It was the sort of thing she wasn’t even sure she would want.
What she most certainly did not want? To hide her reading proclivities from a man who would become her partner through life. She would sooner wrangle an elderly dowager’s ill-behaved corgis than pretend to be someone she was not.
“Mother, the duke will either accept me as I am, if he truly wishes to wed me, or he will not.” She shrugged. Also unladylike, but it could not be helped. “I will not hide my book from him.”
Her mother’s nose twitched, a sure sign that she was about to go into high dudgeon. “Put the thing away, Lydia. I beg you.”
Lydia shook her head slowly. “No.”
“Just when I thought you had finally procured some sense,” Mother grumbled.
Her mother’s insistence that Warwick was asking for her hand in marriage meant precious little if she could not have what she wanted most. Otherwise, she may as well become accustomed to the drudgery of life as a paid companion.
“I have sense,” she felt compelled to argue. “And it is that very selfsame sense that refuses to allow me to hide a book from a man who would marry me as though it is a source of shame. I am not embarrassed by my mind, Mother, and neither should you be. I would sooner be on the shelf than sacrifice myself to a man who cannot see beyond the long end of his arrogant nose.”
“I do hope you are not speaking of me, as I have it on good authority that my nose is neither arrogant nor overly long.”
The lazy drawl emerging from the threshold of the room had Lydia’s eyes flying to him. There he stood. Tall. Debonair. Appallingly handsome. He wore confidence better than his exquisitely tailored coat.
Warwick. He washere. Finished speaking with Rand. Pinning her beneath the full effect of that shockingly blue gaze. Making her forget for a moment that Mother had certainly erred and there was no way the divine, masculine creature before her would be interested in a gangly, shapeless lady who preferred the stars to the drawing room.
Mother gasped at his sudden, unexpected appearance. Lydia flushed, wondering how she had failed to notice his presence when every part of her now hummed into awareness at the sight of him. He performed a formal bow with glorious precision. Only his rakish air and the smug grin curving his lips hinted at his true nature. His smile deepened as he refused to remove his stare from her, andoh dear heavens. The mesmerizing twin grooves in his cheeks reappeared.
She and her startled mother exchanged perfunctory, perfectly polite greetings with him, Lydia’s by force. That she could form a coherent sentence and feign a complete lack of concern at his presence were twin miracles.
“Of course, Lady Lydia was not speaking of you, Warwick.” Her mother was quick to reassure him, either not sensing the inflection of humor in his words or not willing to risk the chance that he had found insult in Lydia’s frank words.
“Very good,” he murmured, not taking his eyes from Lydia. “I would hate to think Lady Lydia should find fault with me in any way.”
No. How could anyone find fault with him when he was as dashing as any man she had ever seen? When he always knew precisely what to say? When a mere smile from his lips devastated her? She studied him as her mind whirred with the possibilities about to unfold.
Something new shone in his expression. His regard was almost intimate. Tender. It quite stole her breath even though she had no wish for it to affect her. How could she possibly gird her defenses against a man so fine-looking it nearly hurt to gaze upon him, who was everything a gentleman should be?
With dimples.
The dimples, simply, were not fair.
But when one stopped to consider the matter of the Duke of Warwick’s appearance, neither was his face. Or the rich mahogany locks that begged to be smoothed by her palm. Never mind the sensual lips that knew how to kiss with such persuasion, lips she had felt against hers, plundering, claiming, taking. The reminder of that heated embrace was a spur in her wild thoughts. The heat in her cheeks heightened rather than abated, and yet she could not tear her gaze from him.
What had come over her? Who was this simpleminded miss who could not stop staring into the eyes of the Duke of Warwick? Who was imagining, for the very first time, that he might actually be hers?
That he might actually wanther.
“Lady Lydia would never find any fault in you, Your Grace,” Mother exclaimed then, winning Lydia’s attention once more. Mother blinked, her smile clearly—at least to Lydia’s well-trained eye—feigned. “Would you, my darling Lydia? Go on, tell him then.”
Lydia blinked. “Mother, it was a figure of speech. You need not concern yourself on his account. Why, His Grace is well-versed in the art of jesting. He has been abon amito Rand, after all. I should hardly think it necessary to explain.”
“Youwerespeaking of me, then?” he asked with deceptive disinterest.
Her mother’s eyes narrowed into a distinctive glare, mouth pursing into a knot. Lydia was sure that had Warwick not watched with such scrutiny, her mother would have mouthed her displeasure to her, or at the very least hissed a reprimand to be on her best behavior. Lydia looked back to Warwick. If she did not know better, she would venture to say he was unsure of himself.
But unsure and the Duke of Warwick were two components of the English language that could not comfortably dwell together in the same sentence. He was the most self-possessed, handsome man—and rake—she knew.
“Yes,” she said with a smile of her own, enjoying the notion that she—who most other gentlemen had overlooked—might make him squirm.
“Of course, she was not,” Mother interrupted with false gaiety. She made an exaggerated show of looking about her then, as though she had lost something quite dear and could not fathom where it had gone. “Good heavens, I seem to have misplaced my needlework. I must go off in search of it. I shall be back in a trice, and I shall leave the door ajar whilst I am away.”
Lydia nearly groaned at her mother’s blatant intention to leave her alone with Warwick. There had been no sign of needlework about. Not only did it go against the rigid strictures of propriety, but it left Lydia with a galloping pulse and a dry mouth as she watched her mother’s skirts disappear over the threshold and realized she was well and truly alone with him.
