A Regency Duchess's Awakening. Amanda McCabe

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       Chapter Six

      He was the biggest damnable fool that ever lived.

      Nicholas strode down the street. The walkway was crowded with shoppers and servants laden with packages, yet he hardly saw them or heard the greetings of his acquaintances. He wasn’t there, in the fine, sunny day on Bond Street, but back in the darkness of Vauxhall, holding Emily Carroll in his arms.

      Emily Carroll! Of all women, how could it come to be her? She had made it clear she disliked him, and she was not the sort of lady he usually liked. She was quiet, watchful, where he liked blithe gregariousness, daring and humour. Yet last night had been beyond daring—it had been sheer lunacy. How did it happen?

      Nicholas rubbed his hand over his face, trying to erase the vivid memory of her mouth under his, soft, sweet, eager. The feel of her body against his touch. He knew all too well how it happened. Lady Emily was tipsy on Vauxhall’s potent punch, and he was a little foxed himself. Alcohol and masks were never a wise combination. They always gave the illusion of freedom and anonymity, of lack of consequences.

      Well, there was no such thing as lack of consequences. He knew that all too well. His own father had lived his life grabbing whatever he wanted, heedless of its effects on his family name or the people around him. For him, there were no consequences; Nicholas and his poor mother and his siblings were the ones who lived with them. When he himself married Valentina, he didn’t care what happened next, he only cared about his love for her in that moment. And Valentina died because of it.

      Since he lost her, he had been so careful. So determined not to be like his father. Until last night.

      He had only followed Emily when he saw her stumble away from the colonnades because he was worried about her safety. He didn’t want to think too closely about why he watched her all evening in the first place. Ever since they ran into each other on her arrival, he had been acutely aware of where she was, her laughter with her friends, her tears at the sad song—the glasses of punch she consumed.

      He could scarcely believe it when her friends let her wander off alone, and when she went off down the dark pathway. Had she no clue of the danger that awaited a beautiful woman in such places?

      Of course she did not. Most young ladies did not grow up as his sisters had, knowing the ways of the world and sophisticated about its dangers. So he had followed, to make sure she was left alone, and when he saw her fall.

      He caught her. And it was as if something deep inside of him, something cold and dormant since Valentina, sprang to life. And not just the thing in his breeches, either.

      Emily, or rather the tipsy, black-haired lady with Emily’s green eyes, had put her arms around him and made him feel strong and protective and—and needed again. The power of the lust that seized him when he merely touched her foot, felt the warm, rose-scented, feminine life of her, shocked him. It was powerful and primitive, completely instinctive—and not something he would ever have associated with Lady Emily Carroll.

      Nicholas kicked at a chink in the pavement, making passers-by veer away from him with startled glances. When he first kissed her, he hadn’t been thinking at all—that burning lust completely took over, and he had to taste her. At first she seemed quite surprised, not sure what to do, but then—oh, hell, but then she responded to him with a gasp, reached out to him, learned the patterns of their kiss.

      She learned quickly, ardently. And he forgot they were in a public garden, on the ground amid the trees. He forgot he was the Duke of Manning and she was Lady Emily Carroll, daughter of an earl who was his father’s СКАЧАТЬ