She pursed her lips, studying the aggravating man. “That was a perfectly acceptable curtsy, I will have you know. One does not need to wear slippers in order to curtsy.”
“Do you always talk this much?” he asked then, quite rudely.
She blinked at him. “I think I liked you better when you were silent, Your Grace.”
Then, the strangest thing happened, right there before her. The Duke of Coventry smiled. And her heart kicked into a gallop.Good heavens, he was the most handsome man she had ever beheld when he smiled that way.
Until he quite ruined the effect by speaking once more.
“The feeling is mutual, Miss Winter.”
She could not contain her gasp of outrage. “That was impossibly boorish.”
He stared at her some more. Was he ogling her stockinged toes? She wiggled them on the chance it would vex him. Once more, he said nothing.
She sighed then. “Are you not going to offer me an apology, Your Grace?”
“Why should I?” he asked. “You insulted me first.”
Well, yes, she supposed she rather had.
At least he had deigned to speak again, so that had to count for something. A victory of sorts, however small. He was no longer smiling, but her body was still beset by the same irritating reaction to him. Her heart pounded. Her insides felt as if they were fashioned of warm honey. Worst of all, the wicked longing she felt in her core whenever she readThe Tale of Lovewas throbbing to life.
She could not possibly be attracted to such a man. He was quiet and somber and socially inept. She adored rakes who were charming and knowing, with devilish grins and practiced kisses. Sinners and seducers.
The Duke of Coventry belonged to neither of those, she reminded herself firmly.
“The insult I paid you was a response to your ill-mannered question,” Christabella pointed out. “It is not done to speak of a lady’s discourse. You see? That is the way of a conversation.”
His lips twitched. “Is it now?”
She had the strangest impression he was laughing at her. No one laughed at Christabella Winter.
She drew back her shoulders and pinned him with her most ferocious glare. “Yes. It is. Of course, I suppose one cannot expect a gentleman who shuns the society of others to know the proper rules of conducting a dialogue. Up until now, I confess, I wondered whether or not you were even in possession of a tongue.”
He stiffened, and she regretted the harshness of her words.
But it was too late to call them back. They had been dropped between them, as sure as any gauntlet.
Miss Christabella Winterwas dreadfully garrulous.
Horridly bold.
Insufferably rude.
She spoke to him as if she had not a care that he was a duke. And mayhap she did not.
Gill had come to the chamber to escape his hostess’s idea of merriment. Charades made him want to retch into the nearest chamber pot. Mostly because the thought of all the eyes in the house party trained upon him simultaneously tangled his stomach in a vicious knot. Set his heart racing. Made his palms sweat and his chest hurt.
Also, because charades was a foolish game.
But he was a foolish man, because here he stood, engaging in a debate of sorts with a flame-haired hoyden who had insulted him. It was true that he needed the Winter family’s coin to save his estates from certain ruin. A potential alliance with one of the Winter ladies had been his sole reason for attending this cursed country house party. But it was also true she was not the only unwed lady in England with a plump purse. He could easily find another. There was no need to waste his time by lingering here with her.
Except, the moment she had said the wordtongue, he had been beset by the wildest surge of lust he had ever experienced. And as a man who had never even kissed a woman, he experienced more than his fair share of pent-up lust. This, however, trumped everything which had come before.
It was incapacitating.
More incapacitating, even, than his affliction.
