“There,” Hurtheven repeated with a wink. “Mine.”
But he wasn’t looking at the mountain. He was looking straight at her.
He shouldn’t treat her with such familiarity, even if his warm regard made her heart skip.
She sent him a haughty expression. “Yousaid it was a mountain.”
“I beg your pardon!” he said with mock horror. “Itisa mountain.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Thatis a hill. A large hill, I’ll grant you…”
“Hill?! A hill!” Fee bounded between them. “She says that looks like ahill.”
“Well,” Delmare put in. “It doesn’t look dramatic like the mountains in Scotland.”
The duke turned toward the view and placed his hands on his hips. “That, I’ll have everyone know, is a perfectly good, English mountain.”
“To be fair, there isn’t ajaggedpeak,” Delmare noted. “And there isn’t any snow.”
“Hills are rolling, pleasant. Mountains have menace. That”—he pointed to the hill—“has menace.”
“Well, ma’am?” Delmare asked. “Is it a mountain?”
“I suspect that’s a question for a cartographer.” If she let the teasing go on any longer, she’d never be able to face the groom. “But the view”—her gaze involuntarily flicked to the duke—"is beautiful.”
She turned away from his grin, occupying herself with removing Fee’s stockings so she might dangle her feet in the stream. She steadily ignored Delmare and the duke as the latter lead the former along the water, speaking to him in low tones.
Troubled, she took a place on the blanket the groom had spread out for their use and reclined on her elbow, keeping a careful eye on Fee. Soon enough, the duke’s shadow fell across her legs.
She squinted up at him, accusation in her eyes.
He took a place on the blanket. “You look as if you have something on your mind.”
“Your marked attention will subject us to gossip.”
“Allow me to put your mind at rest,” he replied. “My staff would never tell tales, least of all about me...”
She sent him a dubious expression.
“...But I will do my best to rein in my enthusiasm in the future.”
“Enthusiasm.”
“I enjoy you, Hera,” he said, voice low. “Your conversation. Your presence. Your look of flustered forbearance when I tease you...among other things I won’t, at present, enumerate.”
She looked away.
It was one of the nicest things anyone had said to her in a very long time. Worse still, she felt the same. She turned back to reply in kind, but he’d already stretched out, and fanned his arms behind his head, giving the appearance of sleep.
With a troubled heart, she returned her attention to the playing children.
She hoped she would hear from the duchess soon.
If he persisted in this level of charm, eventually she was going to succumb to her feelings...and fall fully and hopelessly in love.
* * *
After Hera had chastised the duke, rather than curbing his flirting, he chose instead to expand his exuberance, including everyone in a joie de vivre that proved universally infectious.
