Drat it, Violet. Cease this at once.
“I am sorry about the crocheting,” she said, needing to say something so her whirling thoughts would quiet. “I did not mean to catch you with it.”
She did not even like crocheting, but Aunt Hortense deemed it a suitable activity for a lady because the queen herself enjoyed the practice. Admittedly, Violet’s appreciation for the skill was hindered by being dreadful at it.
“I should have watched where I was walking.” A rueful grin flirted at the corners of his lips now. “I did not expect anyone to be within, and I am afraid I was rather preoccupied with my own thoughts. I did not notice your string until it had felled me.”
His hand was still in her skirts, and he remained on his knees before her. She resisted the urge to reach for his left hand and place it back upon her breast. Why had the weight of him, that forbidden touch, felt so irresistible?
She wetted her suddenly dry lips. “It is a bad habit, leaving the ball of wool halfway across the chamber, in the midst of the floor. If I had not pulled it toward me, with the intention of sparing you from falling over it, you likely would not have tripped in the first place. The fault is all mine.”
“Nonsense, Lady Violet.” He rose at last, towering over her with his broad, strong frame. “I am the interloper here.”
“Yes,” she agreed, before thinking better of it. Her cheeks went hot. “That is to say, you are a guest here in my brother’s home, Your Grace.”
Should she stand?
Craning her neck at him was dratted uncomfortable, but he remained near enough to her that if she stood, she would brush against him. And if she touched this man, she felt certain she may swoon.
Where was a fan when she needed one?
His smile faded, his jaw going rigid, expression hardening. “A forced guest is hardly a guest, Lady Violet. It would be more apt, perhaps, to say I am a prisoner.”
“But Lark House is not a jail,” she felt compelled to protest. In truth, it had been hers for four-and-twenty years, and it would remain so, until she left it for the next one. The thought of having to share a home with Charles’s mother was enough to make her eyes twitch.
“We shall agree to disagree, my lady.” His gaze traveled down to her lap, leaving a path of fire in its wake. “What are you making?”
Her flush increased, and she swore she felt it to the roots of her hair. “It is meant to be a seed pouch for my fiancé. He is a horticulturist.”
Strathmore frowned. “That sounds deadly dull.”
Her sentiments exactly, but that didn’t mean his dismissive tone did not nettle her, for it did. “On the contrary, sir. It is horribly interesting.”
His lips quirked. “You have the ‘horrible’ of it right, I would reckon.”
“To think I was feeling guilty for tripping you,” she snapped. Charles was as interesting as a pile of sawdust, but having this breathtakingly handsome, arrogant duke point out the shortcomings, which already grieved her, was irksome indeed. “There is no need to be cruel.”
“Honesty and cruelty are two distinct beasts.” His stare worked its leisurely way back to hers, so intense, a shock of giddiness rippled straight through her.
Ruthlessly, she banished it and stood, tired of him looming over her, the judgmental beast. But she miscalculated her haste and his nearness, which meant once she rose, she had nowhere to go but into his chest.
So she did.
Her palms flattened over the muscled heat of him. Even through the layers of civility, he was hot. Smoldering like a flame. And she was drawn to him.
Why could she not stop staring at his lips? Why did she insist upon wondering what they would feel like upon hers?
“Lady Violet?” His tone was darkly amused.
Blinking, she raised her gaze back to his. “Yes?”
“I would like to beg your fiancé’s pardon,” he surprised her by saying.
There.
That was better, was it not?
The man had simply needed a reminder of how to conduct himself in a gentlemanly fashion. Suspected of treason though he may be, he was still a peer of the realm. A duke.
