Page 78 of An Inconvenient Duke

Dani bit her lip as Harriett left the room. No doubt she’d have the kitchens in a flurry in a matter of minutes, heating the milk for the chocolate and water for the bath. She didn’t want any of it, yet she didn’t stop her simply because doing all that would make her aunt feel better.

She set the music box back on the mantel and closed the sprung lid, then began to pick up the pieces of the mechanism that had been scattered across the rug. When she found the little brass key, she slipped it into the small keyhole in the back with a prayer that Harriett was correct and that they could have the music box repaired.

“No more,” she whispered as she traced her fingertip over the twisted hinges and the lid that folded, skewed, over the bent plate. “Nothing more is going to break, not if I can help it.”

Snatching up her wrap, she paused only to grab the iron key from the drawer in her dressing table before hurrying downstairs and through the house to the front door.

Harriett followed her into the entry hall, clearly alarmed at her behavior. “Danielle! Where are you going?”

“I have an errand to run.” She wrapped the shawl around her shoulders. “I’ll be back before the bathwater cools.”

She raced out the door and down the front steps, the key to the armory clutched tightly in her hand.

Twenty-Four

Marcus dropped his shoulder and slammed an underhanded punch into the sawdust-filled bag. When it went flying into the air, he pivoted on his left foot and kicked a second bag. Then a third and a fourth—each bag hanging from the beams in a circle around him swung randomly and jangled on its chains. He spun and ducked as he kicked or punched each bag randomly, whichever one moved closest to him first, to send it swinging away and the next one arcing toward him. A group fight.

He welcomed it.

Sweat stung his eyes, trickled down his bare back, and soaked through his breeches, and his arms and legs burned from exertion. But even that wasn’t enough to keep his mind off Hartsham and the torture he wanted to subject the man to for daring to harm the women Marcus loved.

Or his own torture at having lost Danielle.

With a vicious kick, he sent the nearest bag high into the air.

Christ!Why didn’t she understand the danger she kept exposing herself to, or how the thought of her being harmed was enough to put him into his own grave? He wanted to marry her, wanted a life with her—wanted to claim the sense of purpose and the best qualities of himself that she brought out in him. But he couldn’t serve properly in Parliament, focus his attentions on running the dukedom, or be a good father and husband if he was constantly worried that she’d be harmed.

Frustration over her rejection and helplessness to save her from herself churned inside him. Not even being here in the armory, working himself to exhaustion, helped ease the burning pain or lighten the black hollow in his chest.

When he stopped to catch his wind and dropped his aching arms to his sides, a tingle of awareness prickled at his nape. He reached a hand out to the last bag that still moved on its chain and stilled it.

Not looking over his shoulder, he called out, “Hasn’t anyone told you that it’s dangerous to sneak up on a man when he’s surrounded by weapons?”

“Hasn’t anyone told you that it’s dangerous to cross a woman?”

He grimaced as he turned to face Danielle.

She stood in the doorway, leaning a shoulder casually against the doorframe, her bonnet dangling from her hand by its ties. But there was nothing at all casual about the intensity that radiated from her or the anger that simmered beneath her alluring surface.

Leveling a hard look at him, she shoved herself away from the door and came slowly toward him. Damn himself that his gaze dropped to watch the angry sway of her hips. He knew she was a fury, ready to launch the second battle in the war that had sprung up between them, but he couldn’t stop the tantalizing spark of desire she flared inside him. One made even sharper by the heat in her flashing eyes.

She stopped in front of him, and the two of them stared at each other for a long moment. Two opponents sizing up the other before a fight.

As an excuse for why he let his eyes drift heatedly over her, he asked, “How is your hand?”

“Cut.” She did the same, trailing over his chest and abdomen, all the way down to his bare feet before moving just as deliberately back up his body. When her gaze moved over his crotch, his cock jumped. Her eyes darted up to his. Although he saw the hitch of her breath, he didn’t dare let himself believe that the flush of her cheeks was anything more than ongoing anger with him. “Yours?”

“Bruised.” He untied the knots that held the long strips of cloth in place over his knuckles.

“Then maybe you should stop fighting.”

He paused as he unwrapped the cloths. Her underlying meaning pierced more than the chastising tone of her voice. “Then maybe people should stop attacking me.”And the ones I love.

Her mouth tightened, and the urge to kiss her until it turned supple and yielding seized him. If he did, then she really would grab up one of the weapons and use it on him.

She stepped past him to the bags. “So this is how you spend your time.” She tilted back her head to glance up the length of chain toward the beams high above. “Pummeling innocent bags of sawdust and grain.” She arched a brow but didn’t dare to slide him a glance, not even when she placed her bonnet on the top of the bag, where it had been fashioned to look like a man’s head. “Maybe I should try punching this. Maybe then I’d think I could control the people who trust me.”

Before he could bite out a reply to that to tell her how very wrong she was, she drew her hand into a tight little fist and smacked it knuckles first into the bag, which didn’t move. Not even to wiggle on its chain.