At his easy acceptance, Kirkland blanched, as if he had just realized that James was not a man to be trifled with. He had overstepped, expecting James to have been posturing, and had found out to his utter horror that James had been entirely sincere. “A duel would ruin her,” he said. “Everyone would know. There would be no saving her reputation from it.”
“Yes,” James said, his voice cutting, calculating. “She would have to marry—and if she were forced to choose, which of us do you imagine she would accept? The man who abandoned her, or the man who protected her?”
Kirkland remained silent, his lips flattened into a grim line. For a long moment he did not speak, but his eyes had gone dark and shadowed. He had probably lived for this, James thought, since his wife’s passing. He had likely thought of nothing but returning to London, seizing the opportunity to woo Jilly back into his arms. Only he had never expected to find himself in competition with a duke.
Kirkland shook his head as if to clear it. “I will remain in London,” he said. “I left her once—I will not do so again.” He lifted his head, stared James straight in the eyes. “It is her choice,” he said. “I will promise nothing but that I will not approach her unless she gives an indication that she would welcome it.”
That suited James well enough. Though he would have preferred to run Kirkland out of London altogether, his very proximity would likely keep Jilly stuck to James’ side as if she had been glued there.
“That will be acceptable,” James said. “Provided you cause her no distress. And I will be watching,” he stressed. “You may depend upon my attendance at each and every event she attends. You will keep your distance.”
“So much as she desires,” Kirkland said sourly, as he climbed to his feet. “I am already a ruined man, Your Grace. There is little you could do to bring me lower than I have been these past three years.” He gave a mocking doff of his hat as he strode toward the door. “I would say it has been a pleasure, but that would be a lie.”
Chapter Ten
Lady Northrupp’s garden party was a casual affair, and one at which it was perfectly acceptable for Jilly to remain in close proximity to His Grace, the Duke of Rushton. She had been trying to think of him that way ever since those stolen kisses in Lord and Lady Lennox’s garden, but somehow her mind kept reverting to James.
James, who had kissed the corner of her mouth with such delicacy, who had cupped her chin in his warm, bare hand, who had groaned into her mouth as if she had slain him with only a kiss. She could hardly bear to look at him for blushing, and she was well beyond the age where a blush would be interpreted as mere maidenly modesty.
It didn’t seem fair that he appeared so unaffected. He stood just a few feet away, chatting with some dark-haired gentleman of his acquaintance, his hand curled around a glass of lemonade. Though Adrian appeared not to have been able to secure an invitation to this particular gathering, she found a peculiar sort of comfort in James’—no, blast it, the duke’s—presence. He did not precisely hover over her, but he seemed to endeavor to be always within reach, like a loyal guard.
Despite the fact that he had yet to say anything to her beyond a casual greeting, they still seemed to be of much speculation to the crowd. He had, after all, made it eminently clear where his interests lay, and any eligible ladies that had entertained the idea of snagging a duke this Season had been forced to admit defeat. Jilly could have told them that was not inclined to take him, but she doubted very much that such a thing would have endeared her to them. Probably it would only make it worse—she had won over them without effort.
She slanted a glance at him, willing herself not to blush, not to dwell on memories of that kiss. Those kisses. She had expected it to be pleasant, but she had certainly not expected it to drive all rational thought from her head. Blast it, she was going to blush again. She turned away, fanned herself with her hand, hoped she could pass it off as a simple flush from the unexpected heat of the day, and sipped her lemonade.
“You are not,” a low voice murmured at her ear, “nearly as subtle as you think you are.”
She choked. “I beg your pardon?” she managed with a wheeze, coughing delicately into her hand.
James—His Grace—laughed lightly as he stepped round to face her, conveniently obscuring her from the view of, if not all, at least the majority of, the other guests. “I mean to say that, at current, you are the biggest danger to your own reputation. If you keep looking at me and blushing—and especially if you keep glancing at my breeches—someone is going to notice and draw conclusions.”
Oh, no. Her eyes closed on a groan of humiliation, and she found herself profoundly grateful for his broad shoulders. She knew her face must be the color of a cherry following the wave of mortification that had swept through her, and the very last thing she wanted was for anyone else to witness it. “Stand right there, if you please, and do not move,” she said through gritted teeth, willing the furious color to fade with all alacrity.
He laughed again, the complete and utter cad. “You’re doing it again.”
“I know,” she growled. “Which is why I have directed you not to move.”
“Do you know, I have never found blushes to be particularly endearing before now,” he said, his voice rife with amusement. “They have always seemed somewhat contrived. But I am rather enjoying yours.”
“I suppose that makes one of us.” She knew she must sound like a veritable shrew, but every word he spoke only seemed to provoke another wave of abject embarrassment, and she did not blush prettily. She could feel his gaze on her face, knew he was beyond amused, and she could not even tell him to let her be, for he was the only thing standing—quite literally standing—between her and public embarrassment.
“Should I surmise from your, er…shall we say, interest in my breeches that you and Lady Ravenhurst have had a chat of sorts?”
She cracked one eye open. Good lord, he was still laughing at her, his mouth quirked up into a half-grin. “You cannot truly expect me to answer that,” she said, scandalized.
“So you did, then.” He canted his head to the side, his blue eyes narrowing speculatively. “I wonder what else she told you.”
“Will you stop,” she hissed in a low voice. “This—this is hardly an appropriate conversation!” Of course, Nora had found the time to explain the mechanics of the act, and it had all sounded so very undignified and just generally implausible. But that didn’t mean she wished to acknowledge such a thing to the duke.
“Well, no,” he acknowledged. “But it is a great deal of fun. For me.” That grin grew to alarming proportions, no longer just in simple amusement, but with an almost predatory gleam, as if he took utter delight in her discomfort. “You needn’t worry. There’s no one close enough to overhear.”
That was the least of her concerns. “I won’t discuss it with you,” she said, and then added for clarity, “I won’t discuss it at all.”
His brows lifted. “Oh, now I think I really must know. Somehow, I have the feeling that she went into a bit more detail than she ought to have.”
She made a little sound of mingled humiliation and rage, her brows knitting in frustration. If only she could have slapped him—but that would have caused more problems than it would solve.
“All right,” he said on a chuckle. “All right, you may have your secrets. I won’t badger you.”
She drew a steadying breath, felt her hand slip on the condensation coating her glass of lemonade and fumbled to catch it. “It’s not a secret,” she said, aware of the petulant tone of her voice. “Ladies simply do not discuss such things. Ever.”
“But it’s such fun.” His voice was so innocent, his blue eyes wide and guileless. A stray breeze blew a lock of his tawny hair across his forehead, and she was struck by the annoying urge to brush it back.
“It is not, and it does not endear you to me.” She resisted the urge to pat her cheeks—she wouldn’t be able to feel a blush through her gloves anyway.
He hi
d a grin behind his glass. “You don’t need me to endear myself to you,” he said. “You need to be challenged. Provoked.” He leaned closer and summoned a leer. “Perhaps teased.”
“I most certainly do not.” She drew herself up to her full height which was, admittedly, not quite as impressive as she would have wanted it to be. And it was frustratingly difficult to look down her nose at him while having to look up at him. And especially with a loose amber curl bobbing before her eyes, which she puffed away, striving to look severe and uncompromising.
“Of course you do,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “You’ve stopped blushing, by the by.”
She had? She had. He had successfully needled her out of embarrassment. Well, she had wished she could look at him without blushing. Provided she could manage to keep at it, she might come out of this with her reputation intact.
“You are quite proficient at a cutting tone,” he observed casually. “But I suspect you know that already.”
“I beg your pardon?” Now she was actually baffled.
He pitched his voice to a mocking reflection of her own as he said, “I most certainly do not,” and followed it with a snicker. “It’s quite good. I’ll bet you could skewer a man at twenty paces with only a look. Have you practiced?”
She blinked, unsure of whether she ought to be offended or flattered. “Have I practiced what?”
“Skewering a man at twenty paces with only a look,” he repeated. “I can’t imagine you would have succeeded in remaining unwed so long had you not.”
Somehow she had entirely lost the thread of conversation. “Most gentleman are rather easily discouraged,” she said. “I cannot recall a time I have ever found it necessary to skewer one—with a look or otherwise.” She peeked over his shoulder in a desperate bid to locate Nora, who would surely come to extricate her from her unenviable situation, if she were any sort of friend at all.
“I am not easily discouraged,” he said, as if he felt she had needed the reminder. Which she had not.
Tartly, she muttered, “I have noticed, Your Grace.”
A wry twist of his lips. “James,” he said.
Was he stark raving mad? “I cannot call you that in public!” And when he opened his mouth, most assuredly to argue, she interrupted with, “Or in private—which is irrelevant, as we shall never be in private!”
“Pity,” he said. “I was under the impression that you had quite liked being kissed. It would be a shame to never have another opportunity for it.”
Yes, it would. “No, it would not.” She lifted her gloved hand to her face and pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose in aggravation. At the very least she seemed to have exhausted the last of her embarrassment—even that unwise comment had failed to draw a blush from her. “Are you trying to embarrass me?” she snapped.
“Good lord, no,” he said. “I’m trying to flirt with you. Which would be much more enjoyable if you would cooperate.”
Flirt with her? Men didn’t flirt with her. Oh, maybe they once had, but it had been years since then, years since she had last had to suffer the patronizing attentions of men who assumed that simply because she had been abandoned by Lord Kirkland that she would welcome their suits, that as a woman of advancing years she would be desperate for any attention they deigned to give her.
She wasn’t certain she knew how to flirt any longer. She could only stare, dumbstruck, mesmerized by the curious emotion in his eyes. Not quite amusement, but something deeper and warmer, a secret he was attempting to communicate silently to her. A secret shared just between the two of them, a sort of intimacy that made her nervous. She didn’t want that—she just didn’t. Not with him and not with anyone.
And yet that blue gaze that ought to have seemed ice cold seared straight through her, and she felt the warmth of it straight to her toes. Distantly she was aware that he had spoken last, and that she ought to have said something in response, but it took her longer than she would have liked to cast her mind back to what it was he had been discussing and snatch at the conversation.
“I don’t flirt,” she said at last, a touch defensively.
He collected her free hand in his, and his fingers caressed her palm, and she did not know why she did not pull her hand away. She truly did not.
“I can see that; you’re rubbish at it. But I have faith you will improve.” His teeth flashed white, half grin, half leer. “You only require practice.”
How was she meant to respond to that unsettling remark? And where was Nora? She desperately required her presence, needed her to be a buffer between James and herself. Not James. The duke.
“I am not going to practice flirting. With you. Or anyone,” she managed at last, goaded into a response by his knowing smile. Good heavens, how was it that he flustered her so easily? He had the regrettable tendency to provoke her into either anger or embarrassment, and she suspected he did it entirely on purpose, to keep her unbalanced.
Unfortunately, even when he managed to rile her, it was more exasperation than actual anger. Even more unfortunately, she suspected he knew it. Most unfortunately, she did need him. But only to discourage Adrian.
His Grace, the most noble Duke of Rushton, bent his head close to her ear and said, “Do you know, Jilly, I do think you are actually starting to like me.”
An astonished flutter of laughter broke from her throat. She didn’t—she couldn’t. She didn’t want to like him, certainly. She didn’t want to enjoy his entirely inappropriate attempts at conversation. She didn’t want him to flirt with her, or to encourage her to flirt back, or to hold her hand and rub his fingertips against her palm, or to whisper in her ear.
Well. She didn’t want to want those things. And for three exceptionally long years she had not. She hadn’t been tempted into kissing a man in a secluded garden while bathed in moonlight. She had been moved to neither exasperation nor embarrassment by anyone’s attentions. She had never had such contradictory reactions to a man in her life. She had buried her emotions so deeply inside her, and had never expected them to be unearthed again—only, he was managing it, coaxing them all out one at a time, and she didn’t know quite what to make of it. She didn’t know how to handle them anymore, how to sort through the great tangle of them and make them make sense.
It should have been horrifying. And it was. But she laughed anyway, because she had buried that, too, and somehow he had found it for her again.
His brows lifted in surprise. “I can hear the difference,” he said, his voice low and awed. “Between a contrived laugh and an honest one. I like your honest laugh better.”
She had, too. But it had shriveled and died with the rest of her. She hadn’t heard it in so long. It was glorious, and wonderful, and lovely.
And terrifying.
Chapter Eleven
“You did say that you would attend the theatre with me,” James said, two days later, having popped by Kittridge House for afternoon tea.
Jilly had to admit that she didn’t find his presence quite as galling as she might’ve before. She had even deigned to prepare his tea the way he had requested it this time. Milk and sugar—three lumps. The man had a terrible sweet tooth. He’d plowed right through a plate and half of Cook’s tea cakes already, and showed no signs of slowing down. She had thought about inquiring whether or not his own cook was feeding him at all, but decided against it.
“Be that as it may,” she said. “It cannot be tonight. Aunt Marcheline is indisposed with a headache, and my lady’s maid has the day off.”
“It has got to be tonight,” James replied, a touch crossly. “You haven’t a free evening between now and the Hewlitts’ house party at the end of the week. I don’t care to wait an entire fortnight.”
“Be that as it may,” Jilly repeated, “Some things cannot be helped. This is one of them.”
“Lots of things can be helped when you’re a duke,” he said. “Improbable things. Even impossible ones.” He crammed another pastry into his mou
th, chewing viciously. “Give me an hour,” he said. “I’ll return with a suitable chaperone secured.” And he had swept out of the house, fairly bowling over poor Fenton, who had been stationed right outside the drawing room, as he did so.
Jilly had simply rolled her eyes and sighed, then retrieved a gothic novel from the library to read while she awaited the inevitable note that would be sent round admitting defeat. Some things were impossible even if you were a duke.
She was surprised, however, as less than forty minutes later James came striding back in the door without so much as a knock, jabbed a finger in her direction, and declared, “Ha!”
“Ha?” she inquired, snapping the book closed and laying it aside. “What, exactly, do you mean by ‘ha’?”
“I mean I have found you a chaperone,” he said, with a triumphant smile. “A perfectly acceptable one. You may safely attend the theatre with me, and no one will think anything of it.”
He looked so pleased with himself that she nearly expected him to begin rubbing his hands together like the villain in some wretched melodrama. His hair was tousled from the wind, and his coat was just a bit wrinkled, as if he had been in such an all-fired hurry to accomplish his goal that he hadn’t taken care with it. His valet was sure to have conniptions.
“I am afraid it is not that simple,” she said. “My aunt will have to approve this mystery chaperone—”
“Oh, she will,” he said. “I’ve secured the company of Lord and Lady Ravenhurst.”
She felt her mouth drop open. “That’s impossible—they have an engagement this evening. It’s Robert’s uncle’s birthday.”
His grin widened. “They sent their regrets.”
“They did not,” she gasped. “Robert loathes the theatre.”
“True,” he acknowledged. “But he loves horses. I promised him his pick of my stables if they would agree to chaperone you.”
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