Page 8 of The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke

“Indeed, I did not,” she said softly. “I cannot fathom why you would even ask.”

The footman who had assaulted him, the maid, and Sir William stared down at him as if at the end of a dark tunnel. Their faces receded. “My God, Emma,” Sir William said faintly. “How did this happen?”

Both she and Adrian ignored him.

“Your kiss felt like the brush of an angel’s wing upon my face,” Adrian murmured.

“What a fanciful notion,” she whispered. “It must be your injury.”

He sighed. “I think I’m…tired. What happened to the half-wit who brained me?”

“Don’t go to sleep,” she said in panic. “We shall worry about the footman later. Stay awake.”

“I’ll stay awake if you kiss me again.”

“I never—Lord Wolverton?” She lifted his shoulders with her left arm and pressed her head in panic to his chest.

She could feel the reassuring thump of his heart against her cheek. He was a man in his prime, well built, with a soldier’s taut physique. It would take more than a blow on the head to snuff out the life of a man his size, wouldn’t it? Although the ladder-back framework of the hall chair that had felled him showed deep fissures that she suspected could never be repaired.

“Lord Wolverton,” she exclaimed in the voice that never failed to command the obedience of not only her students but her family. “You will be fine. You are not allowed to expire. Or to fall asleep yet. Stop frightening me. It isn’t nice. Wake up.”

His heartbeat seemed to have slowed. Was he still breathing? Frantic, she lifted her face to his throat and listened to his respirations.

Without warning he shifted into her. His wide mouth captured hers in a tentative but deliberate kiss that proved beyond doubt he was more than alive.

“Someone should have warned you,” he whispered in a barely audible voice.

For the span of several heartbeats she could not think.

And when finally she did, she told herself that while he may still be alive, he could have sustained a lasting injury. Because he had defended her. A chivalrous wolf. She brushed a lock of dark gold hair from his bleeding temple. “Warned me about what?” she asked distractedly.

He heaved a sigh against her bosom. “That an angel has no business kissing a devil.”

“I never kissed you—” He sighed and turned his head into her lap.

Her lap.

Yes, appearances mattered. Her reputation mattered, but not as much as the life of a man who had come to her defense in the blink of an eye—in fact, Emma could not help thinking that the entire situation might have turned out better all the way around had Lord Wolverton not been so hasty to play the hero. “You will be fine,” she said as much to herself as to him. How many times had her reckless brothers fallen out of trees, windows, speeding carriages, to their apparent demise? More than once the young demons had lain at death’s door. And Emma, being one of the only two Boscastle children whom everyone agreed showed a modicum of sense, and who fretted the most of her family, was the only one to despair over them.

“My little mother,” her own mama would frequently call her.

But this man, this hard, solid, handsome man whose heavy weight had virtually blocked the flow of blood to her lower extremities, would not expire.

A firm hand touched her shoulder. She glanced up into her brother Heath’s face. “What the devil happened?” he demanded.

Suddenly she realized that they were alone, Sir William and the two other servants having wisely taken their leave. “What happened, Emma?” he repeated.

Heath knelt beside her, his face grim.

One did not expect to see a duke’s heir felled by a chair on the carpet during a wedding reception. Any person of good breeding would understandably be perplexed.

“There has been an…incident,” she said as calmly as possible.

“An incident?” He lifted his brow. “Have you been hurt?”

She gestured at the splintered chair. “No. He got into a fight.”

“That doesn’t sound like Adrian.”