Free Caroline and the Duke: A Regency Short Story by Sabrina Darby Page B

aside and stepped out into the shadows, into the sound of the wind rustling through the greenery. There was no one out here in this cold, Stygian night but him, tucked even deeper into the shadows, away from prying eyes. She took three important steps toward him, heard the orchestra take up their instruments again with a ringing chord.
    “Sutbridge,” she began, his name feeling suddenly foreign on her tongue. The moist, cold earth from the garden corner below them was heavy, cloying in the air, filling the darkness.
    “You wanted to speak with me?”
    She couldn’t read him. As usual, he stood there so negligently, leaning against the brick wall, one arm draped along the wrought iron. She wanted to step closer to his warmth, to breathe him in the way she secretly had on so many other occasions.
    “I did,” she agreed, stalling. For all her brave speech back in the drawing room she had no idea how to propose an affair, to guide their aimless flirtation into something passionate. Perhaps Sutbridge no longer found her physically attractive at all. “I do.”
    “The night is short,” he said, and there was an edge to his tone, the phrasing, everything oh-so-careful, as if he held something back.
    “And you wish to return to the dancing,” she filled in for him. Offered a breezy smile, as if nothing mattered at all. She rested the gloved fingers of her left hand lightly on the railing, not so far from his. She shivered as the cold of the metal seeped into her fingers. It would be nothing to reach out a mere inch, to close the ridiculous distance between them. Once he had kissed her. Could he not be brought to do so again?
    “No, Caro.”
    Startled by the blunt words, she met his gaze. His eyes glittered fiercely in the dim light. He still leaned against the wall, but now she could see the tension coiled within him, the way every muscle of his body was held in stilled motion.
    “No to what?” The air crackled between them, and excitement quickened within her. Aware of possibility, she inched her fingers forward, the tips just grazing the side of his.
    His hand tightened around the iron and he moved, his body shifting forward, closing that space. Sutbridge towered over her and she leaned her head back to look at his face. She couldn’t see him well, could hardly distinguish the dark mahogany of his hair from the ink of the sky. But she knew the broad, strong planes of his face and the intensity of his brown eyes. Tonight, in the absence of light, her other senses were alive. He smelled of winter and perfumed water. She wanted to wrap her arms around his neck and lose herself in him.
    “I need an heir. A legitimate heir.”
    So he thought that was what she wanted. She smiled, put his mind at ease.
    “Yes,” she agreed, for it was nothing more than the truth. “And I’m too old to give you one.”
    “Hardly. I have no doubt you’re still quite fertile.” She was startled by a shiver of desire at his provocative words. “But you’ve made it very clear to everyone that you abhorred marriage.”
    “I did,” she admitted, taking a small step toward him. Another slight movement and her body would be pressed to his, here on the balcony, where anyone could see. “But that isn’t what I want from you.”
    She heard his sharp exhale of breath, wondered what it meant.
    “I know it isn’t.” If he knew that, then why was he hesitating? At least the touch of his hand covering hers was more convincing than his words. The heat, the feeling of skin to skin across barriers of fine fabric, was the most intense sensation she had ever experienced in her life.
    “Let us go,” she urged. “As you said, the night is short.” And she wanted to know pleasure. To know it with him. Most of all, she wanted Sutbridge to transform the taking of a man between her thighs from an act of mere duty to one of transcendent beauty.
    His thumb pushed down the finely embroidered edge of her glove, caressed the thin skin of her