Four Dukes and a Devil Read Free Page A

when a strong hand clamped down on her arm. She turned with a start to realize that the dark-haired stranger had come up silently behind her.
    “Don’t speak, don’t even think until we are outside alone,” he said. The lightest trace of Ireland accented his words. He opened the glass door leading out into the garden.
    Susan attempted to dig in her heels. She feared what that accent could mean. “I do not know you, sir. I shall not go off alone with you.”
    “You don’t know me?” the gentleman repeated. “And yet everyone is quoting what you’ve said about me. Let me introduce myself, I’m the Duke of Killeigh.”
    With those words, he whisked her outside to the seclusion of the winter night.

Chapter Three
    M iss Susan Rogers was not like any spinster of Roan’s acquaintance, especially those with the charge of other people’s children.
    He’d pictured either a robust dumpling of a woman or a thin, spare one, both with gray hair and frown lines.
    Instead, he found himself commandeering a woman with golden blond hair, full curves in all the right places, and brown eyes alive with intelligence. He’d noticed her immediately when he’d entered Bollingers’ ballroom. She’d stood out like a beacon from all other women there—and it made him unreasonably angry.
    He didn’t want to be attracted to her. Not after what she’d done to him.
    Roan Gillray, the fourth Duke of Killeigh, had come looking for a wife. Other men who frequented the round of balls and parties comprising the Season laughed about the Marriage Mart, and many vowed to steer clear of matchmaking mamas—but Roan wanted to be ensnared. He was ready to marry.
    Perhaps it was because he’d been to war. He knew how short and precious life was. There had been times on the battlefield when he’d doubted he would make it out alive…and many lonely nights when he’d longed for the grace of female companionship. He wasn’t thinking about sex. He’d never lacked for bed partners. What he wanted, what he needed was something more …
    And then he’d been blessed to inherit the dukedom from his cousin, an ill-humored, bitter man who had shut out all in the family. No one had been more surprised than Roan when he learned he was his cousin’s heir, and not just to the title but also the old miser’s carefully hoarded fortune.
    Well, Roan had plans for that fortune. He was anxious to throw off the mantle of soldier and take up the hoe as farmer. He wanted peace and a place on this earth that was all his. He liked the idea of knowing where his bed would be at night and having a woman who understood his ways and cared for him sleeping beside him in the middle of it. She didn’t need to love him—Roan had seen too much of the cruelty in men to believe there was such a thing as love—but he wanted a woman who liked him. Now there was a good word. He wanted someone in his life to like him.
    Except now, everyone acted as if he was a pariah, and it was all because of this woman, who had the longest lashes he’d ever seen—
    Miss Rogers jerked her arm away from his hold, and he let her go, half-expecting her to march inside and denounce him. It was anger that had driven him forward, but the cold air had slapped some sense into him.
    However, instead of storming inside, she stood her ground. “You are angry,” she said, “and you have every right to be.” She straightened her back. “I have unintentionally maligned you. Please accept my apology, Your Grace.”
    “Unintentionally, Miss Rogers?” He gave a bitter laugh, his anger welling inside him all over again. “You singled me out, and you don’t know me.”
    “I didn’t single you out. I was talking about Irish dukes in general.”
    “There aren’t that many of us.”
    “Yes, and frankly, I didn’t expect that there would be one in London.”
    “So it would be acceptable to malign my title if I wasn’t in London?” he asked, a bit confused by her reasoning. “Or were we just never