A Highland Duchess by Karen Ranney Page A

his fingers rested against her palm. Another movement and she would have entwined her fingers with his, until they stood linked by hands and silence.
    Did Ian feel the way she did right at this moment? As if something strange were happening? As if by simply declaring herself to be someone other than the hated Duchess of Herridge, she’d somehow truly freed herself to become that person?
    He took one more step, bending his head down until she could feel the warmth of his breath on her forehead.
    “Who is Emma?” he asked again.
    “Does it matter?”
    “Do you never talk about yourself, Emma?”
    What was there to say? That she’d once been a foolish girl, an improvident one, who’d run through the house with her voice raised in laughter. Years of training had modified her behavior until she was decorous to a fault. She could restrain herself so much that people who’d witnessed her demeanor under intolerable conditions labeled her Ice Queen.
    Except now, here, in this place, in this darkened garden, with this man standing too close, she suspected that the Ice Queen might be melting inside. The woman who was beginning to emerge was not as restrained or as capable of resolve. At least, not around him.
    He was not Anthony—that thought rose above everything.
    Anthony was cruel and vindictive. Ian was solicitous and kind.
    Anthony was old; Ian was strong, vigorous, and young.
    Anthony delighted in the debasement of others. Ian thanked his servants.
    Anthony had made her shudder in revulsion. Ian stole her breath.
    Anthony lived his duchy. No one within his sphere was allowed to forget that he was the Duke of Herridge. Ian cloaked himself in mystery.
    Anthony was incapable of humor unless it was at someone’s expense. Ian laughed at himself.
    Ian was much taller than she. Her chin came barely to his shoulder. She might reach out and kiss his throat if she wished.
    The Ice Queen would never do something like that. The Duchess of Herridge would never kiss a stranger.
    The Emma of her girlhood, the optimistic child with shining eyes and bubbling laughter, had not breathed life, had not emerged for so very long that her sudden reappearance now was startling.
    She should put her hand on his chest and push gently, so he understood he was much too close.
    Then he did something surprising. Ian stepped back and stretched out his hand, simply that. A gesture of conciliation? Friendship? Or something more?
    He beckoned her, welcomed her, urged her without a word spoken.
    She should have excused herself and returned to her chamber, burying herself in the books she’d been given. Instead, she placed her bare hand on his palm, stretching her fingers over his hand, feeling the calluses on his fingertips. When he gripped her hand tightly, she didn’t pull free.
    He urged her out of the shadows into the faint illumination from the lamps in the corridor.
    “I should not have brought you here,” he said. “Not to my home. Not to this garden.”
    What did she say to that? Was he warning her? Should she flee now? How strange that she didn’t want to, that her blood felt heated and her cheeks flamed with warmth.
    He glanced downward, stopped, and turned to her.
    “Where are your shoes, Emma?”
    To be confused was one thing. She tucked that emotion away to examine later. To feel embarrassment was another thing entirely.
    She looked down at her bare feet as if surprised to find them suddenly shoeless.
    “My room,” she said. “Your room.”
    He was smiling. “I didn’t notice you were barefoot,” he said.
    The Duchess of Herridge would never have appeared in public in such a shocking lapse of decorum. Emma, however, might well have tossed her shoes away in a show of freedom.
    Perhaps she’d become Emma, just Emma, from the moment she’d been abducted.
    “I’ll see you to your room,” he said.
    Your room . For the first time, she fully realized that she slept in his bed, slept where he had slept, put her head on his pillow.
    He