Duke of Pleasure by Elizabeth Hoyt

Author:Elizabeth Hoyt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2016-11-29T05:00:00+00:00

HUGH WOKE THE next morning to the slam of his bedroom door.

“I can’t do it, guv,” Alf’s husky voice exclaimed. “Thought on it near all night and I just can’t and that’s all there is to it.”

Hugh yawned and opened his eyes.

Alf was dressed in her usual boys’ attire and standing beside his bed. He could see from the little light peeking through the part in the still-drawn curtains that it wasn’t much past dawn.

The imp was pacing back and forth, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, apparently oblivious both to the fact that she’d woken him and to the fact that he slept in the nude.

Bloody hell.

“What can’t you do?” he asked, keeping his voice calm. Even.

“Be a lady!” She threw her hands straight up in the air. “Guv, I just ain’t right for it. I can’t wear a dress, can’t swan about in one. Can’t curtsy and do all those lady things. That Lady Jordan’ll ’ave to do it for you—she’s a real lady, after all.”

“Which is precisely why she can’t do it.”

Hugh braced his hands on the bed and levered himself up into a sitting position against the headboard. The maneuver made the sheets slip to his waist.

She stopped in midstride, only inches from the bed, her gaze fixed on his bare chest.

“Alf?” he prompted.

“Hmm?” Her eyelashes lifted as her big brown eyes looked at him, a little dazed. Had she any idea what her gaze did to him? He was already hard beneath the thin sheets—she must see it—and he was holding on to his control by the barest thread.

“Lady Jordan can’t search Dowling’s house,” he said. “She hasn’t the experience and the skills you have. She also wouldn’t know what to do if she ran into trouble.”

Her pink mouth crimped mutinously. “But—”

He arched an eyebrow. “Can you defend yourself, say against a footman?”

She rolled those big brown eyes, snorting. “Of course.”

“Lady Jordan can’t.” In truth he didn’t believe that it would come to that. A footman would have to be a fool to attack a lady at a ball. But he wanted to be prepared for all eventualities. “She doesn’t know how to handle a knife. She’s never been in a fight. You are our only choice.”

She stared at him, and her fierce little face crumpled, and for the first time he saw an emotion he’d thought he’d never see there: fear. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

She shook her head mutely.

“I’ve seen you leap and run about the rooftops,” he said. “I’ve seen you fight multiple armed men with swords—men who are stronger and bigger than you. Why? Just tell me, why can you face them without fear while the thought of wearing a dress for one night renders you speechless?”

She blinked hard and he saw actual tears in her eyes, his fierce little warrior. “I’m not…”

Perhaps he should let her go. Perhaps he should show some gentleness—compassion—and find some other way to search Dowling’s study.

Except that he had a mission to accomplish: to bring down the Lords.

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