The Lady Most Willing

“Oh, but you must finish your breakfast,” Catriona said quickly. “And keep Lord Oakley company.”

“I would love that above all things,” Marilla said. She turned to Lord Oakley, who had taken a seat next to her, and smiled seductively at him over her bosom.

Catriona thought she might have heard Lord Oakley gulp. But she couldn’t be sure. The duke had already taken her arm and was hauling her toward the door.

Chapter 5

Bret did not let go of Miss Burns’s arm until they had put three full rooms between them and Marilla Chisholm. Only then did he turn to her and say, “Thank you.” And then, because once was not even remotely enough: “Thank you.”

“You’re quite welcome,” she said, looking down at something in her hand.

“You brought a scone?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I was still hungry.”

His fault. But surely she’d forgive him.

She glanced toward the door through which they’d just come. “I think I may have left a trail of crumbs.”

“My deepest apologies,” Bret said, “but I—”

“There is no need to apologize,” Miss Burns said, “as long as you don’t mind if I finish eating while we’re standing here.”

“Please.”

She took a dainty little bite, then said, “I thought Marilla was going to attack you.”

“Is she always so . . .”

“Forward?”

A kinder version of the word he might have used. “Yes,” he said.

“No,” Miss Burns admitted. “But you’re a duke.” She looked up from her food, her eyes large and filled with the same amusement that played across her lips. “Sorry.”

“That I’m a duke?”

“It can’t be a good thing at times like this.”

He opened his mouth to say . . .

What?

His mouth hung open. What had he meant to say?

“Your Grace?” She looked at him curiously.

“You’re right,” he said. Because as lovely as it was to be a duke, and it was—really, what sort of idiot complained about money, power, and prestige?—it still had to be said, with Marilla Chisholm on the prowl, life as a stablehand was looking rather tempting.

“I’m sure most of the time it’s delightful,” she said, licking strawberry jam from her fingers. “Being a duke, I mean.”

He stared, unable to take his eyes from her mouth, from her lips, pink and full. And her tongue, darting out to capture every last bit of sticky-sweet jam.

Her tongue. Why was he staring at her tongue?

“You needn’t worry about me,” she said.

He blinked his way up from her mouth back to her eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

“Dangling after you,” she explained, sounding somewhat relieved to get it out in the open. “And I think you’re safe from Fiona as well.”

“Fiona?”

“The elder Miss Chisholm. She’s as unlike Marilla as, well, as I am, I suppose. She has no intention to marry.”

Bret regarded Miss Burns curiously. “Does that mean that you don’t, either?”

“Oh no, I do. But I don’t intend to marry you.”

“Of course not,” he said stiffly, because a man did have his pride. His first marriage rejection, and he had not even proposed.

Her eyes met his, and for the briefest moment, her gaze was devoid of levity. “It would be very foolish of me to even consider it,” she said quietly.

There didn’t seem to be an appropriate response. To agree would be a grave insult, and yet of course she was correct. He knew his position; he had a duty to marry well. The dukedom was thriving, but it had always been wealthier in land than in funds. The Duchesses of Bretton always entered the family with a dowry. It would be highly