Truly a Wife (Free Fellows League 4)

ssued an edict against me and anyone wearing St. Germaine livery.” She looked up at him. “If Lord Hollister hadn’t graciously offered to escort me inside, your mother would have had her footmen escort me back to my carriage.”

“Then I’m doubly indebted to Hollister,” he murmured. “For if she had, it would have marked the end of my mother’s gala evening and her role as hostess here at Sussex House.”

Miranda glanced up at him. A thin line of perspiration beaded his upper lip, and the look in his eyes was hard and implacable. “Daniel, you can’t mean that.”

Daniel softened his gaze as he looked at her. “Oh, but I can,” he said. “After all, this is my house. And as long as I am the duke, you will always be welcomed in it.”

Miranda felt her heart flutter in her chest as she recognized the sincerity in his voice. “It may be your house,” Miranda reminded him, suddenly prepared to be high-minded. “But your mother has had it longer. And she is the duchess.”

“Dowager duchess,” he corrected.

“A duchess all the same.” Miranda sighed. “I grant that your mother dislikes me, but she is your mother and I really don’t enjoy coming here uninvited.”

“You didn’t.”

“How many other guests did you invite?”

“None,” he answered truthfully. “Only you.”

“Why am I the only recipient of the Duke of Sussex’s largesse?”

Daniel smiled at her. “You’re an intelligent woman, Miranda. Surely that shouldn’t be difficult for you to discern …”

He slurred the last word ever so slightly, but Miranda’s heart was thundering so loudly at the look in his eyes and the husky note in his voice that she barely detected it. She giggled softly. “Because everyone else received an invitation from the duchess and you didn’t want to suffer alone?”

The sound of Miranda’s uncertain laugh enchanted him. It was so thoroughly out of the realm of his experience with her. Miranda was never nervous around him. She was never girlish or coy. He knew she expected him to argue, but Daniel leaned closer, suddenly wanting … needing … more from her. “Let’s not argue anymore, Miranda.”

“We always argue,” she told him.

“Not tonight.”

Miranda chuckled again, a wonderful, throaty sound that filled his head with images of her naked and smiling up at him.

She shrugged, thrown off guard and more than a bit captivated by Daniel’s astonishing change from the maddening antagonist with whom she’d clashed during the past few years to the devastatingly attractive gentleman with whom she’d once fallen hopelessly in love. “I’m not quite sure where that leaves us.” She looked up at him. “What shall we do instead?”

“I’m here,” he said, reaching for her hand. “You’re here. And the orchestra’s here. Why not do me the honor of a dance?” He nudged her onto the edge of the dance floor.

Miranda blinked up at him, not certain she’d heard him correctly. “You’re asking me to dance?”

“I am.” Lifting the dance card and tiny pencil dangling from her wrist, he penciled in his name for the current dance and all the others that followed, blithely crossing out the names already listed and adding his own. Although Lord Hollister’s name was written on the first line, his name had been written beside the last dance of the evening. He looked up at her. She hadn’t given up on him entirely. “And it seems I’ve done so in the nick of time, before your card was completely full.”

“You want to dance to this?” She frowned. The orchestra was playing a quadrille, and in all the years she had known him, Miranda had never seen Daniel Sussex partner anyone in a quadrille.

“You know better than that.” He gave her his most devastating smile. Turning in the direction of the orchestra, Daniel held up three fingers, then four, designating the three-quarter time of the waltz.

“Daniel, you can’t!” Miranda protested as soon as she realized his intention. “You know your mother doesn’t allow waltzing at her galas.”

“She’ll allow it at this one,” Daniel replied, signaling for the waltz once again. The orchestra leader glanced at the dowager duchess before giving Daniel an emphatic shake of his head.

Miranda turned to Daniel with a smug, I-told-you-so expression on her face.

But the Duke of Sussex was undaunted. “I’ve no intention of admiring you from a distance as we step our way through an interminable number of old-fashioned squares. Tonight, I’m going to put my hand upon your waist and feel the warmth of your body as we dance.”

Her smug expression died a swift death as he gave voice to his intentions. Her breathing quickened and her heart began a rapid tattoo when Daniel lifted his right hand high into the air, indicated the signet ring bearing the ducal crest, and signaled once again for a waltz in three-quarter time. He kept his hand aloft until the orchestra leader nodded his acquiescence, then slowly lowered his arm, wincing as he did so. “There. See, Miranda?” He turned to her and smiled a wicked smile that sent anticipatory shivers up and down her spine. “With the right incentives, one can accomplish the impossible.”

“I hope so,” she murmured, “because as soon as she hears the music, your mother is sure to put an end to it.”

“Then it’s our only chance.”