The Devilish Duke by Gaines Alice

Author:Gaines, Alice [Gaines, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises
Published: 2012-08-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

“Richard, why does one of the bedrooms have bars on the window?”

Her husband looked up from the ledger he’d been writing in and set his pen back into the stand. “Been exploring, have you?”

“I hope that’s allowed. I am the duchess here.” Duchess. She’d deliberately used the word in her mind a dozen or more times a day since their wedding. It still didn’t register as real. Exploring the huge manor didn’t help. So many rooms. How could she even remember them all?

“Of course.” He rose, went around the desk and leaned against the edge. “Come here, my little duchess.”

When she did, he parted his legs and drew her between them so that he could embrace her, his face at the same level as hers. Grasping her hips, he pulled her closer. “Fallon is a very big place with a lot of secrets. Some of them involve me.”

“Should we have secrets from each other?”

“No, and we won’t.” His lips brushed hers in a brief kiss. She’d expected sex with the man, but the constant touching and innocent caresses made her glow inside. The fact that he could turn that glow into a flame at a moment’s notice was all the more astonishing.

“Let me tell you one story at a time,” he said. “Once you’ve accepted that, I’ll move on to the next. Agreed?”

“As long as I don’t have to wait for too long.”

“Now then, we know why you married me,” he said. “Because I was better than Tewksbury.”

She poked at his chest. “It was more than that.”

“Well enough. I was much better than Tewksbury.”

“You’re being silly.”

“Perhaps.” His expression grew solemn, and he smoothed her hair away from her face. All the while, he watched the progress of his fingers, avoiding her gaze. “Let’s start with my first wife.”

“Was she very beautiful?”

“Ah, Louisa,” he said. “She was the very image of a duchess. Perfect in every way.”

Quite in contrast to Rosalind. She might be on the path to being a wife, especially when it felt so good to step into his embrace. She still had to learn to act as his duchess.

“She could speak three languages, play the piano, draw. She knew everyone’s station and exactly how they should be treated. She ran this place better than Buckingham Palace,” he said. “We only had one problem.”

“She didn’t give you an heir.”

“That was a small part of it.” He took a breath. “She hated the marital act. Absolutely loathed it. She couldn’t bear to have me touch her.”

“How could that be?”

“You couldn’t understand, and that’s the beauty of you.” The light in his blue eyes softened as he studied her face, drawing a knuckle along her jawline. “I don’t know what perverted her. Women are taught such nonsense about their own bodies.”

She had to smile inwardly at that. Whatever she’d learned about the sins of physical intimacy, he’d untaught her since the afternoon of their wedding day.

“Louisa accepted that she had to give me an heir, so she surrendered herself to me as a virgin sacrifice,” he said.

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