Chapter 3 #2
“Your talent for condescension is remarkable.”
“Then pray enlighten me, Miss Jenkins. What catastrophe demands you bear humiliation with such stubborn pride?”
“If I do not repair my reputation, my sisters will suffer!”
Silence. The Duke took a step back, his hands dropping to the side. Their look was locked, and she drew deep breaths, as if she had been running up the stairs.
“Miss Jenkins,” his voice was even and dark around the edges, “if I don’t find who forged all this, I might lose more than my reputation.”
Prim saw the real concern in the way his shoulders were bracing for a fall, even in this quiet room.
“We share an enemy, Miss Jenkins.”
Prim hated that he spoke with logic, even and logical. It made it more difficult to argue against sane rationales.
“That enemy tries to coax a reaction out of me. One, they seem as predictable. I intend to prove them otherwise, making them make a mistake, just one move. But I need your assistance and co-operation.”
“You still think that the target was you.”
“I am. And you are being dragged into this. I feel… responsible for you.”
“I doubt ‘responsible’ is a word that crosses your vocabulary often,” she said, dryly. “But do continue.”
“I am offering a helping hand, and you deem it right to bite it. Very well, Miss P.J., I am proposing we announce a courtship. Everyone targeting you will be forced to seize immediately.”
“Are all your plans based on delusion, or is this entirely my honor?”
He chuckled, and the sound was infernal. Nature shouldn’t have allowed for a man who looks like him to have a smile that can wipe out whole cities in its wake. Prim struggled to gather her thoughts.
“You know I am right, Miss Jenkins, despite your spirited opposition,” the Duke said.
She tried. She really tried to say that her opposition to his suggestion was because he was a rake, that he would be reckless with her reputation and the future of her sisters. But there was a simple, undeniable reason. The Duke was affecting her.
As if sensing her weakness, he took a small step toward her, just an inch. And yet, her body reacted violently. His presence wrapped all around her, like heat, like a storm, like a phenomenon of the heavens she had no way to stop, only endure.
“I am not a very patient man.”
“One… One of your many virtues,” Prim said with unconvincing bite.
“What is your decision, Miss P.J.?”
He took one final step toward her, the distance shrunk again. Her heart thundered treacherously, the sharp inhale a blatant tell that made him smirk.
“Come now,” he murmured. “I am hanging from your lips.”
Prim’s eyes snapped up to his, only to find them fixated on her lips. She watched helplessly as he lifted them slowly to meet hers. She needed to get out of his room.
“A fake courtship,” she blurted. “Till you find who is after you and I get a suitor.”
“There you go, Miss P.J.,” he cooed. “That wasn’t hard was it?”
“May I go now?”
“Of course,” he chuckled and leaned unnecessarily close to open the door. “I will be out after a while. Look for me.”
“Will definitely not.”
He chuckled and Prim fled the moment the door flew open. She went to the ball and looked for her sisters frantically. Found them close to her parents that were talking with the Countess herself.
“Prim,” Camilla studied her sister’s face. “You are flushed.”
Of course, she was. Being close to the Duke of Mildenhall had that side effect.
“I was just at the powder room.”
“There is something wrong.”
“I was in the ladies room. Needed a minute,” Prim said, determined that half-truths are the best lies.
“Don’t listen to her,” Camilla patted her sister’s hand. “Miss Sears is simply jealous.”
“Villains always get what they deserve in the end,” Myrtle added.
Prim smiled the tensest smile she could fake. Her sweet sister. Believing that in real life justice is served and love triumphs. Prim was not that much older, but she already knew how cruel the world could be.
As if on cue, a group of ladies that debuted with Prim approached. All married already, a vicious smile on their lips.
“Miss Jenkins,” the ringleader, the Baroness of Sefolk, said. “It’s been a while since we last saw you. But then again-”
Prim braced for the whip of the insult and mustered all her resolve and resilience to make it through it one more time. But the abuse never landed. Instead, everyone was looking over her shoulder.
“Good evening.”
Prim swallowed. It was him. The Duke. He somehow materialized to her side like a deus ex machina.
“Your… Your Grace?” The Baroness stuttered.
“You were saying?”
Prim felt the ice his voice drop the temperature in the hall. He spoke loud enough to draw everyone’s attention. Prim wanted to shrink and vanish and never existed in the first place and took one subtle step away from his dominating presence.
“I was not…” The Baroness looked down.
“Exactly as I thought,” The Duke said coldly.
This was the best time for Prim to simply try a basic vanishing act But she didn’t get a chance. On hand rested on her waist and pulled her closer. A firm, warm, big, unyielding hand. Prim looked down to make sure that she was not on fire because that was exactly what she felt.
“Careful, Miss Jenkins,” he said, “you were losing your footing there.”
Prim looked up with a scowl. That rake was groping her in public and was shameless enough to disguise it as the gallant support of a frail lady. You scoundrel, her look said. He simply smiled and tilted his head.
“It is time I made my intentions plain,” he said. “I am courting Miss Jenkins. By choice, and with great pleasure.”
The room went silent before a wave of hushed whispers took over, shocked voices, gasps and open disbelief. Prim didn’t even register the reactions that spread like wildfire in the hall.
But Prim felt her pulse hammer at her throat so much that she feared that her sisters could hear it. When he slowly looked down to her, she inhaled sharply. She hated that she did, yet it couldn’t be avoided. The intensity of his gaze demanded the halt of some primary function.
There was a simple, obvious truth that took over her thoughts, brighter than the candles of the chandelier that made his features sharper as he smiled innocently at her.
Oh. Oh no.