Scandal of the Year (29 page)

Does
Harry
know about those sorts of kisses? Does he have those kinds of
thoughts
? Did he have any idea what one kiss of my hand would do to me? Of what dreams I would unfurl from it?

Is it only me, or do all women think this way?

Would
a real man have kissed my mouth?

She was tempted to touch her mouth again, and to imagine.

She gripped the grass again, more tightly, needing to feel solid ground. She was dizzy, more confused than she’d been yesterday. As though the land around her was sea and she’d just been cast adrift in an ocean of sensual knowledge she would never now partake of if Harry married Millicent.

Damn the Duke. She was devastatingly clever, but he’d just made it very, very clear that
she
knew nothing, nothing at all about . . . anything.

“Did he make you a promise on the heels of this ‘kiss,’ Miss Eversea?”

She was never going to enjoy the mocking way he referred to that
kiss.

She said nothing.

But he seemed to take this as a confirmation.

“Are you spoken for? Did he back away from a promise?” he asked hurriedly. He sounded tense. Oddly as though he intended to deal unkindly with Harry if this was the case.

“Not . . . not as much. No. But everything was . . . implied. Or so I thought. We’ve been so close for so long, you see, and . . . there was no reason at all not to believe . . . especially not after yesterday . . .”

“And yet he is preparing to launch a proposal at your dear friend Millicent.”

He might as well have shot an arrow straight into her solar plexus. Hearing those words spoken aloud by another human were just that pleasant.

She covered her eyes with her hand, sucked in a jagged breath. “Yes. He told me so. Yes.”

She took her hand away and bravely looked back at him.

The duke took this in with raised eyebrows. And gave his head a little wondering shake, whether at Harry’s or her expense, she could not be certain.

“Has
he
ever sent flowers to you?”

“He once presented me with a bouquet of wildflowers he’d just picked,” she confessed dismally.

The duke thought this was amusing, judging from what his eyebrows did.

“Has he kissed
her
? Any of her parts? Or sent flowers to her?”

Argh. The misery. “I don’t know. She hasn’t told me.
He
hasn’t told me. And usually . . . well, Millicent and I tell each other everything. And I thought Harry told me everything, too.”

“If you haven’t told Millicent how you feel about Lord Harry, then you haven’t told Millicent everything, have you?”

Well, then. She was generally assumed to be clever, but in that moment she felt a fool. He had an excellent point. She hadn’t
dreamed
Harry harbored a tendre for Millicent; she’d floated along in the comfortable certainty of friendship.

“I’m afraid all of this is rather evident. To me. Otherwise, you are exceptionally inscrutable and I’m certain not a soul suspects,” he humored. Suppressed laughter in his voice.

She scowled darkly at him. “And isn’t that
just
my good fortune that
you
should notice and choose to torment me with it.”

He laughed. Admittedly, he had a fine laugh, deep and genuine. She sensed he didn’t do it easily. She liked the sense that she’d surprised it from him.

And therein lay his vulnerability. She could make him laugh.

She had another surprise for him. “Lord Moncrieffe, do tell me, since we’re speaking so frankly. What is your game?”

By Laura Lee Guhrke

S
CANDAL OF THE
Y
EAR

W
EDDING OF THE
S
EASON

W
ITH
S
EDUCTION IN
M
IND

S
ECRET
D
ESIRES OF A
G
ENTLEMAN

T
HE
W
ICKED
W
AYS OF A
D
UKE

A
ND
T
HEN
H
E
K
ISSED
H
ER

S
HE’S
N
O
P
RINCESS

T
HE
M
ARRIAGE
B
ED

H
IS
E
VERY
K
ISS

G
UILTY
P
LEASURES

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Laura Lee Guhrke

Excerpt from
What I Did For a Duke
copyright © 2011 by Julie Anne Long

ISBN 978-0-06-196316-2

EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062041739

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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