Chapter 3 #2
She swallowed, not liking being beholden to him or the way she couldn’t help but to admire how very handsome he looked, the lamplight glinting in his golden hair.
He had dressed formally this evening, in a black coat and trousers, a gray damask waistcoat, and a crisp white neckcloth.
He would have looked at home in any of the social gatherings in New York City in his elegant attire, and yet she knew instinctively he would have stood out.
When he almost smiled, he was nothing short of beautiful, and much to her dismay, she found herself wondering what it would feel like to have that harsh, unforgiving mouth on hers.
When he raised an imperious brow at her again, Addy realized that she was staring at him.
Having improper thoughts she ought never to have about a man as cold and unfeeling as the Duke of Marchingham.
She reached for her wine and took a bracing sip, aware of the furious heat creeping up her neck and reaching her cheeks.
What was wrong with her? The man had orchestrated the rescue of her trunks and her person, but that was all. She didn’t like him, and it didn’t matter how lovely he was to behold.
An awkward silence descended once more, and Addy turned her attention firmly to the consumption of her roast and haricot verts, which had turned cold.
“That was most kind of you to fetch dear Addy’s trunks,” Aunt Pearl ventured. “You have been a godsend to us all.”
Addy stifled the urge to kick her aunt beneath the table. The man was already insufferable. There was no need to further inflate his opinion of himself.
“Despite the unexpected nature of your visit, I aim to be an affable host,” he said mildly.
Addy snorted. An affable host might have avoided pointing out that they were uninvited guests.
“Did you say something, Miss Fox?” he asked.
“Nothing at all, Your Grace,” she answered with mock sweetness.
Addy swore the corners of his mouth twitched, as if he suppressed a smile. But his countenance remained implacable as he returned to his meal in more silence.
Lion slowly pulled himself from the depths of slumber to the realization that someone—or perhaps more accurately something—was licking his face.
His eyes jolted open, and in the low light of the flickering hearth, he discovered a dark, furred beast perched on his chest. Said beast moved enthusiastically to his ear, licking behind it.
“Good God,” he grumbled, knowing at once what the thing was.
Dandy.
The French bulldog that had been destroying the solitude of his home ever since she had arrived shivering and wrapped in a blanket, held in the elder Miss Fox’s arms as if she were a baby.
It had taken remarkably little time to prove that she was not, in fact, an innocent babe, but instead the spawn of Beelzebub.
“Cease that at once,” he snapped.
Dandy didn’t even pause in her ministrations. Instead, he felt the sharp prick of teeth on his earlobe as the dog took a nibble.
“Damnation.” He lifted the squirming dog from his chest. “Bad Dandy.”
Lion settled her on the floor and sat up, wincing at a twinge in his back as he rubbed his ear.
He had been reading in the library, too unsettled to sleep, some port at hand, and his eyes had grown heavy.
Instead of venturing to his bedchamber, he had lain on the Grecian couch with the intention of closing his eyes for a few moments.
Given the darkness beyond the windows, it looked as if he had slept for far longer than he’d intended.
Dandy leapt onto the cushion and rose on her hind legs to lick his ear again.
“Curse it, mongrel,” he growled, rising to his feet to glower down at the boisterous dog. “Why aren’t you in the stables where you belong?”
He had his answer when a familiar voice called quietly from beyond the library.
“Dandy? Where are you, my naughty little darling?”
Lovely. Now he was going to have to face Miss Fox. Alone. In the shadows of the night.
“Dandy?” she called again.
The dog’s pointed ears went up, and she angled her face toward the partially ajar door, listening. Then she jumped from the couch and raced across the carpets.
Lion had but a moment to compose himself, running a hand through his hair in an effort to tame the wayward waves that were a constant source of irritation to him, before Miss Fox appeared in the doorway.
Wearing nothing but a nightgown.
His mouth went dry and desire unfurled within him, like a summer rose suddenly blooming.
Her hair was unbound, falling down her back as it had been when he had spied her sitting before the fire earlier.
Once again, her toes were bare beneath the hem of her gown.
As she moved, the fabric clung to her decadent feminine form in all the best places, making him uncomfortably aware that she was not wearing a corset.
Her breasts were round and full and tempting, her waist and hips deliciously curved.
“There you are,” she said, bending down to pat Dandy on the head, clearly unaware of his presence in the shadows. “It wouldn’t do for the dreadful duke to realize you’ve been running about.”
The dreadful duke?
Grimly, Lion cleared his throat.
Miss Fox jumped and straightened, emitting a high-pitched squeal. “Marchingham. I didn’t know you were there.”
He moved toward her. “That much is woefully apparent.”
As was the fact that her nipples were now hard.
Rude, pointed tips jutting toward him. A temptation he should not be noticing.
This was Miss Adelia Fox, scandalous hoyden and menace to his sanity and his sisters’ reputations.
The proof was before him. No lady would leave her bedchamber in the midst of the night in such a shocking state of dishabille, particularly when she was staying in someone else’s home.
She was a problem. Trouble. Just like her ear-eating dog.
“I hope you weren’t eavesdropping on my private conversation with Dandy,” she said with the airs of a queen.
Miss Adelia Louise Fox was the most outlandish woman he had ever met.
“Did you just smile?” she asked, suspicion in her voice.
Was he smiling? Good God, he actually was. How utterly horrifying.
Lion stopped before her, which was a mistake because the proximity made her scent rush over him, violets and orris root and soft, warm woman.
For a mindless moment, he found himself wondering if her perfume would linger in his bedclothes and upon his pillow.
But then he realized how ludicrous such a thought was, and he promptly banished it.
“I cannot help my natural reaction to preposterous behavior, Miss Fox,” he told her.
She eyed him curiously as the little dog sat upon her feet, facing him as well with dark-brown eyes. “You aren’t angry?”
“Angry that your dog decided to make a meal of my ear whilst I was asleep? Angry that she isn’t in the stables where she belongs? Or angry that you insulted me to the hound in question?”
Her lips parted.
He wished she weren’t so bloody beautiful.
“Have I rendered you speechless, Miss Fox?” he pressed, rather enjoying himself.
He had no doubt that she wasn’t ordinarily silent. The woman was bold and opinionated and brazen.
“I’m never speechless,” she countered, apparently having found her tongue. “What did you mean when you said Dandy made a meal of your ear?”
“I felt teeth.”
She nibbled her lower lip, drawing Lion’s attention to the sensual allure of her mouth. “She adores ears. She’d never truly bite them hard enough to cause harm. But sometimes she’s enthusiastic and forgets herself.”
The dog was as ill-mannered as Miss Fox was.
For some reason, Lion didn’t say that thought aloud.
“What are you doing wandering about in the midst of the night?” he inquired instead. “Surely you realize it isn’t done to leave your chamber without at least a dressing gown.”
He would not look at her nipples. He would not look at her nipples. He would not—
His gaze fell to where the puckered buds continued to protrude in an erotic taunt from beneath the fine fabric of her nightgown. His cock twitched. What was wrong with him? Lion forced his stare back to her face where it belonged.
“Dandy was scratching at the door,” Miss Fox explained. “She needed to venture out of doors for a moment. But after we came back inside from the garden, she had one of her happy bouts and raced away, and I couldn’t find her. She must have run into the library and discovered you there.”
Lion was reasonably certain the woman was as mad as a Bedlamite.
“A happy bout? Good God, what is that?”
“It’s when she suddenly tears off on a joyful sprint,” Miss Fox explained. “There’s no telling where she’ll go or when it will end.”
And the mongrel was equally insane.
“I’ve never heard of a dog doing something so illogical.”
Miss Fox beamed. “Well, now you have. Dandy doesn’t give a fig about logic. Do you know why, Your Grace? Because she’s a dog. Her primary concerns are being loved, being warm, and not allowing anyone near her favorite blanket or her bowl of food.”
Her incessant cheer vexed him. Why was she always smiling? Why did she speak to him as if he were a small child incapable of understanding complex thought?
“You should go back to bed, Miss Fox,” he told her.
But damn him if uttering the word bed in reference to his unwanted houseguest didn’t cause his stupid cock to harden. It was her scent. Her nearness. All that glorious hair tumbling down her back. The exquisite fullness of her breasts.
Those nipples.
His breath was tight in his chest. It had been a long time since Lion had allowed himself to be tempted by a woman. Since he’d permitted himself to feel the slightest stirrings of attraction.
She cocked her head, considering him. “Why are you not abed at this hour? Why were you sleeping in the library?”
He wasn’t going to admit it was because her presence had caused him so much upheaval that he hadn’t been able to sleep. That he had ventured to the library to read and sip port until he had finally, mercifully passed out.