One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club #1)

“Leo’s token,” she whispered. “When it’s found, I’ll know you’re blameless.”


His eyes hardened as he withdrew his hand. “Very well. While Leo’s killers walk free, I’ll not come to you. But once that token is recovered and I am proved innocent, there will be no further delay. And when I do take you, I will have all of you. Touch all of you. Taste all of you. You’ll deny me nothing.”

She stared up at him, paralyzed with longing and fear.

“Say yes, Amelia.”

“Yes,” she managed. What a devil’s bargain she’d just sealed.

He rose to his feet and made to leave the bedchamber. Amelia fell back against the pillows and pressed her thighs together, attempting to ease the sweet, maddening ache in her womb.

At the door, he stopped. “And Amelia? Even though I’ve pledged not to come to you, there’s nothing to keep you from coming to me.” With one last burning glance, he reached for the door handle. “The door’s unlocked, if there’s anything you need.”

Chapter Nine

Juno’s hooves danced under him as Spencer eased into the saddle. He exchanged a nod with his outrider. The groom had been walking her for most of the morning, but now the mare had reached the end of her patience. As had he. A good, hard ride was what they both needed. They’d outpace the carriages for this last leg of the day’s travel and he’d see about procuring rooms at the inn.

At Juno’s impatient whicker, he nudged the mare into a canter. As the horse found her pace, a fresh breeze whipped through his hair—a refreshing burst of coolness on this warm afternoon. He ought to have been taking in the pleasant countryside, Spencer supposed, but instead all he saw was Amelia, as she’d appeared last night. The soft gold of her unbound hair, burnished by firelight. The enticing pink curves of her flesh, covered by the sheerest white muslin.

Her clear blue eyes, filled with fear.

Devil take it. That fear had come as a stab to the heart. Her courage and sensible nature were what attracted him to her in the first place. From her teasing during that that cursed waltz, to the kiss she’d demanded before accepting his proposal—she infuriated, intrigued, and aroused him, all because she refused to be intimidated. Just as she’d said that morning after Leo’s death, in the carriage: When they were alone, they were just a woman and a man.

Not anymore, evidently.

Now, thanks to the esteemed membership of the Stud Club, they were a woman and an alleged murderer. This morning ought to have found him a well-satisfied bridegroom, and instead he was frustrated in every way. All because Julian Bellamy had an irrational hatred of aristocrats, Rhys St. Maur had been a hot-tempered youth, and Leo Chatwick had had the poor sense to go walking in Whitechapel alone at night. Now Amelia feared him.

And then—of all the addled feminine notions—to remedy the problem, she’d suggested they sit up all night and chat. She wished to submit him to her own version of the Spanish Inquisition, examine his sins, his failings, his family history and moral principles.

Good God. He couldn’t imagine a worse strategy for earning her trust. How, precisely, would that interview go?

Very well, Amelia. I’ll answer your questions. Yes, I spent a wild youth in Lower Canada, disappearing into the wilderness for weeks at a time with people you’d consider heathen savages, causing my excellent father no end of grief. Yes, during my first year in England, I nearly pummeled Rhys St. Maur to death at Eton. Yes, I ruined your brother’s fortunes in pursuit of a horse, for reasons you will find inexplicable and unforgivable. There, now. Can’t you see I’m not a villain?

Oh, that would go over splendidly.

And if she thought he would ever discuss his true reasons for abducting her from that ballroom … well, she would wait in vain. If there was one indisputable advantage to being a duke, it was never having to explain himself to anyone.

That didn’t mean they couldn’t know one another. Ever since their waltz, he’d been seized by an intense desire to know everything about Amelia Claire d’Orsay. Hell, he’d married her in part to assuage it. He just didn’t see why words must be involved. He wanted to learn his new wife from the inside out, starting with the sweet cleft of her womanhood and working his way to her delicate fingers, which he’d discovered last night to be capped with neat round calluses from needlework.