He looked genuinely perplexed. “Should I have?”
Lydia pressed a hand to her temple. “Dear Lord, you intend to starve me into compliance. I suppose you have also forbidden singing and—” she snapped her fingers, “—laughter.”
“I would never forbid anything, Miss Montague,” Maximilian said, though the set of his jaw suggested otherwise. “I merely make recommendations against certain things.”
She withdrew a wrapped biscuit and sniffed it suspiciously. “If you are trying to bribe me with this, you should know I am not above blackmail.”
He folded his arms. “I am not above retaliation.”
She snapped the biscuit in half, crumbs scattering onto her skirts. “I should have brought a companion with backbone.” She glanced at Lady Marchweather, blissfully unaware as she slept.
“Perhaps you might have,” Maximilian replied, “if you had not terrorized every eligible escort in London.”
She gaped, then grinned. “You have heard the tales, then.”
“I have lived them.”
After each retort, his fingers drifted to his cravat.
She tilted her head, studying him. “If you are this tense before we have even left the city, you may not survive to Devonshire.”
He reached for the brandy flask, opened it, and poured himself a judicious inch. “That is a risk I accepted the moment I agreed to this.”
Lydia watched him over the rim of her biscuit, a small smile on her lips. She could not decide if he was the driest man she had ever met or merely the best at concealing his true self beneath layers of starched cloth.
Lydia pretended to study the map, but her eyes flicked up at regular intervals, catching Maximilian watching—her face, her hands, the way she arranged her skirts.
Her breath caught as his gaze dropped to her mouth, then he blinked hard, as if pulling himself back from a ledge. Her mind drifted to the moment in the Montague parlor when his hand had caught her wrist. She remembered the gentleness of his touch and the way his thumb had pressed against her pulse. She wasn’t sure whether he meant to steady or possess her, and she found she would not have minded either.
The memory unsettled her, which meant she had to confront it.
“Is wrist-grasping a family specialty?” she asked.
He blinked, startled. “Pardon?”
“You did it when we met and looked as though you meant to do it again just now.” She waggled her fingers.
His gaze lingered on her hand before returning to her face. “I suppose I did. You seem to have that effect on people.”
“Unnerving them?”
“Disarming them,” he said, leaving her uncertain whether it was an insult or a compliment—perhaps both.
She folded the map and handed it back. “There, Your Grace. I have conceded the route at great personal cost. The least you can do is agree to a detour if I spot anything remarkable along the way.”
He hesitated. “Within reason.”
She leaned back, satisfied. “Everything I do is within reason. My reason, to be specific.”
Lydia pressed her cheek to the window, watching the city fade into narrow lanes and sparse hedgerows. It was not the landscape she craved, but she resolved to make it interesting, even if Maximilian refused.
As they rounded a bend, the carriage hit a rut the size of a badger’s sett. The jolt dislodged Lydia fromher position, pitching her toward Maximilian. His arm shot out, steadying her.
The dowager snorted awake at the jolt, blinked at Lydia on the duke’s shoulder, and promptly dozed off again with a satisfied hum.
For a moment, neither Lydia nor Maximilian moved. Her shoulder pressed against his chest; his breath tickled the curls at her temple. She felt the tension in his jaw. The warmth of his palm against her bare arm was almost indecent, and she became acutely aware of how closely her ribs brushed his with every breath.
She could have righted herself immediately, but she did not.
