Hazel dismounted more carefully, smoothing her skirts. Greyson dismounted as well, handing his reins to a waiting groom and stepping toward the water’s edge. The others chatted behind them, but Greyson stood slightly apart, with his gaze fixed on the rippling surface. His silver eyes seemed distant and pulled inward, as if the quiet stirred old thoughts he could not quite shake.
Hazel watched him. He appeared as though the world existed at a polite distance from him. Hazel felt an impulse, light and mischievous, and entirely unlike her usual self.
Perhaps he could do with a very small disruption.
She stepped lightly behind him.
“Your Grace,” she said sweetly.
He turned a little, though not fully. Her fingers darted up, and she stole his hat.
“Hazel?” he blinked at her.
She backed away with a grin, clutching the highly improper trophy. “If you stare any harder at the water, you shall summon it to speak.”
“Hazel…” he repeated with the faintest quiver of disbelief.
Cordelia gasped delightedly behind them. “Hazel! Did you just steal a duke’s hat in public?”
Matilda snorted. “I approve.”
Evelyn murmured. “Oh dear.”
Greyson stepped toward her. “Hazel, please… return the hat.”
“Come claim it,” Hazel teased, holding it just out of reach.
His eyes narrowed, and just as he took a step, a sudden gust of wind whipped across the water. Hazel felt the hat jerk from her grasp.
“No!” she yelped, lunging for it.
But the hat sailed on, ever so tragically and gracefully at the same time, falling directly into the shallows with a softploosh.
No one spoke. Cordelia clapped a hand over her mouth, while her eyes were enormous with delight. Evelyn looked stunned. Matilda’s lips twitched upward, fighting laughter with decorous dignity.
Hazel stared at the water in horror. “Oh… oh, dear. Greyson, I… that was not part of the plan.”
It most certainly was not.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Greyson could only stare at the hat floating away into the shallows like a fallen soldier… his perfectly respectable, perfectly dignified, perfectlydryhat.
It was Cordelia who broke the stunned silence with an explosive, delighted cry. “Hazel has drowned the Duke’s hat!”
Matilda elbowed her so sharply she nearly toppled. “Cordelia.”
“What? Shehas! Look at it! The poor thing never stood a chance!”
Greyson felt the familiar spark of irritation. It blossomed into a tight coil in his chest, and a ready-made scowl formed out of instinct. It was absurd and mortifying. It was entirely unnecessary chaos.
But then, his eyes found Hazel. She was standing very still on the bank, staring at the water as though she had personallycommitted a crime against the aristocracy. Her lips were pressed together, trembling on the verge of a suppressed laugh.
She looked incandescent. A warm, palpable joy radiated off her, even in her mortification. And Greyson felt something inside him yield to that joy. Whatever she had done, whatever havoc she had wreaked, he knew, with startling clarity, that he could not stay angry at her, not when she looked at him with that mixture of guilt and stifled mirth, glowing like sunlight through the leaves.
“You know,” he said slowly, “you owe me a hat now.”
The tension snapped into laughter, relief and sparkling amusement.
