He lowered his mouth to hers, giving her a gentle kiss that wasn’t at all like the last one they’d had—that would definitely not be traditional and might shock the guests as well.

He drew back, his eyes damp with tears. She thought she might have been crying too. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you,” she replied, swallowing hard against all the emotion. She never thought she’d be a bride, and yet here she was.

He was hers. He would be hers forever.

And she was so happy.

An Excerpt from NEVER KISS A DUKE

Chapter One

Everything Sebastian had ever known was a lie.

“You’re saying I’m no longer the duke. That I am illegitimate. Do I have that right?” Sebastian Dutton, the Duke of Hasford, spoke in a clipped, sharp tone. A tone he normally reserved for one of his dogs caught gnawing on a shoe.

This was much bigger than footwear.

Sebastian sat across from the solicitor’s desk, his cousin Thaddeus Dutton, the Earl of Kempthorne, sitting beside him. Unlike Sebastian, Thaddeus looked as though he’d been up for hours—crisp, alert, and attentive. Likely he had; Thaddeus took his duties in service to Her Majesty very seriously. He had wanted to join the army since he and Sebastian had first played tin soldiers together.

The solicitor visibly swallowed before he replied to Sebastian’s terse statement.

“Yes. You do not have claim to being the Duke of Hasford.”

He heard Thaddeus emit a gasp, which was the most demonstrative Thaddeus ever got—his gasp was equal to another person’s dead faint.

Sebastian had gotten up at a ridiculous time to attend this appointment—normally he would have sent his secretary, but the note from the solicitor’s office had strongly emphasized he should attend in person. So he’d roused himself before noon, grouchily drank his coffee, and tried to look somewhat awake as he approached the address indicated on the note.

The cousins were both tall, but there the resemblance ended; where Sebastian was fair haired and lean, with an easy smile and an even easier charm, Thaddeus was dark, from his hair to his eyes to his rigorous sense of right and wrong.

They were opposites, and the best of friends. Dubbed the Angel and the Devil by their friends and family, though there were disputes as to which was which. In appearance, Thaddeus was devilish, but it was Sebastian’s attitude toward life that earned him the sobriquet.

You do not have claim to being the Duke of Hasford.

Had the floor dropped out from under him, or was that just how he felt? For the first time, he knew no amount of personal magnetism or supreme confidence would rescue him from the situation.

“So who am I?” Sebastian asked. His words were spoken through a clenched jaw.

“Mr. de Silva,” the solicitor replied.