He set the food on the table by the bedroom window and kept a grip on Ellie’s wrist. “I am safe with you,” he said. “I have pondered why that should be and whether it’s to my liking.”

“And?”

He drew her near, carefully, giving her every opportunity to pull away. Ellie stood in his embrace, torn between the longing to wrap her arms around him and the certain knowledge that to do so was errant foolishness. She averaged the difference between prudence and impulse by allowing the intimacy to go on, relishing the feel of his body against hers, and saving for later the regret that must follow.

“We have no pretenses between us,” Elsmore said. “You are honest with me. You don’t expect me to bring good cheer and ducal beneficence to every exchange. You skewer me if I toss out too much small talk, and I adore you for that. You do me the very great honor of dealing with me as if I am capable of grasping a significant problem and perhaps even solving it. To you, I am more than a prize to be hauled onto the dance floor.” He kissed her temple. “You scold me.”

“Somebody should scold the pair of us.” Instead, Ellie’s arms, which had been obediently at her sides, wound around his waist, inside his morning coat, where all was warmth and intimacy. He was lean, muscular, and tall enough that Ellie could rest her full weight against him, like a woman overcome with fatigue.

Or loneliness.

“If you scold me,” he said, “I will apologize sincerely, and assure you that I won’t presume again.” He rested his cheek against Ellie’s crown, and she stole another moment of forbidden pleasure.

This mutual interest in each other had no future. Not because he was a duke—dukes took mistresses, they had liaisons, they seldom made the most faithful of husbands.

Ellie had no future in any intimate capacity with Elsmore precisely because she was not honest with him and never could be.

“If you apologize,” Ellie said, stepping back, “then I must do likewise. I am disinclined to apologize for harmless familiarities enjoyed when we are in private. Those familiarities, though, are a distraction from my appointed task. We’d best eschew them going forward.”

He cradled her jaw against the warmth of his palm. “Mightn’t you leaven that damned sensible pronouncement with a bit of reluctance, Eleanora?”

Nobody, nobody ever, had spoken her name before with that combination of tenderness, desire, humor, and regret. A blow to the head would have been easier to withstand than Elsmore’s hand, gently touching her cheek.

Ellie was ambushed by yearning and regret, a pair of emotions that could bring any woman low before she even knew she was under siege. What would it be like, to cast prudence out the window, and seize the duke?