James rolled his eyes. “We shall do our best, no doubt.”
Blackbrook let out a dramatic sigh. “I suppose, then, I shall have to suffer in solitude. It is an agony that I shall have to overcome.”
“I’m sure you shall find a way,” he returned. “You always do.”
“Indeed,” Alexander replied. “Though for once I suppose I shall choose business over pleasure. Since you are engaged, I shall depart for the country posthaste.”
James couldn’t have been more relieved. He’d need to find Jack a husband before her brother returned. For he could not keep this ruse up for long.
Chapter Sixteen
Jacqueline did love a pair of breeches. She loved the way they felt, the way they clung to her legs. Add a good linen shirt, and it was the most freeing thing in the entire world.
Of course, she understood why so many young ladies adored the modiste, but truth be told, she loved the freedom that she felt in her brother’s clothes.
As she shimmied out onto the branch and eyed the duke’s window, she grinned at the fact that he’d left it open and was standing just on the other side, arms folded across his beautiful chest.
His own linen shirt was open at the throat. She drew in an appreciative breath. She would never look as marvelous in a linen shirt as he did.
The fabric positively draped every one of his chiseled and perfect muscles. And the hollow of his throat? She had the most outrageous urge to press a kiss to it.
He cocked a brow, tilted his head to the side, and said, “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Would thou deny thy father and refuse thy name?”
She could barely stop herself from laughing and nearly lost her grip.
She threw herself in through the window, and much to her delight, he caught her.
She stumbled against him, and she thought it most intriguing, his catching her. For she knew that he knew she was most capable. And yet he had been there, ready, should she fall.
It was rather endearing, really.
As he held her against his hard body for a long second, she wondered if him standing there, professing the lines of Juliet, had all been a ruse and a reason to get to hold her in his arms. It certainly felt like it, as he encircled her in his broad embrace.
She drank in his scent of lemon and leather and juniper berries. It was a beautiful thing to drink in. Heady. Intoxicating. And she found herself wishing to bury her face into his chest; to feel the hardness and heat of him.
Heavens, he was perfection.
Not entirely perfect, of course. No one could or should be perfect.
There was that arrogance about him and general sense of superiority that all dukes had. Yet, she even liked that to some degree. She loved the fact that he was so certain about things. To have that certainty herself? It would be a welcome thing.
So much of her life had been spent in certainty, but the last year had been spent shaken.
She couldn’t grow accustomed to so many doubts now.
She wished she could let that go. She wished she could feel on solid ground again, but she wasn’t certain if she ever would; for things were going in such a different direction than she’d ever expected, she doubted she’d ever feel grounded again.
But James? His feet were firmly on the ground, and if she but held firmly onto him, surely she’d feel thus, too.
So, she held onto him for a moment longer than she’d meant to. And when she leaned back, she realized her thoughts had taken a far too serious turn.
Determined to find levity, she teased, “I like your shirt. Will you tell me the name of your tailor?”
He laughed, that delicious, deep rumble of a laugh. “I’m not sure you could afford him,” he drawled.
“That is a low blow,” she returned, folding her arms just beneath her breasts.
“I do beg your pardon. That is not how I meant it,” he said, seeming alarmed that he had possibly given offense. “It is simply that my tailor is one of the best.”