“What was that about?” she asked him quietly when he’d reached her. “You were very hostile to Lord Routhecamp. Why?”
“Lord Routhecamp is a cad,” the duke said. “I’ve heard about the way he treats ladies. And you heard it too, didn’t you? You heard the way he responded to the questions I asked him. He confessed to engaging in flirtations with no intention of taking them seriously.”
“And what if he did?” Lavinia asked. “Does that give you the right to scare off one of the only gentlemen who seems willing to speak to me?”
“Lady Lavinia, for heaven’s sake—you can do better thanhim. What has someone like him ever done to make himself worthy of your attention?”
“I don’t know,” Lavinia said. “It’s not as if I have much time. There are plenty of gentlemen who have already decided they don’t care for me. I agree he seems as if he has a checkered past, but does that mean he can’t be redeemed? Perhaps he isn’t who I would have chosen if I could have had any gentleman I liked, but I know as well as anybody that that isn’t the way things are. I can’t afford to refuse to give anyone a chance.
“If there’s even a possibility that I might experience feelings of love for someone, I have to try to allow them to grow. And Icertainlycan’t afford to gain a reputation as someone who is turning gentlemen away. If people see me that way, others will hesitate to approach me—and what then? It will be impossible for me to find a match.”
“You’re not giving yourself enough credit here,” the duke said. “And you’re not giving me enough credit either. I wouldn’t have sent him off the way I did if I thought he was your only chance. He isn’t. You have enough charm about you to engage the interest of as many gentlemen as you’d like. All you need is to learn how to do it.”
“I can’t do that,” Lavinia protested. “I don’t know how to charm anyone. You know that as well as I do. Every time I try to be charming, I end up pushing people away from me.”
“But it doesn’t have to be that way,” the duke told her. “Youhavedone things that are charming. I’ve seen them. I think it comes to you when you aren’t trying, which complicates the matter, but you’re capable of it.”
“When have I ever been charming?” Lavinia asked.
“When you pulled me off the garden path so that Lady Genevieve wouldn’t see me?—”
“You didn’t find that charming,” Lavinia protested. “You didn’t like that I had done that.”
He held up a hand. “Allow me to finish, please,” he said. “It wasn’t the act of pulling me off the path that was charming. It was the way you didn’t try to win my approval. When I objected to what you’d done, you told me to leave if I didn’t like it. There was something unusual about that boldness. It was a moment I have never been able to forget.”
She regarded him. Were they still talking about Lord Routhecamp? Suddenly, it seemed as if perhaps they weren’t. “You’re sayingyoufound me charming?”
“This isn’t about me,” he said gruffly, looking away quickly. “This is about your ability to be bold in social settings. That’s what you can do that will charm gentlemen in ways they won’t forget. That’s the skill you have that will allow you to win them over.”
“But if that’s never worked in the past, what’s to make me believe it will work now?” Lavinia asked him. “I can accept that it’s something you took a liking to about me, of course, but why should anybody else find it to be a good quality just because you did?”
“Some people will admire your boldness and some won’t,” the duke said. “But you’re looking for a genuine love match, are you not?”
“You know I am.”
“Then what you need to remember is that the right person will like the qualities you naturally possess,” the duke said. “The right person won’t require you to pretend to be something you’renot. You don’t need to learn how to do that. You don’t need to learn to be someone who can tolerate behavior like Lord Routhecamp’s.
What you need to do is learn how to best show off the person you are. That’s what gentlemen need to see if they are going to appreciate your potential and truly come to care for you in the way you’re hoping they will.”
Lavinia nodded. As strange as it sounded, it did make sense to her. “How can I do that, though?” she asked. “How can I showcase the qualities I possess naturally in such a way as to win people over? I’ve never been able to do it before. This is the problem I’ve always faced, and now I’m forced to try to resolve it within a matter of days. I don’t see how I’m going to do that.”
“Well, we are planning on meeting one another tonight, are we not?”
“Yes,” she said. “I still intend to be there.”
“Good. Then that is what we’ll focus on—learning how to show off the best things about you so that you can draw the attention of agoodgentleman, and not a cad like Lord Routhecamp. Someone you choose for yourself.”
“Is he really so bad?”
“Didn’t you hear the things he was saying?” the duke asked. “He spoke of how he didn’t care what happened to the ladieshe spends his time with. He said outright that there was a difference between having fun with someone and finding someone he deems good enough to marry. That’s a bit of a shocking opinion, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” Lavinia said. “I can imagine enjoying spending time with someone I knew I wasn’t going to marry.”
She fixed her gaze on the duke, wondering whether he would understand the point she was making.
If he did, he made no comment. But he lingered for a moment, looking at her as if she was a puzzle he was struggling to solve.
Then he swallowed. “I think perhaps I’d better go inside,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense for us to linger here.”
