“I am certain you have told many females a great deal of nonsense over the years, Warwick.” Her arch tone pecked through his lust-hazed thoughts. “Whether or not you used those precise words is a moot point. The thing is…”
She trailed off, and he turned to her expectantly. “What isthe thing, Freckles? Have out with it.”
Her lips pursed as she seemed to muddle through what she wished to say. She looked adorably befuddled, and the driving desire to put his mouth on hers once more raged through him.
“The thing is, Your Grace,” she began, “that you refer to me in the same manner with which one might speak about a butler, and you have known me for nearly my whole life, and I have always been a nuisance to you. I am more than aware that I am too tall and that I am rather more plump than convention considers appealing—”
“You have never been a nuisance, and neither are you plump,” he intervened.
“That I am too opinionated,” she continued as if he had not spoken at all, “that I am nearly on the shelf, and that you are a handsome and dashing duke to my spinster wallflower. Yet suddenly, you declare yourself my suitor and follow me about this house party, daring to suggest that you are gazing upon me as if I am someone who would hold you in thrall when we both know quite well I am not.”
He didn’t know how to answer her concerns, for she was not precisely wrong that he had not always seen her as he did now. That was part of what he loved about the termagant. She was perceptive and observant, unafraid to embrace her intelligence and hoist it as a flag for all to see. But she was decidedly wrong about her not holding him in her thrall. Her artless loveliness hit him in the gut each time he looked at her.
“Would it help to know that I have also never kissed my butler?” he asked, attempting levity as a last recourse.
Freckles exhaled a disgusted sigh. “Have you gone mad, Warwick? Perhaps the strain of your father’s death has been too much for you and you are now addle-brained. It is the only explanation for your developing this ludicrous notion that you wish to court me.”
“Moreover,” he continued as if she had not spoken, warming to his cause, “I never considered you a nuisance, not even when I rescued you, bedraggled and stinking of fish, from the pond that day.”
“Stinking of fish!” Fury made her voice deep and husky.
He swallowed, shifting in his seat as his cock grew more rigid. What the hell was wrong with him that he could sit here arguing with her and yet think of nothing but touching her, kissing her, and making her his? Her anger was oddly lust-inspiring. Then again, this was Freckles, and everything about her was.
“You see?” Alistair gave her a heavy-lidded look. “I am honest to a fault. Obsequiousness has never been one of my sins.”
“Oh.” She huffed, her breath making a silver cloud in the air, her bonnet stirring in her agitation. “You know what I mean, Warwick. Do not be obtuse. I know my faults, all of them, so do not expect me to believe you cannot spy every one for yourself.”
“You are the perfect height,” he countered, mentally ticking through her extensive arguments, “and your form is perfect, curved and pleasing and feminine just as it ought to be. You are intelligent, kindhearted, and quick-witted enough to flay any lesser opponent alive. If it has never occurred to you that I like you, Freckles, precisely for who and what you are, then you are a fool. You are precisely the sort of woman whom any man would be proud to take to wife.”
“Any man.” She made a dismissive sound. “Clearly that is not so.”
“Perhaps not any man,” he corrected gently, unable to keep himself from widening his legs so that his thigh pressed against hers through the layers of cloth and blankets separating them. She did not withdraw, and he wished he had a free hand to clasp hers or the privacy to kiss her once again, to taste her in all the places he longed to run his tongue. But they were not the only revelers about the Abingdon Hall park, and it would not do to court scandal.
“You see?” she chimed in, her tone exasperated. “Even you admit it.”
“You are the sort of woman I would be proud to take to wife,” he elaborated. “And I am heartily grateful no other has yet claimed you for his own, as that means you are mine.”
She went silent. He risked another sidelong look in her direction. Freckles stared back at him, her brow furrowed. “You recently suffered a blow to the head. That is the only explanation. Are you with fever? Delirium is setting in? The cold weather has given you a lung infection.”
He chuckled at her determination. “No, Freckles.”
“You are serious.” The last was a statement rather than a question.
“About making you my duchess?” He paused. “Utterly.”
Another silence descended between them, and he swore he could hear the wheels of her agile mind turning.
“Why are you here at this house party?” she asked at length.
Of course, she would be curious, being the wily creature she was. Wise of her to note it was not the sort of thing he would have ordinarily done. “Why do you think?”
“You truly are searching for a wife, then?”
“No.” A small smile flitted with the corners of his mouth. “I have already found her.”
“Obsequiousness may not be one of your sins, but arrogance certainly is.” She made a tsking sound. “I was right about you, Warwick. You are a rogue.”
He did not miss the smile in her voice, and it filled his chest with something buoyant and unfamiliar and…warm.
By God, he rather liked it.
