest with her.
“Was?”
If his life had been written by Shakespeare, he might have said that Delilah had entered the past tense of his story when he first laid eyes on Catriona. That he had been so squarely struck by Cupid’s arrow that all other women were made insubstantial and colorless.
But the truth was, Bret had broken it off with “Delicious Delilah” some weeks earlier. It was exhausting keeping company with London’s most renowned opera singer. Forget her temperament, which was full of drama, both on and off the stage. It was the other men who were driving him to the edge. He couldn’t get a quiet drink at White’s without a pack of young bucks edging over to his table with winks and leers and drunken elbows jabbing in his shoulder.
Even at the Icicle Ball he’d been accosted by a pack of young men dying to talk to him about the legendary lady. To say nothing of the rude and raunchy gestures, as if the young dandies could approximate Delilah’s curves by cupping their hands in front of them.
If it was going to be that much work to be with a woman, she ought to be someone whose company he could not live without.
He drew back another inch, and then another, regarding Miss Burns—Catriona—with something approaching wonder. “Was,” he affirmed softly. “I do not have a mistress right now. I could not, I think . . .”
Now that I’ve met you.
But he didn’t say it. How could he say it? It couldn’t possibly be true. A man didn’t fall in love, or like, or anything more than lust in so short a time. It did not happen. And it certainly did not happen to him.
“I think you have bewitched me,” he whispered, because surely that had to be it. It did not matter that he did not believe in fairies or witches or magic of any sort.
He bent down to kiss her again, surrendering himself to the enchantment, but the moment his lips touched hers, they heard a commotion in the great hall, followed by a terrible sound.
Taran Ferguson, bellowing Catriona’s name.