“You still haven’t told me who you are,” he said, and with his face so close to hers, she felt the brush of his breath across her lips. It sent a shiver through her.
Meg’s gaze collided with his once more, and there it was again . . . that peculiar cinching sensation around her middle. It was accompanied by a strange tug in the pit of her stomach as if there were an invisible rope through her navel and someone behind him had gathered the end of it in their fist. And in the back of her mind, she envisioned the thick braiding coiled around the two of them, pulling their bodies flush . . .
Feeling herself teeter forward on the balls of her feet, she released the frames at once and dropped back on her heels.
She’d only managed to secure one side, leaving the spectacles to dangle crookedly from his right ear. But she didn’t dare try to correct them now. She was too light-headed and her heart was racing at a most peculiar gallop.
“I must go,” she rasped, laying a hand against her midriff.
She realized that her glove had fallen at some point. Her gaze drifted down to it, pausing along the way to study his corded forearms, strong and dusted with dark hair, the skin swarthy and tanned. And she found herself wondering if he spent time out of doors with his sleeves rolled up or, perhaps, with no shirt at all . . .
The errant thought took her completely off guard. Especially when her mind flashed to an image of this man standing bare-chested in the sunlight and brandishing a long, gleaming sword like one of Arthur’s knights during the age of myths and legends.
She became oddly short of breath. Winded, even. Clearly, there was something amiss with the air down here.
Lifting her gaze, she saw him staring back at her most curiously, his black pupils eclipsing all those golden flecks. His nostrils flared. Then she heard the scuff of his boot against the stones. Felt the slight crush of her skirts against her stocking-clad shins. Saw his gaze fall to her mouth. And then his hand lifted, hovering for a fraction of a second . . . just before she felt the touch of his thumb and forefinger against her chin.
Her lips parted on a gasp.
The sound cut through the stillness of the shadowy corridor and seemed to bring them both to attention.
He released her at once. Then, retreating a step, he stared down at his hand with marked confusion as if he’d never seen it before.
“Were you going to”—she splayed a hand over the buttons of her spencer, the garment impossibly tight—“kiss me?”
He flinched as if she’d dashed a glass of cold water in his face. Looking down the ridge of his nose at her, he crisply enunciated, “Of course not.”
She didn’t believe him. And her racing heart didn’t believe him either. “Was that your method of intimidation, then?”
“Of course not.”
“Is that all you have to say, of course not? You won’t even bother to explain yourself?”
“I—” He looked at his hand again and then over his shoulder, toward the corridor. And, when he spoke again, his tone was distracted, faraway, his attention clearly diverted. “I’ll leave you now. I trust you know the way out.”
Then, before she could make heads or tails of anything at all, he turned and strode back in the direction from which he’d come. The intense focus he’d given her an instant ago had apparently shifted to something else.
In other words, he was a typical man.
Dipping low for the fallen glove, she stole beneath her hem to take hold of the recipe as well. Just in case the Duke of Distraction should turn back around, she tucked the folded foolscap against her palm beneath the kid leather and stood.
As she watched him go, she nodded to herself and expelled a breath. “Most definitely lunacy in the family.”
Chapter 3
The secret ingredient
Lucien Ambrose, the seventh Duke of Merleton, dismissed the intruder from his thoughts. He had more pressing matters to attend to, rather than dealing with the machinations of a wayward husband-hunter. And time was of the essence.
This was about his life’s work, after all. He could already feel the effects of this latest experiment dissipating. Therefore, he focused on ensuring that the length and speed of his gait was adequate enough to reach the buttery before his research was altered by any further delay.
For the past eleven years, he’d been studying his family’s ancient book of recipes, searching for the truth behind the myth. And for eleven years, his efforts had offered nothing except frustration.
At least, until today.
There had been something distinctly different in this afternoon’s sample. Named the Recipe of Glatisant, it was a meat pie said to have suffused the knights with the attributes of the questing beast, making them feel powerful and virile, and heightening each of their senses—all the symptoms that he had experienced moments ago.
Which meant that there might be some truth to the old tales passed down for centuries in his family.
His pulse leapt with excitement as his stride continued to eat up the flagstones beneath his feet. Though, to be honest, he’d never expected his experiments to render a demonstrable result.
He’d always been pragmatic. Logical to a fault, some would say. Fancy was not in his nature.
Even as a boy of six walking in the garden with his mother, he could recall when she’d pointed to a rainbow and told him that it was a wonder of creation. He had disagreed, explaining that it was a prismatic effect of bending light and even showed her the triangular prism he’d kept in his pocket. Mother had laughed, then had taken both his hands and spun him around in a circle, telling him that he was a wonder of creation, too.
He’d never really known precisely what she’d meant by that, because there was no question of the manner in which he had appeared in this world. It was a simple matter of procreation. At the time, however, and because he adored his mother, he’d accepted those nonsensical comments as the idioms of her lexicon.
His mother had often spoken of wonders and miracles, of chance and fate, and his father of knights and legends, of improbable romantic tales.
Given time, Lucien may have begun to understand and, perhaps, even believe their delusions. But they had died when he was seven, and he’d been raised by his grandfather instead.
The sixth Duke of Merleton had been shattered by the death of his only son. The once-enigmatic duke, who’d enjoyed sharing ancient stories about noble quests with anyone who cared to listen, had become closed off and grim. He’d taught Lucien that what mattered most was keeping the book locked away, safe and secure, so that no one—not even the family—would ever clap eyes on it again.
Then Lucien had been sent away to school, his key to the vault confiscated.
Even though he had obeyed his grandfather’s orders, it had been difficult. After all, he’d barely been introduced to the book before he was barred from it. And he’d had so many questions that required answers.
So when Lucien had succeeded the title and reclaimed the key to the vault, that was precisely what he’d set about to find: answers. Proof.
A less determined man might have given up after a year or two of constant failure. Most definitely after five. But his own nature forced him to exhaust every single possibility before he surrendered.
And it might have all been leading him to this very moment.