She heaved a sigh that all but bent a furrow in the grass at their feet.
“Oh, enough,” she said irritably. “Very clever people often assume no one else is as clever as they are. Which isn’t very clever of them, when you think about it.”
“After knowing you but a few short days, Miss Eversea, I would never make the mistake of assuming you aren’t clever.”
She would not be pacified, particularly in that ironic tone of voice. “I will be exceptionally clever now, then. You’ve made quite a show of courting me, which I can assure you, has been disconcerting for me and has caused mirth and discussion. But you’re not interested in me. Not truly. I am naught like Lady Abigail. But Millicent is. Your eyes linger rather appreciatively on her whenever she’s about, and she could not be more different from me and more like Lady Abigail in form and shape. I am quite aware I’m possessed of a few singular charms, as has been pointed out by other young men. But they’re not of the sort you typically appreciate. You’ve a game. I want to know what it is. Surely you can’t need my money.”
He was . . . lividly . . . amused by this. Wicked, astounded delight was written all over his face.
“Charms, have you? Perhaps I enjoy a diversity of female charm—”
“Stop. Stop, stop, stop. And here is the other thing: Every time you look at my brother Ian or hear his name something brief and . . . murderous . . . flashes cross your face. It’s there and then gone. Every. Time. Not very clever of you. And yes. I believe I’m the only one who notices.”
Oh dear.
The silence was so absolute it was as though a dome had dropped over the two of them.
He wasn’t at all amused now.
She’d never seen a man so still. It in and of itself was almost camouflage, like a wild creature blending into its environment, hoping to ward off attack or planning to mount one. She’d cornered him and he didn’t like it. And all at once she was afraid, because she had no doubt this man was dangerous and resourceful and ruthless as a rule, but never more so than when cornered.
She doubted it happened very often.
He was clearly thinking rapidly.
Her heart battered away in her chest, but she was reckless from disappointment and possessed the courage of her temper and she frankly had stopped caring for perhaps the first time in her life.
She waited implacably for his answer. She didn’t blink.
He drew in a breath. “Surely what you’re noticing flash cross my face is merely a twinge of indigestion.”
But he sounded peevish now. The amusement was back, but entwined with a note of warning. He would tolerate only so much prodding.
She lowered her voice to a hush. “What did Ian do? It has to do with Lady Abigail, doesn’t it? I know my brothers, Lord Moncrieffe.”
A silence. The wind took another frisky pass at his hair. His face was a strong one. He glanced at her, then glanced away, and his eyes settled on the man in question, and everything about him seemed made of implacable granite.
Genevieve was very glad she wasn’t Ian at the moment.
“You presume too much,” he said coldly.
“Presume! I presume? I presume? I believe you’ve set a precedent in presumption. What did Ian do? You may as well tell me. I shan’t tell a soul.”
He gave her his profile. A strong chin, not at all soft. Squared off. A downright elegant nose, straight as a blade. Every line of him precisely drawn.
“What Ian did isn’t for the ears of ladies, Miss Eversea. Let’s just say it was a killable offense. I might have been hanged for killing him, but few men would have blamed me for it.”
Oh. The breath went out of her again.
His coldness ought to have deterred her. But now she understood he’d meant it to.
“Killable? I am not as innocent as you seem to believe. I know Colin nearly died tumbling from the trellis of a married countess. I am not naïve when it comes to the wildness of my brothers. But I assure you they do have good hearts—”
“Miss Eversea. Understand that I can tolerate no kind words about any of your brothers now.”
His voice was dark and threatening as a newly dug grave. She ignored him and finished.
“—and unfortunately they occasionally make more than their share of mistakes. When the world seems to be your oyster one has a tendency to partake greedily and sometimes recklessly. But they have good hearts and are the most loyal of friends and Chase is even a war hero . . .”
She trailed off at the look he turned on her.
Almost . . . hunted. Furious. And resigned. She sensed he was about to tell her what Ian did, and he didn’t want her to hear it, and now she wanted to stop him, and it was too late.
“I found him in bed with my fiancée. They were both nude. I found him there because I suspected I would. I in fact watched him make a daring climb up a tree and enter through a window three nights in a row before I stopped him.”
Each vivid, potent word slapped at her. Nude. Bed. Fiancée.
She could envision the scene with shocking, sordid clarity. Her brother, disrobing, climbing into bed. The duke lying in wait to catch them, consumed by . . . anger? Grief? Had he felt numb? Was it pain or pride he felt or . . .
How in God’s name had Ian gotten out alive?
She didn’t like imagining this proud man watching this. It was in fact nearly unbearable to imagine.
“Did you love her?” She almost whispered it. And she regretted how lightly she’d asked him before.
The duke slowly shook his head to and fro, ruefully and wearily at the question, at some private amusement. Fortunately, he no longer looked murderous.
“I might have done,” he said softly.
She was left to wonder what he meant.
She didn’t press him. Because if he loved as strongly as he hated, he might have ultimately incinerated the girl.
Suddenly she was grateful only her hand had been kissed, and for her love for Harry, and for all she didn’t know about love and sex.
They were both looking toward Ian now.
Ian, like Harry and Millicent, was entirely new. She realized he was doing his best to appear nonchalant, but she knew her brother very well. He laughed a bit too loud; his gestures were too emphatic. He was playacting devil-may-care for the duke. That would explain his twitchiness and the pallor he’d been sporting. It was almost funny.
Somehow she hadn’t considered the cruelty behind such reckless, playful indulgence of whim and desire, of a man climbing through a window or up a trellis. That something or someone other than pride might be savaged, a heart broken, a life destroyed, hopes shattered. It seemed staggeringly selfish.
But then men, in all their charm, generally were, and the duke was hardly excluded.
“I’m sorry,” she said sincerely, quietly. “It was shameful, what he did.”
He lifted his hands on his knees, dropped them again. A sort of shrug. “Yes.”
“Whereas you’ve never done anything shameful in your life.”
He turned his head very, very slowly toward her. Then narrowed his eyes dangerously.
She met his gaze bravely. She tried and failed to get just one eyebrow up. Both went up. She really wished she had a signature sardonic gesture. She envied the duke his.
“It was done to me,” he explained.
“Ah.”
Something that may have been a smile came to haunt his mouth.
A firm, long, masculine, flexible mouth. She supposed it was good, too.
“And has he apologized to you? Ian?”
“I wouldn’t allow it. I wouldn’t have believed him, regardless. I believe he was sorry he was caught. I believe he was sorry I interrupted the two of them before it could proceed farther. But sorry for irrevocably altering the course of my life? For depriving me of my future happiness? I doubt he thought of it in those terms. I should like to make him sorry, however.”
Dear God. Had his heart really been broken? Or his pride simply singed? All sh
e knew was that legends had been made about the consequences of crossing this man.
She began tentatively. “Perhaps if you expressed it to him in those terms—”
He sighed exasperatedly. “Oh, for God’s sake, Miss Eversea. I’m a man. I do not whinge on about my happiness. I shoot on the spot, or I take revenge later. I do both very well.”
Take revenge later.
That’s when it occurred to her. Her jaw dropped. Then she clapped it shut.
“And I was to be revenge?”
Another of those cornered silences from the duke. He reassessed her. Deciding upon his strategy, no doubt.
“What did you plan to do, seduce and abandon me? ‘Ha-ha, I showed you, Ian Eversea, I despoiled your sister because you despoiled my fiancée’?”
And then, bloody man, she would have sworn, she could have sworn, he was stifling a smile.
“ ‘Despoiled’?”
She glared silent fury at him.
“Well, when you put it like that . . .” he said somberly.
Very risky to tease her now.
There were innumerable things she ought to be feeling. Shock and indignation and fury, among them. She ought to glower and storm away. She ought to lecture him.
She wavered instead on the brink of doing something tremendously subversive like . . . smiling.
He noticed her indecisiveness and took advantage.
“Would it have worked?”
She sighed. “Perhaps if I were in a more amenable frame of mind,” she reassured him. “And less in love with Harry. You are a duke, after all.”
“And that’s impressive,” he completed whimsically. “Of course, you were hardly cooperating. Flinging other young ladies into my path. Though I must say I was tempted by Olivia. You certainly paint a compelling picture and I was very nearly persuaded.”
“You were nothing of the sort.”
He laughed again, that rich masculine sound.
Across from them she noticed Harry’s head turn. He shaded his eyes and watched them, then dropped the bat, and the girls laughed at him.
“Well, we’ve established that revenge of the sort you were planning is now out of the question,” she said firmly to her strange new friend. “Do you now plan to shoot Ian? Because I won’t allow that.”
“You won’t allow it? You’ll fling yourself bodily in front of him? Ah, now, that’s a pity. And you’re certain you shouldn’t like me to compromise, ruin and abandon you?”
She could think of no other context and no other conversation in which such a statement would make her smile. Certainly her mother had raised her to be horrified by every one of those words, and every one of those words was potent with story and meaning.
But smile she did.
Thereby adding herself to the number of people who were new.
And the duke smiled, too, looking suspiciously very much like a man enjoying himself.
What a peculiar exchange. Then again, the two of them had both had their worlds upended recently. Whether his heart was broken or just his pride was another story. Nevertheless.
Something occurred to her.
“But would you really have done . . . all of that?” She didn’t want to repeat words like “compromise,” “seduce,” and “abandon.” “Not that it would have been at all possible. I simply ask.”
His smile faded, and he turned away from her and plucked idly at the tiny daisies that had the ill fortune to be growing near where his restless hands were.
“You shouldn’t ask questions when you know at heart you’d prefer not to hear the answers.”
But then he looked at her directly. No smile in his face or eyes. Just a rueful admission about his mouth. A warning of sorts to not forget about the sort of man he really was.
“But you like me,” she accused slowly.
“Nonsense. For one thing, you are far too clever. Which is not at all restful. I could never relax a single moment knowing you’ll see right through me at all times.”
She laughed, delighted, the sound musical and lilting.
Harry’s head swiveled toward the sound at once. It was a sound he knew, of course, and he’d always been able to make her do it more than anyone else could. He shielded his eyes and straightened his spine.
And then stared very pointedly at Genevieve and the duke.
The duke spoke quickly, his voice quick and low and casual. “Don’t flinch. Don’t stare at him. Do what I say and watch what happens now.”
“What—”
“Hush.”
He had such natural command she did exactly that.
And he reached over and lightly rested two fingers against her hand again. Gently pinned it to the grass, like a small pale butterfly.
As though his head were attached to the duke’s fingers by a string, Harry’s gaze followed it to the spot where they rested upon Genevieve’s hand.
He froze.
He stared.
If he’d been a wild creature, his fur would have stood on end in objection.
And then, faintly but unmistakably . . . Harry frowned. Darkly.
Genevieve’s breath caught sharply. She obediently stopped herself from staring at him. She looked down instead. Long enough to notice that the duke wore a gold signet ring, and that his hand was long and elegant and scrupulously groomed but sported emphatic veins, as though he’d used his hands to do difficult masculine things his entire life. Dark, crisp hair curled on his wrist, and that hair seemed almost embarrassingly intimate, because if she wanted to right now she could touch it. His finger looked very brown against her own white hand, which she normally took such care to keep from the sun. His hand could cover hers completely if he wanted, shelter it, vanquish it, comfort her or render her terrifyingly defenseless.
Funny how the spot where the duke’s finger touched her was suddenly the locus of the universe for three people.
“Your hand is unconscionably soft, Miss Eversea,” he murmured.
Oh.
And then he took his fingers away.
Her eyes widened. She couldn’t lift her head just yet.
The shock of the stealthy compliment spread slowly through her, the way sherry did when bolted quickly. She flicked her eyes up at him. Made a quick frown of disapproval. Then inhaled to steady her nerves.
She could have sworn that spot where he’d touched her hummed with portent. Like he’d drawn the sword from the stone rather than lift his fingers.
She got her head up again at last and looked at him.
He was new, too.
“Now laugh again,” the duke murmured. “Make it convincing. And for God’s sake, don’t look at him when you do it. Look at me. Laugh. Laugh,” he hissed when it seemed her dumbstruck stare was permanent.
Genevieve gave her head a toss. “Ahhahahaha!”
He rolled his eyes. “Lovely molars,” the duke murmured dryly. “Good thing you were born into money, for you would starve treading the boards. Now wait, and look at me while you do.”
She did as commanded, caught up in the momentum of following his orders.
And he smiled.
It began lazily, and within seconds was as intimate and sensual and enveloping as a mink wrap. She felt that smile everywhere on the surface of her skin. All the little hairs on the back of her neck stood alertly, as though he’d brushed his fingers there, or as though they anticipated that he might. She felt . . . ensnared. And woefully . . . thrilled. And once again very, very out of her depth.
Until she reminded herself the smile was for effect. That sobered her.
Good God. For whom does he usually produce this smile?
Out of the corner of her eyes she saw Harry restively shift his feet. Like a horse nagged by flies. He leaned his weight on his cricket bat, twisting it into the ground thoughtfully. He was in fact watching Genevieve and the duke with a fixity of expression she could truthfully say she’d never before seen him wear.
His pale blue eyes were decidedly . . . flinty. His jaw, which
was square, was set resolutely.
Well.
Was it jealousy? Protectiveness? Usually Harry found the world very accommodating. It provided him with joy and diversion and comfort and plenty of devoted, worshipful friends—like her—and very soon a wife. He’d always taken for granted Genevieve’s regard, and why shouldn’t he?
But how would Harry behave if his world behaved unexpectedly?
A diabolical possibility surged through Genevieve almost painfully, like blood rushing back into a sleeping limb.
“How did you know?” she whispered.
“He looks at you every time you laugh. Every. Time. He’s been showing off this entire time, and I do believe it’s on your behalf. And he noticed the last time I touched you,” he said simply. “I noticed, even if you didn’t. And right now it looks like two men would like to hurl cricket balls at me.”
He meant Ian, too, who was watching the two of them with ill-disguised suspicion.
It was almost funny.
“It does rather, doesn’t it?”
“You sound pleased, Miss Eversea. Oh, and by the way, if you stare at them now, it ruins everything you just accomplished. So look at me again, and try for something akin to fondness in your expression. Another of those fetching blushes wouldn’t go amiss. Or if that’s too distasteful, look off picturesquely into the middle distance.”
But she was tired of taking direction from him. She rebelled and wrapped her arms around her knees, then rested her cheek upon them so she wouldn’t have to look at anyone at all for a moment.
The muslin of her dress felt deliciously cool, which is when she realized her cheeks were almost feverishly hot. She’d been taking an unaccustomed emotional buffeting all afternoon. It was taking its toll upon her temperature. Blushes, flushes, and blanches.
Your hand is unconscionably soft.
You have an excellent mouth.
Compliments so specific, bold, and singular she scarcely held them in her thoughts for one second without blushing. She wanted to both savor and recoil from them.
She wished Harry had said them to her.
She contemplated whether she was in fact pleased to make Harry jealous. She breathed in, testing, and discovered instead of the jagged misery she’d inhaled for days she felt . . . revived.
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