"Your agreement sounds..."
"Like disagreement, yes. Years of practice, Your Grace."
They walked back to the inn, Alaric still holding the apron and folding it carefully. He'd return it later. That would be the polite thing to do. The fact that returning it would require seeing Marianne again was entirely incidental.
"Your Grace has flour in your hair," Grimsby observed.
"I'm aware."
"And what appears to be mincemeat on your collar."
"Also aware."
"And a smile on your face."
"I'm not smiling."
"My mistake. That must be a grimace of contentment."
"There's no such thing as a grimace of contentment."
"Your Grace appears to be inventing one."
Alaric caught his reflection in a shop window. He was, indeed, smiling. It was disturbing. Dukes of Wexmere didn't smile about flour fights and failed pies and widows who argued about everything.
Except, apparently, this one did.
"Grimsby, I think I might be in trouble."
"Yes, Your Grace."
"You're supposed to reassure me."
"I'm supposed to be honest, Your Grace."
"Since when?"
"Since Your Grace started wearing aprons and smiling at his reflection."
"I wasn't smiling at my reflection."
"You were smiling at the memory of the morning."
"That's worse."
"Considerably, Your Grace."
Alaric retreated to his room, where the ledgers waited on his desk like old friends—predictable, logical, and entirely uninterested in his romantic prospects or lack thereof.
He opened the first ledger, determined to focus on numbers and accounts and things that made sense. Instead, he found himself staring at the same page for twenty minutes, thinking about the way Marianne's eyes lit up when she laughed, the way her hair escaped its pins, the warm weight of her when she'd landed on him in the snow.
This was ridiculous. He was the Duke of Wexmere. He didn't develop... feelings... for provincial bakers. He certainly didn't spend his mornings making ugly pies while wearing aprons. Andhe absolutely didn't stand outside bakery windows at dawn like some love-struck youth.
Except he'd done all of those things.
And worse, he was already planning to return the apron the next morning. At approximately the same time. Just in case Marianne needed help with anything.
"I'm in so much trouble," he said to the ledgers.
