Scandal And The Duchess by Jennifer Ashley Page B

again.
    Heady sensations, heat chasing shivers, and again Rose had to lock her fingers on to his coat to remain on her feet. Steven closed his teeth over her lower lip, and fire streaked through her, like a lightning storm homing in on one point.
    Steven traced her lip with his tongue, then once more slid his mouth over hers. This time, Rose met his strokes with her own, their bodies locked together, touched by the cool draft from the staircase.
    Sanity didn’t return even when Steven eased back, wiping a tiny bit of moisture from Rose’s upper lip.
    “Oh, Rosie,” he said, his accent thick. “Why the devil did I have to meet ye?”
    “We didn’t meet.” Rose struggled to find her voice. “We stumbled into each other.”
    “Aye, and I wanted to stay fallen on you forever. You’re a beautiful woman, my Scottish Rose. You could be the end of me.”
    And you, of me,
Rose finished silently.
    Steven touched her cheeks, his hands caressing as he held her with his gaze. His eyes looked clearer now, the same color as the winter sky through the window behind him.
    Love was for warmth, and spring, Rose tried to tell herself. Not for winter, and cold.
    But perhaps love knew no seasons—it simply came when it was time.
    “We should commence our search,” Steven said. “Before young John returns to be shocked.”
    “Yes.” Again, Rose had to search for breath to form the sound. “We should.”
    Steven smiled at her, which did nothing to help Rose collect herself. He released her from the comfort of his arms, but only to take her hand and lead her on up the stairs.
    ***
    Steven hadn’t caught his breath even by the time Rose had led him up through the maze of the house to the top floor.
    The manor wasn’t truly a maze—it had been built at the end of the seventeenth century, when straight lines and symmetrical architecture had been in fashion. But its occupants had, for the past two hundred years, filled it with screens, cabinetry, sofas, tables, chairs, paintings, bric-a-brac, mirrors, chests, highboys, étagères, desks, and credenzas by the score, and every room had mixed and matched styles from over the centuries. A decorator in the past had tried to break up the severity of right angles in rooms by placing the furniture together in the middle, which succeeded only in making everything more of a jumble.
    Might have interested Steven more if his whole body hadn’t been burning from Rose’s nearness. One taste of her wasn’t enough, and never would be.
    Steven had sensed a desperate hunger in her, one she might not even realize she possessed. Rose obviously missed her husband, but whether or not he’d satisfied her in bed was anyone’s guess. The fact that the man had died on their honeymoon could mean anything from he’d been overexcited making love to his beautiful wife to slipping and falling down the stairs. The journalists would believe the first—that Rose had killed him by being too eager in the bridegroom’s bed, but Steven had no idea what the real story was.
    Rose walked through the house without worry, looking over everything her husband must have shown her, without guilt. Whoever had been to blame for the duke’s demise, it hadn’t been Rose.
    They went through room after lofty room, Rose knowing her way around perfectly. Steven enjoyed imagining her leading him until he had no idea where he was, and then telling him she’d take him back out for a price of a kiss or two. For more than kisses. She’d smile when she said it, her eyes sparkling.
    No, that would never happen. Rose wasn’t the sort of woman who went in for naughty games. In spite of the scandal sheets, she was a gentleman’s daughter, raised to the straight and narrow.
More’s the pity.
    Rose turned around so suddenly that Steven almost ran into her. Reminded him of their first meeting, he falling onto her bosom, then sliding down her welcoming body.
    “I’ve thought of something,” she said.
    Steven had thought of something