To Pleasure a Duke (The Husband Hunters Club 3)

He blinked, wiping a hand over his face. It was raining again and he hadn’t even noticed. He groaned and started to get dizzily to his feet, only to have Eugenie grasp his shoulders and push him back down to the ground. Her face was above him, frightened and angry, her cheeks streaked with rain and tears.

“What were you thinking, Sinclair? They could have killed you!”

Sinclair grinned at her, strangely buoyant despite everything that had happened, then winced when his bruised jaw protested again. “I couldn’t give up my watch and ring without a fight, Eugenie. What sort of man would I be if I did that?”

She shook her head at him in despair, and gently brushed the bruised skin where Seth’s fist had connected. “Why are men such fools?” she said, clearly not expecting an answer.

“At least we’re in one piece.”

Eugenie had been brave up until now, but now her emotions overwhelmed her. Her lips trembled and then she pulled away from him, crumpling onto the ground in the damp leaves, her head in her arms.

She was weeping. Sinclair watched her shoulders shaking. His limited experience of women told him she’d be better off when she got whatever was bothering her out of her system.

He waited.

But when her sobs began to grow louder and more violent, he was worried enough to kneel over her. “They didn’t take anything that mattered,” he insisted untruthfully. “We’re alive, that’s all that counts, isn’t it? Eugenie, please be calm. You’ll make yourself ill.”

He rested his hand on her hair and after that it seemed natural to stroke her soft, damp curls. That seemed to do the trick because her sobs stopped and eventually she lifted her head. She was a mess, he thought pragmatically. Her green eyes were swollen and pink, her skin was red and blotchy, and she seemed to be very damp about the bodice of her dress.

She seemed so vulnerable. His protective instinct urged him to gather her up in his arms; he resisted.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped.

“Why on earth are you sorry?”

“This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have trusted Georgie. I thought—I thought—” The tears began to spill over her lashes again.

Sinclair gave in and wrapped his arms about her and held her close. Yes, it was her fault, but only because she was too honest and trusting, too good at heart, and she could not see there might be wickedness in a child’s heart.

“He fooled me, too,” he said. “And if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think he enjoyed robbing us.”

“Did you see that, too?” she asked hopefully, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.

“Yes, I did,” he said, and found his handkerchief—at least they’d left him that—using it to mop at her tearstained face. After she’d blown her nose and restored herself a little, she looked around at the woods and the gathering darkness.

It wasn’t late, but the rainy weather and the thick forest reduced the light so that they could have been in a twilight world.

Eugenie shuddered. “This is a horrible place,” she said.

Her wet lashes were spiky against her flushed cheeks, her lips still turned down at the corners, and slowly, but with increasing heat, it occurred to him that he wanted to make love to her.

“It will be all right,” he said, knowing he was babbling and not caring. “I promise it will be all right.” He leaned closer to her and his lips brushed the soft skin of her cheek. “I promise, Eugenie.”

She turned her face, and he was gazing into her remarkable eyes, telling himself there was no one else in the world who looked at him like that. He kissed her damp eyelids, gently. He knew that if she opened her eyes again he would probably have to stop, but she didn’t. She lay in his arms, snuggled against his chest, as if she was sleeping, except that her breasts were rising and falling very quickly. There was a telltale flush of desire on her cheeks.

He knew, with a sense of triumph, that she wasn’t going to deny him.

Eugenie felt his warm breath against her cheek, and then the feather light brush of his lips. If she kept her eyes closed then she could pretend this was a dream, one of her very best dreams. It felt right that this should happen now, after their brush with death.

With a happy sigh she surrendered herself to his kisses.

He began to undo the fastenings on her bodice, his mouth warm against her chilled skin as each inch was exposed. She shivered. She heard him get up and spread out her cloak, and then he was lifting her, cradling her close, and laying her down in a warm nest he’d made. The rain was still falling but the heavily leafed branches above them gave them protection.

His body was heavy on hers, but she welcomed his weight and his strength, her arms slipping about his waist. His mouth was on her breast, closing on the rigid peak. Pleasure shimmied through her and she wriggled against him, wanting to get closer, wanting to fe

el his naked flesh pressed to hers until she couldn’t tell which of them was who.

The emotion and trauma of the past days was replaced with the need to be held and loved, to feel alive, and she reveled in Sinclair’s touch.