If the Duke Demands by Anna Harrington

Author:Anna Harrington
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2017-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Two More Frustrating (and Utterly Confusing) Days Later

Miranda leaned over the railing and laughed joyfully at the jugglers performing on the alley in front of their box at Vauxhall Gardens.

“Don’t you dare ask if you can learn to juggle,” Sebastian warned in that same grumpy voice he’d used with her all evening. For the past two days, in fact. Since he kissed her backstage at the opera and she rejected him, apparently wounding his male pride.

And tonight was proving no different.

She gave an insulted sniff, irritated at him herself for kissing her so wonderfully when he knew nothing could come of it. Kissing? Oh, the aggravating devil had dared to do so much more! “I would never ask such a thing.” Then, because she couldn’t help tormenting him the way he’d tormented her for the past two days, she added, “But knife throwing! Now there’s a skill I’d lov—”

He shot her a murderous glare that silenced her in mid-word.

She swallowed, thinking better of finishing that sentence after all.

The man was incomprehensible. At one moment warning her not to do anything that would cause a scandal, and at the next kissing her in such a way as to ruin her reputation if anyone caught them. At one moment, treating her as if she were a child, then touching her until she moaned with the passion of a woman. First agreeing to help her with Robert, then behaving as if he were jealous. Jealous? Ha! Not when he had the lovely Lady Jane at his side tonight as his personal guest. Yet instead of paying attention to Jane and engaging her in the same rakish conversation he’d held with Miranda at the opera, he’d spent his evening grumping and growling over every move she made.

Good heavens. The conundrum that was Sebastian Carlisle could drive a woman mad.

With a heavy sigh, she rose from her chair. He grabbed her arm, stopping her. “Where are you going?” he demanded.

She arched a brow, daring him to challenge her, here amid all their family and friends. “I want a glass of punch.”

He released her arm. “Do not leave this box.”

“Your talents are being wasted as a duke.” As she slid past him, she lowered her head as close as possible to his ear without drawing attention. “You should have been a gaoler.”

He turned in his chair as if to make a second attempt to stop her, but she was already gone, slipping around the dining table where they’d taken supper as guests of the Earl of St James.

The countess had sent invitations to Audley House and Park Place for all of them to join the couple in a private box at Vauxhall for the season opening of the pleasure gardens. So the entire Carlisle family and their guests—minus Josie and Chesney, who preferred to enjoy a quiet evening at home—had piled into several carriages and made their way through the city and across the Thames to the gardens.

Oh, the place was simply magical! The gardens

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