Play With Dukes, Get Burned (Dukes in Danger Book 9) by Emily E K Murdoch

Author:Emily E K Murdoch [Murdoch, Emily E K]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dragonblade Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2024-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

30 June 1811

Daniel frowned.

Though he was not, in his own mind, a proud man, he did know what he excelled at, and he was generally able to avoid what he could not master. It was one reason he had always cared little for his lack of title. Give someone a title, and expectations of behavior, skill, and confidence are immediately placed on their shoulders.

And this was not a new propensity. When he was a boy, his mother had called it “his way”. Since he had been a child, it had been his habit to only begin a thing if he knew how to complete it.

Like baking, for example.

“Not quite,” said Nora cheerfully. “Come on, really put your back into it!”

Daniel stared down, utterly lost, at the dough on the kitchen table. “Put my—”

“Your back into—you know what I mean!” Nora’s hair was streaked with flour again.

He tried not to examine just where one floury streak and another began. He’d already stirred up enough trouble by staring too closely at Nora. He needed to concentrate on his . . . dough.

“I will never hurt you. But you’re hurting me, Nora. Hurting me by being apart from me every second you’re not touching me.”

Daniel swallowed. It was hot today, was it not? Hot in the little cottage, hot in the kitchen Nora had pulled him into when he had only called to see how she was doing.

See how she was doing, sneered a voice in the back of her mind. You know you couldn’t stay away. Try as you might, you sat in that lonely, increasingly empty home, and thought of nothing but her. Do not attempt to make this all noble. You want to—

“Look, watch my hands,” said Nora, blowing away a strand of her hair that had fallen from its pins and looking confidently at the duke who had flour on his cuffs.

Daniel nodded rather than risk speaking. His gaze drifted slowly down Nora’s body, lingering at some places perhaps longer than they should, but eventually reaching her hands.

They were small. Delicate. Yet the strength in those fingers was more than he had ever seen in an entire person.

“Watch,” Nora murmured.

Daniel swallowed. All he could do at the moment was watch. Watch the little smile that curled Nora’s rosebud mouth whenever she thought he wasn’t looking. Watch the way sunlight glittered as it streamed through her hair. Watch the way Nora tied an apron, slowly and carefully behind her own back, her fingers gracing the linen as though it were silk.

And feel. Feel his stomach lurch whenever she brushed past him in the tiny kitchen. Feel the hair on the back of his neck go up whenever she smiled. Feel warmth pooling in his loins whenever he thought about—

No. He wouldn’t do that again. Kissing Nora had been—God, it had been everything.

But he wasn’t going to cross that line again. Brothers shared plenty of things but not that. Not women.

“See, the aim is to ensure plenty of folding, then pressure.

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