There was a pause, a curse. And then Dougal pulled back, but only slightly, smiling. “I believe Chartreuse has found our housebreaker.”
He nuzzled her nose with his and she melted with a different kind of warmth. “I should have pushed her into the bushes.”
“Agreed.”
“Next time.” She licked the line of his jaw with the tip of her tongue, just a little, just because she wanted to. “We could pretend we didn’t hear anything.”
“Until they knock on my door and can’t find me,” he said, groaning. “Or you. Damn it.” He stroked his thumbs along her cheeks, securing her at the right angle to kiss her again, hard, hungry, as if he couldn’t get enough of her.
“We should go,” he said regretfully, gruffly. She wasn’t the only one affected by whatever it was between them.
She might have tried harder to convince him to stay, even as candles glowed at the windows of the house, but voices sounded, too near. Footmen, raising the alarm.
“The duke is missing! Search everywhere!”
Dougal sighed. He opened his mouth to say something else but then the footmen were upon them, too fast. If they were caught together, she would be compromised. He would marry her, she knew that much. And it was so tempting. But also selfish of her. She saw the struggle in his face, and the moment he read the hesitation in hers.
“My reputation,” she mouthed. And he didn’t know her well enough yet to know that wouldn’t have stopped her, not if she’d thought a penniless viscount’s daughter could marry a duke.
He looked disappointed but it was so brief she had probably imagined it. Wanted to see it. When he met her eyes, as the snapping of branches underfoot and the panting of footmen increased, his expression was rueful, apologetic, very close to laughing.
She crouched in the bushes, not knowing she could feel this way, desperate, happy, wanted. Wanting.
She didn’t even care that a twig was currently trying to poke up her nose.
Oh, he was dangerous, this man.
So very dangerous.