Love Letters From a Duke Read Free Page B

sat a Roman nose, set into his features with a noble sort of craggy fortitude. But it was his eyes that finally let loose that odd shiver through her limbs with an abandon that not even she could tamp down.
    His gaze was as dark as night, a pair of eyes the color of Russian sable, mysterious and deep, rich and full of secrets.
    Felicity found herself mesmerized, for all she could think about was something Pippin had once confessed—that from the very moment she’d looked into Captain Dashwell’s eyes, she’d just known he was going to kiss her.
    A ridiculous notion , Felicity had declared at the time. But suddenly she understood what her cousin had been saying. For right now she knew there was no way on earth she was going to go to her grave without having once had her lips plundered, thoroughly and spectacularly, by this man, until her toes curled up in her slippers and she couldn’t breathe.
    She didn’t know how she knew such a thing, but she just did.
    “I’m here to see Miss Langley,” he said. His deep voice echoed with a rough, smoky quality. From the authority in his taut stance, to the arch of his brow as he looked down at her—clearly as surprised to find a lady answering her own door as she was to find him standing on her steps—he left her staggering with one unbelievable thought.
    And her shiver immediately turned to panic.
    This is him , her heart sang. Please let this be him .
    Hollindrake!
    She struggled to find the words to answer him, but for the first time in her life, Felicity Langley found herself speechless. She moved her lips, tried to talk, tried to be sensible,but it was impossible under this imposing man’s scrutinizing gaze.
    Yet how could this be? What was he doing here, calling on her? And at such an unfashionable hour?
    And no wonder he was staring at her, for her hair wasn’t properly fixed, her dress four years out of fashion, and her feet—dear God, she’d answered the door wearing red wool socks!
    Tally nudged her from behind. “Felicity, say something.”
    Reluctantly wrenching her gaze away from his mesmerizing countenance, composing herself, she focused on what it was one said to their nearly betrothed.
    But in those few moments, Felicity’s dazzled gaze took in the coat once again—with its shockingly worn cuffs. Worn cuffs? Oh no, that wasn’t right. And where there should be a pair of perfectly cut breeches, were a pair of patched trousers. Patched? But the final evidence that cooled her wayward thoughts more thoroughly than the icy floor that each morning met her toes, was the pair of well-worn and thoroughly scuffed boots, one of which now sported the added accessory of a firmly attached small, black affenpinscher dog.
    Boots that looked like they’d marched across Spain and back, boots that had never seen the tender care of a valet. Boots that belonged to a man of service, not a duke.
    And certainly not the Duke of Hollindrake.
    She took another tentative glance back at his face, and found that his noble and arrogant features still left her heart trembling, but this time in embarrassed disappointment.
    To think that she would even consider kissing such a fellow…well, it wasn’t done. Perhaps, she conceded, it was. But only in all those fairy tales and French novels Tally and Pippin adored.
    And that was exactly where such mad passions and notions of “love at first sight” belonged—between the covers of a book.
    “You must be the man we’ve been expecting,” Tally was saying, casting a dubious glance in Felicity’s direction. Obviously unaffected by this man’s handsome countenance, she bustled around and caught up Brutus by his hind legs, tugging at the little tyrant. “Sorry about that. He loves a good pair of boots. Hope these aren’t your only pair.”
     
    Aubrey Michael Thomas Sterling, the tenth Duke of Hollindrake, eyed the damage to his boots first, then looked back up at the pair of young ladies before him. Twins, he guessed, though not