Page 9 of The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke

“He caught Sir William forcing his intentions on—”

“What?”

“—on my hand. William wouldn’t let go of my hand and Adrian interceded.”

Heath smiled darkly. “Now that sounds like a duke.”

She forced herself to remain calm. “Is he going to be all right, Heath?”

“Did he insult you?”

“Not in the least.” She shook her head, her worried gaze riveted to Adrian’s still face. “He was trying to defend me, and the footman hit him with a chair by mistake.”

Heath slid two fingers beneath Adrian’s white neckcloth to feel his pulse. “In that case, I can state with complete confidence that he shall be all right.”

“Then why isn’t he moving?” she asked in a distraught voice.

Heath smiled. “Ask him.”

She looked down into a pair of hazel eyes smoldering with unholy mirth. Adrian’s lean cheek pressed into the curve of her breast.

A wolf, indeed.

Chapter Three

Adrian observed the figures that flitted around his bed through half-closed eyelids. He wanted to tell whoever they were to go to the devil and let him sleep for an hour or so. But it had been insult enough to his dignity to suffer Heath and Drake Boscastle examining his head and peering into his eyeballs while he lay uselessly on the floor.

He’d also wanted to inform the pigheaded fools that he could have walked to the carriage on his own if the walls had stopped spinning for a moment and some jokester had refrained from yanking the carpet out from under his feet every time he attempted to take a step.

He would have been content to remain cradled against Emma Boscastle’s enticing bosom until he found the energy to chase after the dunghill who had insulted her. And the other idiot who’d brained him into the bargain.

He picked out her graceful figure standing at the window of Heath Boscastle’s town house.

From what he could see of her, and his vision was deucedly blurred, she appeared to be unharmed, not a red-gold hair on her slender neck disturbed, which was more than he could say for his pride.

He had meant to come to her rescue, not the other way around. He lifted his head to speak. A piercing pain shot through the base of his skull into his back teeth.

She glanced around at him unexpectedly.

“Hell,” he said. “Hurts like hell.”

“He’s stirring, Heath,” she whispered to a shadowed form at her right. “Fetch the physician from downstairs.”

A minute or so later a brusque white-bearded Scot stood at Adrian’s bedside. “He might be perfectly well in the morning,” he announced with little conviction.

“Well, thank heavens,” Emma said from the opposite side of the bed.

“Then again,” the physician added, “he might not.”

“How does one know?” she asked in consternation.

“One doesn’t,” the Scottish doctor replied with cheerful morbidity. “That’s the challenge of medicine.”

She ventured closer to the bed. Adrian would have recognized her by her subtle fragrance alone, sweet and alluring like roses after a rain. The challenge from his point of view was not medicine. It was hiding his fascination with the woman standing at his side. His head might hurt. The rest of his unfortunate male body seemed to work well enough.

“I believe he’s coming around,” the doctor said. “Can you give us your name?” he asked, biting off each word with a distinctive burr as if he were addressing a child.

Adrian folded his arms across his chest and sat up, his head pounding. “King Tutankhamen.”