The Daring Duke by Jess Michaels

Author:Jess Michaels [Michaels, Jess]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Passionate Pen
Published: 2017-03-14T07:00:00+00:00

Emma slowly dropped back through the crowd of partygoers until she trailed behind them. Only then could she breathe again. The past quarter of an hour had been a nightmare, with James shooting her looks, her mother’s suggestion ringing in her ears and Meg smiling and chatting with her, utterly oblivious to all the betrayals Emma was committing.

She felt like rolling into a ball and hiding away forever, but that wasn’t possible. So the best she could do was provide some distance between herself and the others and try to regain some purchase on her emotions.

Something that became clear was impossible when she looked up to find James standing along the side of the path, leaning against a tree. She let out a sigh as she approached him.

“Waiting for me?” she asked.

“Hiding from me?” he retorted.

“No,” she lied, for she had, of course, been doing exactly that. “I needed…I needed space.”

He straightened up and looked at her more closely. “What’s wrong?”

She worried her lip for a moment and shook her head. “Just…my mother is pushing me. And she told me…”

When she trailed off, he reached out and took her hand. She caught her breath as she looked up at him. His gaze was heated, hooded, and her body responded even though he was barely touching her. Everything felt hot and tingly and the world went blurry, the only thing in focus was him.

“What did she tell you?”

She drew in a deep breath. “That you fought with Sir Archibald over…over me.” His face twitched, and in that moment she saw the truth. She would not have been more shocked if the man had started singing and dancing right there on the path. “You did?”

James nodded. “He said something very untoward. And I admonished him for it.” His tone was dark and dangerous, and once again it hit her in the most inappropriate places.

“Something untoward about me?” she gasped. “He doesn’t know about—”

“No!” James said. “Not about us. He just made some implications about his intentions toward you that I didn’t care for.”

She shivered, for she could well-imagine what Sir Archibald had in mind. He had always spent a great deal of time staring at her chest, and whenever he touched her, it was like a snake curling around her skin. But still…

“You grabbed him, you pushed him, you sent him away,” she stammered. “James, you…you made a scene.”

“He deserved far worse than I did to him,” he said. “But how did your mother know?”

She shrugged. “I have no clue. Someone overheard you, perhaps, or Archibald talked before he fled your house. What matters is that people are going to be talking about this. It is too good a story not to repeat.”

“You seem troubled by this,” he said, his brow wrinkling. “Why?”

“Aside from the fact you nearly came to blows over me? I am troubled because it casts too big a shadow on me.”

“No, it puts focus on you, which was exactly our plan from the beginning,” he said, but his tone was falsely bright.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.