How to Tame Your Duke by Juliana Gray

Author:Juliana Gray [Gray, Juliana]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, HistorIcal romance, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780425265666
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-06-03T21:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

At half past four in the morning, Emilie gave up trying to sleep. She rose from her bed, dressed with clumsy fingers, stuck on her whiskers, and went downstairs to the library.

God knew she was tired enough. She’d slept a fitful hour immediately upon lying down, and then started back awake just as the duke’s body lowered itself upon hers and began to transform from skin into fur, his growl of pleasure to sharpen into a snarl. She lay awake, breathing hard, unable to move at the vivid reality of it all.

It’s your whiskers. Where the devil have they gone?

She’d told Freddie she’d shaved them. What else could she say? She could only hope that he was drunk enough to have forgotten the whole thing in the morning, or at least believe her when she denied knowledge of the episode. He was certainly drunk enough to accept the bit about the shaving without a blink of surprise. Oh, right, he’d said blearily, and turned around to vomit into the washbasin.

The day outside was still winter dark, as black as midnight, and the air was chilled. Emilie crept down the back stairs with every muscle aching. The sins of the night had come back with a vengeance: She felt as if she’d been wrung out, piece by piece, and laid out to stiffen in the sun. Between her legs, her flesh tingled and stung, scraping with acute sensitivity against the seam of her trousers.

Perhaps dresses weren’t such a nuisance after all.

The library lay on the other side of the house. The dear and comfortable library, her favorite room: Surely there she could nestle with a book in one of the wide chairs. She could lay the fire—she knew how to do that, now—and perhaps even fall asleep for a precious hour or so, before the rest of the household awakened.

She scampered down the cavernous hallway, the spine of the house, from which all the principal rooms connected. Past glowering portraits and a pair of knights sprung from some impossibly giant race—Ashland’s height was evidently not an accident of nature—and the white marble statue of Apollo, her favorite, though his essential bits had been made sacrifice at some point to delicate English sensibilities.

She was just crossing past an open doorway when a faint sound reached her ears. A rhythmic beat, sharp thumps muffled by the walls.

She turned to the door. A hint of yellow light glowed from the bottom of a long and narrow staircase.

For an instant, her dream reared up before her, more vivid than before: Ashland’s snarl, his damp fur beneath her fingers.

Don’t be ridiculous, she thought. It’s only the servants, beating carpets or . . . or churning butter. Some household chore or another.

Was that grunting? Just before each beat, almost merged together.

Emilie hesitated, poised at the top of the stairs. She looked down the hall toward the library, quiet and peaceful. Empty.

Of course this was nothing. Dreams were nothing.

She would walk down those stairs right now and prove it.

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