Currently, he stood with Lords Waverly and Jeffcoat, sipping a drink and chatting, looking happier than she’d seen him the entire time he was at her family’s country house.
He turned in her direction while she was staring, and to her mortification, he waved.
She spun on her heel away from his gaze. “I think I have to go home.”
Her father put a hand under her elbow. “What is wrong? Are you ill?”
“I suspect it’s simply nerves,” her mother said, and in an uncharacteristically firm tone, she added, “You cannot go home or we shall all be stranded. Why don’t you go speak with His Grace?”
“Mother! No. That definitely won’t help my nerves.”
“He’s coming over,” her father said cheerfully.
“God help me,” Amity said. “I think I’m going to be sick. Where is the closest water-closet?”
Grabbing Beatrice’s arm for support, she dashed from the room, even as she could feel the duke behind her, making her skin prickle with awareness.
After a few minutes in the luxurious retiring room with Beatrice applying a damp cloth to the back of her neck, being careful not to get a drop of water on the silk, Amity felt no better.
“I knew I shouldn’t have come. I’m liable to melt into a pool of humiliation and sadness on the ballroom floor if the duke so much as smiles at me. Look at my hands.”
Beatrice sighed, dropped the cloth on the edge of the sink and took hold of Amity’s trembling hands. “You must stop this nonsense. You are Amity Rare-Foure. You’ve had a fiancé, you’ve had a duke ask you to marry him already, you are a wonderful chocolatier. And you are a dear sister. Please, for my sake, because I hate to see you like this, if you cannot wait for him to announce his engagement, please go speak with him. Tell him how you feel before it is too late.”
Her sister’s intelligent brown eyes staring into hers imparted wisdom. All at once, Amity knew Beatrice was right. She was behaving like a spineless, feather-pated ninny. She straightened her shoulders, examined herself in the mirror, and nodded.
“You are right. Let’s go.”
Back in the ballroom, she marched straight over to the duke, who was chatting with her parents.
He turned to her ... and her voice vanished.
Coughing, she gestured for him to draw closer. “Please, Your Grace,” she whispered, “may I have a word with you? Alone?”
He cocked his head at her plea, looking downright surprised.
“Always,” he answered when he’d recovered. Unexpectedly, instead of speaking discreetly to her parents, he said in a louder voice, encompassing those around them, “If you will excuse us, Miss Rare-Foure and I need to discuss a sensitive chocolate matter.”
Amity’s eyes widened at his bringing attention to their rather improper private meeting. Nevertheless, he was a duke, and she supposed he could do what he liked at his own party, or anywhere else for that matter.
When her parents nodded, she had to wonder what the civilized world was coming to. The duke gestured for her to precede him out of the ballroom. In the hallway, he paused and considered.
“I believe the drawing room is empty now, as everyone has gathered in the ballroom for the grand announcement.”
He’d supposed correctly, and Amity found herself alone with the duke, who closed the door behind them and waited.
The grand announcement. His words echoed in her brain, making it nearly impossible for her to continue. She hadn’t thought about what to say between the ballroom and the drawing room.Should she declare herself right away?
When she said nothing, he asked, “To what do I owe the pleasure of a privatetête-a-têtewith London’s premiere chocolatier?”
She blinked. Whether to ease her nerves or merely to make a jest, Henry had made reference to their first meeting on the pavement when he’d invited her into his carriage.
In reply, she said the same thing as she had that day. “That is redundant, my lord.”
He smiled and showed her his dashing dimples, and she wondered how she could have ever let this man get away. She could only pray to God and to her queen that it was not too late.
“Notmy lord, Miss Rare-Foure. Have you learned nothing?”
“I have learned a great deal, in fact,” she confessed. “I can but hope I did not learn too late.”
