Dukes to the Left of Me, Princes to the Right by Kieran Kramer Page B

sly, murderous types.”
    “Oh.” Poppy felt vaguely guilty, as if she really had killed someone.
    The duke gave her a stern look. “I saved your precious reputation tonight.”
    She stared at him. “You’re no gentleman to say so.”
    He laughed. “I’m merely the first gentleman who’s dared encourage you to be yourself—a nice girl who longs to be naughty. It’s why you’ve been telling your suitors fanciful stories. You’ll soon find that nothing is boring anymore. Not when you’re with me.”
    He threw open the carriage door, leaped out, and offered her his hand. She narrowed her eyes to convey her disapproval of him as he swung her down, which meant she wasn’t really looking at what she was doing and landed against his chest.
    “I’m sure it was the shock of that ridiculous betrothal that accounted for my behavior in the carriage,” she said in her most proper voice.
    “Indeed.” He bowed, a glint of wry amusement in his eye.
    She climbed the stairs, opened the door, and refused to look back at him, even though she sensed he was watching her.
    He was right about her being bored. And he knew she knew he was right.
    It annoyed her no end.

CHAPTER 9

    It was a little-known fact about Nicholas that he always practiced archery when he was sexually frustrated. Of course, that meant he rarely did. He was usually a sexually sated male who preferred to spend his sporting hours boxing at Gentleman Jackson’s or fencing at Angelo’s.
    But in his view nothing beat piercing sandbags with arrows when it came to releasing tension caused by a craving for a female. In fact, he was bound to get a lot of good archery practice in until he wedded and bedded Lady Poppy Smith-Barnes. Even the thought of her pert little chin or those endearingly bony elbows drove him mad with lust.
    Which was why he was in Hyde Park much too early in the morning the day after his betrothal. He’d even managed to locate his brother at a dreary hotel in Cheapside and drag him along.
    “I can’t believe it.” Frank was breathing down Nicholas’s neck (in quite the literal sense) when he bent down to pick up the arrow he’d dropped. “You missed the bull’s-eye by a good half inch.”
    Nicholas ignored his unsporting behavior. “It’s been known to happen. Must you stand so close?”
    “Must you be my brother?” Frank scowled, his bantam-rooster chest pushed up to Nicholas’s stomach.
    Nicholas refrained from rolling his eyes. “You should take to the stage. Your gift for melodrama is wearing anywhere else.” He pulled back on the bow and focused on the sandbag target once more.
    Frank scoffed. “I might have to. Especially since I’m down to my last farthing.”
    “That’s not my fault.”
    “Oh, yes, it is. You hold the purse strings.”
    “And you’ve been given a generous allowance. But you gamble it all away.”
    “That’s what a gentleman of leisure does. Stupid .”
    Nicholas tossed the bow and arrow aside. Frank had always gotten away with calling him names at home. Mother had intervened every time, and after she’d died, his stepmother had actually encouraged Frank’s insults. But both of them were gone.
    Nicholas grabbed his baby brother by the cravat and hauled him close to his face. “Grow up.”
    “No.” Frank’s eyes narrowed. “Big dummy .”
    Nicholas forced himself to remember that Frank was, quite simply, an ass. The last ass in the family had been Great-uncle Hesperus, who’d fathered six children among three housemaids.
    Nicholas supposed the family was due another ass now. Which gave him the wherewithal to drop his brother to the ground without killing him. “And your speaking like a two-year-old is somehow going to convince me to give you additional funds?”
    Frank stood up and wiped off his bottom. “It should. If you were a good brother.” He broke an arrow over his knee for emphasis.
    Nicholas bit his cheek and picked up the bow again. “Listen. If you’d stop gambling, which