Chapter 11 #2
Every eye in the circle turned toward her. Rosalie felt the familiar urge to demur. “It is Romeo and Juliet, naturally,” she said. “Miss Montagu is Romeo scaling a wall in the Capulets’ garden... albeit with more restraint than Romeo displayed, I’m sure.”
There was a beat of silence before Miss Montagu nodded, and Lady Penelope burst into delighted applause. The room followed her, and Rosalie sat faintly stunned by her own daring, and by the duke’s observation.
It was late in the evening when the party began to break apart.
Many of the Bartridges’ close friends were staying overnight, but the other guests were graciously taking their leave.
Rosalie lingered in the antechamber while Lady Poole and her mother said their goodbyes.
The Sutton carriage was being brought around.
She stepped into the night air and made her way down the front steps.
It was quiet in Wembley. The road was clear beyond the gates.
She walked toward them. But she was not alone.
“Bartridge probably pawned the Sutton coach to buy himself another violin,” the Duke of Hartmere said, taking a tin out of his pocket. “You could drive home with me,” he remarked casually.
Rosalie laughed under her breath, watching him dig snuff out of the tin. Her father also partook. She hated the smell.
“You don’t approve?” he asked, smiling.
“Surely, you should not do that in front of a lady,” she joked. “If we were truly courting, you would not dare expose your baser habits to me.”
“Then you don’t know what it’s like to be truly courted by me.”
“Does anyone?”
He seemed to think for a moment, then clicked the tin shut without taking anything from it and put it back in his pocket. “Now that you ask, no.”
Rosalie gasped softly. “You’re playing with me.”
“I’m not,” he swore.
“The Duke of Hartmere has never courted a woman before?”
“Not in this generation.”
The evening had turned properly cold, and a gust of wind swept down the road toward them. Rosalie’s lace shawl was too thin for the weather. She crossed her arms and held herself together.
“You’re too delicate for this world, and now you are shivering.”
“I’m only cold. Not delicate. The wind won’t blow me away.”
She heard the rustle of fabric and turned to find him shrugging out of his coat. He settled it around her shoulders without asking permission. It was heavy wool, warm from his body, and it smelled faintly of coffee, smoke, and something sweet.
“Your Grace.” She clutched the coat around her. “This is entirely improper.”
“No one can see us.”
“That does not matter. What if the driver were to come? Or our chaperones?”
“We would hear them cackling a mile away.”
“You have disrobed in front of me,” she said through a shocked laugh.
He frowned, but the expression was not serious. “Do you want me to take my coat back?”
“No.”
The word came out with such force it shocked her, like a small dog barking. This caused him to laugh, and she settled under the comforting weight of his garment. She should have taken it off. Instead, she bent her head and breathed in the smell of it, realizing a beat too late that he had noticed.
It was hard to read his eyes in the dark. But they fixed on her with an intensity that made her heart flip. For a moment neither of them said anything. Rosalie became aware of how close they were standing. The silence between them. The fact that his gaze had dropped briefly, again, to her mouth.
Even if we are not seen, and in his mind this is not real, these moments still matter, she wanted to tell him, knowing that risked ruining the moment.
He seemed to catch himself, or read her thoughts on her face. He looked toward the street, saying, “You are to see Sinclair tomorrow, your mother said.”
“Yes, that’s true.” She said it slowly, adjusting his coat around her shoulder. She hated how he insisted on bringing Sinclair up at every opportunity, obviously trying to redirect her attention away from him. “We are getting on well, I think. He is... exceedingly steady company.”
“Steady as in dependable or steady as in predictable?”
“Both, Your Grace.”
“Good for you. That is good.”
She did not know why she wished that it were not true that it was good for her. She wished that there was no meeting with Mr. Sinclair tomorrow, no steady company, or that this moment with the Duke of Hartmere was a temporary madness.
“Another point. You need not keep calling me Your Grace,” he insisted quietly, turning back to her. “Not when we are alone like this and pretending to be more than we are. Gabriel will do. That is my name. First names for partners in crime are better.”
“All right.”
“Say it.”
“Gabriel,” she repeated. Warmth spread through her over the way his name formed in her mouth, the illicit sound of it, the forbidden act of even speaking it. Some wives never called their husbands by anything other than their titles.
He smiled at her submission and leaned down. She froze and then caught on fire when he pressed his mouth to her cheek, close enough to the corner of her lips that she felt the warmth of his breath linger there. She wondered whether he meant to move closer still...
When there it was: the cackling from a mile away.
The duke—Gabriel—straightened at once, stepping back as though nothing had passed between them but a routine goodbye.
“Good night,” he said quickly, sweeping his coat off her shoulders and disappearing back toward the house. “Enjoy tomorrow. Do tell Mr. Sinclair that the Duke of Hartmere says hello.”