A Spinster's Guide to Danger and Dukes by Manda Collins

Author:Manda Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2023-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

A week ago, Poppy would never have imagined she’d be so brazen as to kiss the Duke of Langham as if her very life depended on it. But, as Hippocrates said, desperate times called for desperate measures.

Rhodes’s voice had sent alarm coursing through her, but once her lips touched Langham’s, she was so caught up in the maelstrom of sensation his nearness brought that all thoughts of the constable were swept from her mind.

She’d been kissed before, by a dance partner at a local assembly before she left for London, but the experience had been more embarrassing than pleasurable. And she’d never felt the need to repeat it.

Langham, though. His kiss she felt from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. It had never occurred to her that a kiss could be playful, but his teasing strokes, which invited her to answer with her own, gave her a strange lightness in her chest.

He’d just moved to kiss down over her jaw and along the curve of her neck, one hand caressing up from her waist and over her breast when the sound of Rhodes’s surprised “ahem” cut through the fog of her desire.

Langham’s head snapped up, and he took a step back from her, looking all the while like a man awakening from a trance. “We’ll follow you down, Rhodes. If you will, please wait for us outside the entrance. Miss Delamere is feeling a little unwell from the height.”

Poppy, despite feeling a little breathless from the abrupt shift in Langham, was none too pleased at Langham’s subterfuge. “I am not unwell,” she hissed. Far from it, if she were being honest with herself. But she was hardly going to give him the satisfaction of telling him that.

“It gives him a plausible reason to discount what he just saw with his own eyes,” Langham hissed back, with an equally annoyed look. “I’m attempting to preserve your reputation. Once our betrothal is at its end you will need to go about your life without the whisper of scandal.”

The reminder that whatever this was between them was temporary brought Poppy up short. He was right, of course. Their ease with one another had become so familiar that she’d forgotten for the space of a few minutes that they would soon go back to their former lives.

Turning away from him, she set about smoothing her gown and straightening her hat, which felt a little askew.

“Here,” Langham said with ill-concealed impatience, though whether it was for her or himself Poppy could not tell. With a surprisingly impersonal touch, given how familiar he’d been a moment ago with her person, he tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear and straightened the ribbons of her bonnet beneath her chin. “We can’t do anything about your reddened complexion, but at the very least you no longer look as if you’ve just been thoroughly kissed.”

If only it were as easy to remove the evidence of what had just happened from her mind, she thought wryly.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.