Page 26 of The Duke Decides

Louisa, walking up the carpeted stairs of Barkham House with him.

Louisa sitting at a vanity table in his dressing room, removing pins from her hair.

Louisa in his bed in the master’s suite. Beside him. Beneath him. Her calm, sweet face asleep on the pillow next to his as morning sun stole through the windows.

His gut tightened at this cascade of images, chest squeezing, throat strangling with how acutely, how desperately these new thoughts appealed to him. He couldn’t speak.

She stepped away toward her desk, rubbing one hand along the back of her neck as if soothing an ache. “Leaving is my best option.”

Yes. Come with me.

No. It was too soon.

“Not true,” Gabe said. “The best option is to defeat your blackmailer.”

She turned to face him, her skirts a soft rustle, her face pale and stark. “I cannot see how.”

Hell’s elbows, she was beautiful. He groped through his brainbox for the shreds of the master plan he’d developed on his way to Knightsbridge.

“He’s bid you to sell your buildings to his agent, hasn’t he?”

“And the land too, I presume. He said something about development.”

Which would make all this go away. Everything she had built, cast out into the cold world.

“But before he only wanted money.”

She winced. “And I paid. I was a fool.”

“So, with the right temptation, he will grow even more avaricious. More demanding.”

She watched him warily. “I can’t want that.”

“But if he gives into greed, we can make him expose himself. Reach too far, as it were.”

“I don’t see how.” She spread her hands, showing her empty palms. “I have nothing of my own to give him.”

Gabe stepped closer. “I have a plan.”

She bit her lip. That lush, kissable lip. “To catch the blackmailer, and expose him.”

“Yes.”

Her brows drew together. “Will this plan entail my being your lover?”

“Hell’s knees, I hope so.”

Longing chased across her face—oh, yes, she wanted him—before she caught and shuttered her expression into polite disapproval. “I cannot risk my reputation. I have already— He already has enough with which to torment me.”

“What if he thought he could take more?” He stepped so close his chest nearly touched her breasts. His trouser leg brushed her skirt, and even that brief contact made his nerves tighten.

“I don’t have—”

“What if he thought you were going to be a duchess?”

Chapter Nine

“He is courting you!” Lady Emmeline clapped with the delight of a girl.