Tall, Dark & Notorious: The Duke's Cinderella Bride

‘No!’ She turned her head away to avoid his kiss and at the same time pushed against his restraint, fighting to escape the steely band of his arms, but only succeeding in pressing herself more intimately against him. ‘No!’ Again she protested, fearing the desire that she could clearly see still held him in its grip. ‘You must not! Please, Hawk, you must not…!’

Her pleas pierced the fierce desire that raged through Hawk’s body, causing him to pause, to blink dazedly as he stared down at her in stunned disbelief.

This woman—this girl—was the ward of his host. The unmarried ward of his host.

He released her abruptly to step back, jaw tight, eyes gleaming a glittering, inflexible gold. ‘You should not have come here alone, Jane,’ he repeated harshly.

Her throat moved convulsively in the moonlight. ‘No, I should not. But I had not expected anyone to follow me—’

‘No, Jane?’ Hawk’s voice was hard, inflexible. ‘Are you sure that your present indignation is not due to the fact that it was the wrong man who responded to your invitation?’

She looked bewildered by his accusation. ‘The wrong man? I do not understand—’

‘Was it not James Tillton who was supposed to attend you here tonight rather than myself?’ Hawk had realised belatedly, as he remembered the flirtation he had witnessed during dinner, that this must be the case—that Jane’s dismay when he had joined her here had really been due to the fact that her lover—James Tillton?—had not arrived for their arranged tryst.

‘Lord Tillton?’ Jane gasped at his accusation. ‘I detest Lord Tillton! He behaved most disgracefully towards me during dinner—to such a degree that in the end I had to pierce his wrist with my fingernails in order to stop his pawing of me beneath the table. Besides which, he is a married man!’ she added frowningly.

Hawk’s mouth twisted scathingly. ‘Summer house parties like this one are notorious for the night-time assignations of people who are indeed married—but not to each other.’

‘Indeed, Your Grace?’ Her voice was icily cold. ‘And which female guest’s bed have you chosen to grace with your own illustrious presence tonight?’

Even now, in her pride and anger, Hawk could appreciate how beautiful, how tempting the inaptly named Miss Jane Smith truly was. Admittedly, her years spent under the guardianship of the forceful Lady Sulby seemed to have cowed the more spirited parts of her nature, but they were still there nonetheless—in the way that Jane challenged him, in the way that she never flinched from contradicting him. Two things that rarely, if ever, happened to the Duke of Stourbridge.

Jane Smith was unusual in that she did not seem to see him as just a duke. She saw past his title to the man beneath, and it was to that man that she spoke during her moments of rebellion. It was to that man that her beauty appealed. To such a degree that Hawk had briefly forgotten all the caution that had served him so well these last ten years.

It would not—it must not!—happen again.

‘I have no interest in bedding any of the ladies now residing at Markham Park,’ he said disdainfully, knowing by the way Jane stiffened that she had heard his intended rejection of her own charms in that carefully worded dismissal. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I believe I will make my excuses to the Sulbys before retiring to my bedchamber for the night.’ He bowed abruptly before turning to leave.

‘Not without first making me an apology,Your Grace!’

Hawk turned slowly back to her, his narrowed gaze taking in the taut lines of her body and the challenge in her defiantly raised chin.

‘For almost kissing you…?’

She gave him a contemptuous glare. ‘For wrongly accusing me of encouraging Lord Tillton!’

Was it possible Hawk had mistaken the events he had witnessed earlier at the dinner table? Had Jane not been encouraging Tillton after all, but rather, as she claimed, fighting off the other man’s unwanted attentions? Attention towards a young woman about whom it was obvious her guardians did not care, let alone offer protection to?

‘If I was mistaken—’

‘You were!’

‘If I was mistaken then I apologise.’ Hawk nodded abruptly. ‘But in future I would advise you not to come here alone. You might find yourself in much graver danger another time than you have this evening.’

‘Until now these dunes have always been my place of refuge!’

Until Hawk had intruded.

Until he had held her in his arms and attempted to kiss her.

But that was a temptation she had not demanded apology for…

She was magnificent. Hawk could acknowledge that even with his inner determination not to initiate any further intimacy between them. Her unconfined hair blew in the wind, a thick curtain of flame, her eyes were wide and challenging, and those perfectly pouting lips were set defiantly.

All of those things told Hawk that she would be a formidable lover. that this woman was more than capable of matching the depths of his own passion, which he was always at such pains to hide from others and which Jane, instinctively, was able to touch and ignite.

Jane Smith, he decided determinedly, was a definite danger to the icy reserve of the Duke of Stourbridge.

Jane Smith was even more of a danger to the inner man that was still, at heart, the sensual Hawk St Claire.

‘They obviously no longer offer such refuge,’ he pointed out coldly, unpityingly. ‘I will bid you goodnight, Miss Smith.’ He turned away, and this time he did not look back, did not hesitate as he strode purposefully back to Markham Park.

Jane watched him go—a tall, forbidding shape that finally disappeared into the darkness—knowing that it wasn’t only the refuge of the dunes that the Duke of Stourbridge had invaded this evening. When he had touched her, when he had looked in danger of kissing her, he had awakened a hunger deep inside her, a desire she had never known before, which had caused her breasts to swell and harden, and which had ignited a fiery warmth between her thighs that had made her want to forget all caution as she met and matched the passion she had been sure would be in his kiss. At that moment Jane knew she had wanted to lie down with him amongst the sand dunes, to strip away every vestige of the haughty coldness of the Duke of Stourbridge even as they stripped away their clothing, to explore, to kiss, to caress—

There Jane’s heated thoughts came to an abrupt halt. Because she had no idea what came after the kissing and caressing!

She did remember Lady Sulby’s cautions to Olivia at the start of her Season concerning her behaviour with the more roguish members of the ton—the main one being, ‘A lady may take as many lovers as she wishes after she is married, but not a single one before she has the wedding ring upon her finger.’

Did Jane’s wanton longings concerning the Duke of Stourbridge mean that she was not, after all, the lady she had always thought herself to be…?

‘You sent for me, Lady Sulby?’ Jane stood obediently in front of the other woman the following morning as Lady Sulby sat at the table in her private parlour, reading through the correspondence strewn across the table in front of her.

The blue gaze was ice-cold as Lady Sulby swept her a disparaging glance before answering. ‘You are completely recovered this morning from your headache, Jane?’

Her tone and demeanour were surprisingly mild. Instantly increasing Jane’s wariness. She had been expecting further retribution for what Olivia had warned her Lady Sulby perceived as Jane’s ‘flirtatious behaviour’ with the Duke of Stourbridge the evening before. The mildness of the older woman’s tone now did not in the least deceive her into dropping her guard.

‘I am quite recovered, thank you, Lady Sulby.’

The older woman gave a gracious inclination of her head. ‘You slept well?’

‘Fitfully.’As expected, Jane had found her dreams full of images—not of the Duke of Stourbridge, but of the man who had held her in his arms and ordered her to call him Hawk. Those images had been so erotically arousing that she had awoken suddenly in the darkness, gasping, her body shaking, her nipples hard and aching to the touch, and an unaccustomed dampness between her thighs.

‘Indeed?’ Lady Sulby sat back in her chair, the once beautiful face hard and unyielding as she looked at Jane from between narrowed lids. ‘Could that possibly be because you failed to sleep alone…?’

Jane gasped at the accusation even as she felt the colour drain from her cheeks. Surely Lady Sulby had not misunderstood Jane’s response to Lord Tillton’s advances towards her the evening before in the same way the Duke had?

Or could Lady Sulby possibly be referring to the Duke himself…?

Coming so soon after the memory of Jane’s erotic dreams about him, the thought made her cheeks now suffuse with colour.

‘Do not trouble yourself to answer, Jane,’ Lady Sulby snapped, before Jane had recovered sufficiently to refute the accusation. ‘It will serve no purpose for me to hear any of the sordid details—’

Jane’s shocked gasp interrupted her. ‘But there are no sordid details—’

‘I said I did not wish to hear!’ The older woman looked at her with unguarded dislike. ‘It is enough that, despite all our efforts, all the guidance and care that Sulby and I have so generously given you these last twelve years, you have still grown into a woman exactly like your wantonly disgraceful mother!’

Every drop of blood seemed to drain from Jane’s head and she felt herself sway dizzily. ‘My—my mother…?’