Chapter 1
“What is that infernal racket?”
The muffled growl heated Cathy’s shoulder through her thin chemise. Kathleen Quinten shifted in her sleep. That deep, gravelly, and faintly familiar voice did not belong in a lady’s bedchamber. The sound seemed drenched in bourbon, too much of it. Was there a man in her bed?
It cannot be...
She shifted again, her body primed to bolt. However, a heavy weight pinned her to the mattress. Her mind was still under the effects of a deep slumber, but her hand had wandered idly and settled on something warm and smooth. Upon contact, her fingers instinctively curled around it, and it quickly turned rigid.
“W-what?” she muttered, finally opening her eyes and letting go of the foreign body part of the very person who held her down in her bed.
The scream did not just gurgle in her throat; it erupted.
“Hush!” Tristan Radcliffe, the Duke of Baxter, leaped from his prone position and placed his large, calloused hand over her mouth. “I said, hush!”
She could not believe the audacity of the man! What was he even doing in her room? In her bed?
Cathy stared up at him, her vision still swimming. The morning light was dim, filtered by the heavy velvet curtains.
The usually well-groomed Duke of Baxter, acclaimed as the most eligible bachelor of theton, was unrecognizable. On this morning, when Cathy could barely bring herself to rise, his own eyes were bloodshot from possible intoxication. Though he invaded her senses in many ways, that smell of alcohol—so familiar in her childhood—evoked white-hot fury within her.
She bit his palm.
“Argh. You vixen!” the Duke grunted, yanking his hand back and shaking it hard. “What are you doing?”
It did make him lift his weight off of Cathy. He rolled off and away to the edge of the bed. She took it as an opportunity to scramble backward, pulling the silk duvet to cover herself.
“No, what areyoudoing in my room?” she demanded. “You should not be in my bed at your wedding party!”
The Duke groaned, rubbing his temples with his fingers.
“Why are you so loud? My mind is not ready for this. I am hearing a whole cavalry marching inside my head, and I cannot process what you are saying when you yell at me with that shrill voice of yours.”
My shrill voice? How dare he be so unbothered by this?
Cathy narrowed her eyes at him, her shoulders stiffening as she got herself into a more upright position on the bed. She suddenly felt a blast of cool air touch her bare shoulders.
Wait. Why are my shoulders bare?
What was happening? The cool touch was a stark contrast to the heat the Duke left behind on the sheets. The duvet felt like barely any protection against the man who could make even a tall woman like her feel small.
“I will scream louder if you do not vacate my rooms this instant!” she hissed, her eyes blazing. “You should know what standards of conduct to follow, even if you are known as a rake. Is your own suite not opulent enough, or did you lose your way after drinking yourself into a stupor? If a maid enters this room at this very moment, my life or what is left of it will be over!”
The Duke squinted back at her, his eyes dropping to the breasts she was covering with the duvet. Then, he shook his head as if clearing it before he explained, “I do not really remember what happened. The last thing I remember was drinking with Brandon. Then, everything that happened after felt like I was in a fog. I knew that I smelled your lavender soap somewhere, but I could not fathom how we were so close.”
Cathy’s eyebrows raised in indignation. Of all the things he could remember, it would be her soap. Why did he know what she smelled like?
“That is how you describe it?” Cathy’s voice rose once more. “You are a man, not a hound, Your Grace. You climbed into an unmarried lady’s bed because you were drinking with your friend last night, and you had the call of the wild as a canine?”
The Duke straightened himself, standing on the floor by the foot of the bed. He had managed to pull up his breeches, which still hung obscenely low on his hips. That was all he was wearing.
Cathy’s eyes widened at the sight of his muscular shoulders and well-defined abdomen. She had never seen a man in such a state of undress before. Her breath came like a huff, but this time, she managed to tame her gasp. The morning light caught every ripple of muscle. On his shoulders. On his chest. On his...
For as long as she had known of him, he had always been attractive, but his rakish ways seemed to have diminished his appeal—to her, anyway. She had no tolerance for rakes. At the moment, though, his presence dominated the room.
He turned to her, seemingly oblivious to what she was thinking.
“Come to think of it, I do remember speaking to you last night, Miss Quinten,” Tristan said, fixing her with a stare. “You were your usual self, arguing with me about some nonsense. Oh, yes, you said something to the effect that Homer was superior to Virgil, although I had spied one of your sisters clutching a book of Virgil’s. Somehow, there is something suspicious about that, since I ended up in your bed.”