Chapter 9 #2
“You should have seen the traffic,” he said, taking the drink her father offered him.
“All through Westminster. Is something happening today I do not know about? I almost got out and came on foot. Would have walked too, if not for the rain. Certainly, I told myself, arriving tardily is less of an insult than arriving wet to such an esteemed home as this.”
“And so fashionable, Your Grace,” her mother said, ignoring his compliment but blushing.
She looked like the cat who got the cream—a real-life duke in her finest drawing room.
“That’s how they’re doing it on the continent, aren’t they, Lady Chipping?
The contessas were always late to the parties in Venice. ”
“And in Milan.”
“Oh, yes. In Milan!” Lady Winthrop nodded, laughing. “Too close to the border.”
As the two women launched into another tale, Rosalie caught his eye across the room.
Something passed between them that needed no words at all.
A little tilt of his head, a question. She glanced at the door once her father sat down by the fire, his eyes already starting to close with drink and sleep.
It was not difficult to find a moment alone with him.
There was a small library off the drawing room that Rosalie had claimed for her own; when the party drifted toward the piano to drunkenly play some Italian songs before dinner, Rosalie excused herself with a murmur about needing air.
She was not surprised, three minutes later, to find that the Duke of Hartmere had excused himself too.
“Do you think the meal will ever come?” he asked the moment he entered. He closed the door behind them but left it ajar. “I shan’t lie to you; if you plied them with drinks to execute this private intercourse—”
“You believe me to be much more Machiavellian than I am.”
“Hopefully, I have not missed the mark by too much. I like a schemer.”
He smiled. That expression always made her knees go weak, but it was even worse when they were unchaperoned. If anyone caught them now... Well, she supposed that hardly mattered, given the likely trajectory of this moment.
“You have decided something, then,” he said with a sigh. “I can see it on your sober little face. You do wear your decisions plainly, Miss Winthrop... whatever else you manage to hide from me and everyone else, though I would like to think I am special.”
“That is not a comforting thing to hear from you.”
Something flickered across his face. It was surprise, she thought, though he covered it quickly.
“You are agreeing that you are a schemer or that I am special?” he said.
“I did not say either of those things.”
“But I could tell that’s where you were headed.”
She guffawed. “Do you know me so intimately already, Your Grace, that you can read my mind and all my thoughts?”
He gave a side smile this time. “Somewhat intimately.”
“I hate you,” she whispered, not meaning it at all and smiling.
“You are free to hate me or love me in whatever way you wish.” He walked closer to her, passing her only for a moment that made her heart beat quicker, before he approached the bookshelves. “When you agree to be my partner, I will take whatever I can get from you.”
Her throat went dry. She knew he was only joking.
He had made it painfully clear that he did not see her as a person who could incite longing in him.
She chewed on the inside of her mouth, watching as he examined her curated collection of books.
His fingers drifted over the spines, and a shiver ran down her back.
“I am agreeing,” she spat out before her nerves could fail her. “For your aunt’s sake mainly, and for reasons of my own I do not intend to explain to you today—or ever.”
“I think you enjoy being mysterious,” he said after a pause.
“But that seems fair enough.” When he looked at her, his smile was not the lazy, provoking smile she had grown used to from him.
“You will not regret it, Miss Winthrop. I cannot promise to be as genteel with you as I should be, but I can promise you that you will not regret me.”
“Funny. I suspect I already do, somewhat...”
He laughed and crossed the small distance between them before she had properly registered him moving. Slowly, he took her hand where it rested at her side. She had forgotten her gloves in the drawing room.
Did he even realize what he was doing? Her whole arm, her body, was set alight by his touch. His skin was softer than she anticipated—his fingers, also bare, were long now that she looked at them.
The Duke of Hartmere pressed his mouth just below the ridge of her knuckles, and a surprised moan caught in Rosalie’s throat. The gesture was more wicked than anything he had ever said to her.
“Now that we are agreed, I shall speak with your father tonight,” he said, still holding her hand.