“We both know you’re not going to do that any sooner than you absolutely have to.You’ll pick a chit at random at the last hour of the last day, and then you’ll regret that decision—whatever it is—for the rest of your life.”
“Thank you,” Donovan said coldly.“That sounds charming.”
“It sounds,” Geoffrey corrected him, “like a full week ofnoresponsibility, until the duty kicks in at the eleventh hour.I vote you treat it as such.”
“You don’t vote.This is not a democracy.”
“It’s seven days.Seven.Out of a lifetime of decades filled with nothing but duty.Would it really kill you to set responsibility aside for a single week?”
“This conversation is what’s killing me.I am extinct.Please cease speaking.”
“Forget about duty, then.Think about me.”
“I never think about you,” Donovan lied.
“You’ve given me my notice.We have one fortnight left together, before realistically never setting eyes on each other again.What if… you expended a hint of effort in an attempt toenjoyit?”
“I’m a duke.Peers don’t expend effort.We have servants for that.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t be hauling about a bag full of accounting journals and carrot sticks.I mean it, Southbury.Forget about duty for once, and have a week of just plain fun.”
“What the devil is ‘fun’?”
“God help us both.”Geoffrey rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.“You need me even more than I feared.”
Silence stretched between them.
“I know I do,” the duke said gruffly.“Why else would I run after your carriage?”
Geoffrey’s eyes locked with Donovan’s.“I’m glad you did, Southbury.No one else sees you like I see you.”
Donovan’s flesh heated in remembrance.Geoffrey had seen every inch of him, on countless occasions.The duke hadn’t expected to ever be forced totalkabout it.
“I see you,” Geoffrey said, his gaze unflinching.“You are not the slab of marble you pretend to be.”
“Isn’t my statuesque demeanor why you call me Adonis?”the duke muttered.
“One reason,” Geoffrey shot back.
Donovan lifted his nose and glared down at his valet imperiously.“I did not give you leave to call me ‘Southbury’.”
“Did I?”Twin splotches of pink tinged his valet’s sharp cheekbones.“I should not have done.Forgive me.”
“Donovan,” said the duke.
Geoffrey blinked owlishly.“I beg your pardon?”
“You may call me Donovan until you leave my household,” the duke replied.“And I shall attempt to have ‘fun’ on this errand.”
“Not an errand,” Geoffrey reminded him.“The errand occurs on the last minute of the last hour.Between now and then is nothing but holiday.A full week of… anything you want.”
The duke arched his brows with unmitigated skepticism.“AnythingI want?”
“Anything,” Geoffrey repeated softly.“Donovan.”
With those two words, the rest of the world disappeared.The clopping horses, the lumbering carriage.Donovan did not feel like a buttoned-up duke in a traveling costume, but rather as vulnerable as he did kneeling naked before his valet in a basin of bathwater.
Donovan had never been more tempted to close the distance between them and haul his valet’s beautiful lips against his own.He was always tempted.The past twenty years had been nothing but temptation.The exquisite torture of being touched by someone he did not dare touch back.
