Nell and the Runaway Duke (Sin & Seduction Book 4) by Sofie Darling

Author:Sofie Darling [Darling, Sofie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oliver Heber Books
Published: 2022-12-27T00:00:00+00:00

A feeling soared through Lucas.

Relief, yes.

Something else, too.

Joy.

“But, sadly,” he said, “I must inform you there are no eels in this river.”

He liked the way she smiled at his playful tone. “Thank heavens. Too many teeth on eels for my liking. What fish are in this river?”

“Brown trout like to run here. Now—” He had a delicate subject to broach. “There’s a reason we had to remove boots and stockings.”

He glanced at the river, and her eyes went wide with understanding. “You don’t mean…”

He nodded. “I do. We’ll fish in our bare feet in the river. Best way to catch trout. So, you’ll need to—” Here was the delicate subject. “Well, you see how I’ve rolled up my trousers…” He let the sentence trail, feeling heat suffuse his neck. He’d only just gotten her to agree to meet him in London next week, and now he risked offending her and he didn’t want that.

The expression on her face turned quizzical. “Are you trying to tell me I need to tuck my dress into my drawers?”

Lucas cleared his throat. “Erm, yes.”

She shook her head with amusement. “You know something?”

“What?”

“You do a right good imitation of a nob sometimes.”

Lucas tried to smile and roll along with her observation, he really did, but it was difficult. For a variety of reasons. The first being that she was wrong in only a single respect. His wasn’t an imitation.

Like the gentleman he was, he glanced away when she lifted the hem of her skirts. But that didn’t prevent the periphery of his vision from snatching glimpses of her movements. The reveal of an ankle… the shapely length of a calf… He busied himself with tying a lure onto a line.

How fitting a metaphor.

He was completely hooked, wasn’t he?

Once she’d gotten herself all sorted, he waved her over to his place at the riverbank. Gingerly, she stepped off the blanket, bare toes touching green grass. A smile utterly without design or consciousness spread across her face. The cool pleasure of grass blades was not lost on her. “That’s what I thought it would feel like,” she said.

He smiled, but kept quiet, not wanting to intrude on this moment. It was hers. That she could so appreciate something that he’d taken for granted his entire life filled him with a gravity he hadn’t expected.

Her amber gaze met his. “You brought me here for this.”

“Fishing? Yes.”

“So I could walk barefoot on green grass.”

“Ah, well, yes, that, too.” He seemed to have lost the ability to form complete sentences.

“No one has ever done anything so thoughtful for me.”

He tried to shrug off her appreciation. “It was quite a simple gesture, really.”

“I think it’s a grand one.”

A moment stretched between them. One weighty with import. Import of what, Lucas couldn’t say with absolute certainty. But he had an inkling, and just that inkling was enough to wallop him and steal the breath from his lungs.

And what he detected in her eyes?

She might have an inkling, too.

He held up a fishing pole.

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