In Bed with the Duke(42)

She hurried on, because now she’d started she might as well get it all out into the open.

‘And I wouldn’t even mind handing my fortune into your keeping, if we ever get our hands on it. I’d feel as if you’d earned the right to it. I’m sure you would put it to good use. Could you not do with an injection of capital into whatever business you are in? If you don’t mind me saying so, you don’t seem to be all that plump in the pocket, or you wouldn’t have fallen into such difficulties today, would you?’

‘You...you don’t know what you are saying,’ he hissed, rolling over onto his back so he could look up at her. And then, probably because he couldn’t, he reached up to touch her face.

Then snatched it back.

She smiled to herself in the dark.

‘I’ve already told you I wouldn’t mind you touching me,’ she said gently. ‘The way a man touches his wife. In fact,’ she admitted daringly, ‘I think I would like it very much.’

‘And I repeat: you don’t know what you are saying.’

‘Not...not entirely, no. But I do know that I couldn’t lie next to any other man, the way I am lying here with you, and feel like this.’

There was a beat of silence before he said, in a voice that was scarce more than a whisper, ‘Like what?’

‘All sort of tingly and warm. As...as if something very wonderful is about to happen. Something to do with your lips. And your chest.’ She reached between them and laid her hand on his chest, where she could feel his heart beating a rapid tattoo. ‘And your legs.’ She ran her bare foot up and down his calf. ‘I have the strangest urge to wrap myself all around you like a vine.’

‘It’s the enforced intimacy—that’s what it is,’ he grated. ‘We’ve been thrown together in unusual circumstances and you’re feeling...grateful to me. Attracted, too, I don’t doubt. Just as I’m attracted to you. Extremely so.’

Her heart leapt.

‘Though I feel I should warn you that it might well be due to some after-effect of the drug they gave us.’

Her heart plummeted.

‘And once this is over...’

No, no, it wasn’t just because she’d unwittingly swallowed a sleeping draught. The only reason their enforced intimacy had made her admire him so was because all the tests they’d faced had proved what he was really like, beneath the harsh exterior.

‘I will still feel like this tomorrow—I’m sure I will.’

‘Prudence, Prudence...’ He did reach up to cup her face then. ‘God, whoever gave you such an inappropriate name? Practically begging a man to make love to you is the least prudent thing an innocent girl like you could do.’

‘I haven’t begged you to make love to me,’ she protested, her pride stung. ‘I was speaking in a hypothetical way, about marriage. You were the one who leap-frogged over the practicalities and went straight to the wedding night.’

‘How can I help thinking about the wedding night when you’re lying here half-naked and talking of wrapping yourself around me like a vine?’ He pulled her down so that she was sprawled half over his body. Then, just to make sure she knew what he was talking about, he shifted slightly, so that his pelvis made contact with her hip. ‘Can you not feel what you do to me?’

Oh, yes, she could feel it. She’d spent her early childhood following the drum. She’d learned a whole lot more about what went on between men and women than sheltered girls her age would have known.

‘So you do want me, then? It isn’t just me feeling like this?’

‘Of course I want you,’ he growled. ‘I’ve wanted you ever since the moment you sat up in bed this morning and gave me an eyeful of your breasts!’

‘But...you threw me out of your room.’

‘I thought you were trying to entrap me. I thought...’ He groaned. ‘I don’t know what I thought.’ He ran his hands up and down her back. ‘But I...’ He hauled her close and breathed in raggedly. Clasped the back of her head to his throat.

He was trembling.

‘Prudence, I beg of you, don’t tempt me any more. You have placed your trust in me. Told me you think I am an upright, honest man. And it’s true that all my life I have prided myself on doing the right thing. Even when I knew my wife had committed adultery I refused to sink to her level. But right now I am so close to behaving like the worst kind of scoundrel. It’s bad enough that people will be accusing me of taking your innocence. If I do so in fact I will have become the very villain they sought to make of me.’