His fingers grazed hers and her heart kicked the way it had when they’d waltzed in the before time, when they had been friendly acquaintances and not nemeses.
Now he was holding her hand, and she could not work out why. That was, at least, until he took the flowers and put them in the vase of water he carried. “Where would you like these?” he asked, completely unaffected by their nearness.
She swallowed, and tried to fake her own indifference. “On the coffee table.” Later tonight, when she fell asleep on the sofa because the bed was a mess, she could look at them as she drifted off.
“Youdon’t always do what I want.” It took her a second to connect his words to the appropriate part of their conversation. He put the vase down and assessed the rest of the room. “You are unique in that way. I trust you.”
She pursed her lips. “Even though we are enemies?”
With his hands in his pockets, he faced her casually, as friends might—as he had at the zoo. “We don’thaveto be enemies.” There was something in his voice that she couldn’t pick.
“What are we if not enemies?” Her mouth was dry, and she ran her tongue around it. If they were to talk, she needed to be on even footing, and that footing required mouthing properly.
“We could be friends.”
“We can’t be friends.” Her scoff turned into a cough. She leaned against the door to steady herself.
“Because I ruined your career?”
Must she state the obvious?“Yes.”
He shrugged. “Well, I suppose we’re not friends then. Acquaintances? When are you moving?” he asked without giving her a chance to address the friend question.
“At the end of the week.” She should continue packing. Maybe if she did, he would recognize that he was not welcome and leave. Instead, she found herself sinking down into the sofa, her skirts flouncing. They really were pretty flowers.
“You have a lot of packing to do.”
“I know.” There was so much mess. There were so many boxes. Why could they not pack themselves? Perhaps the Captain should write a book about animated household items that did the work on their own. He enjoyed speculative fiction. He might write that for her. She would suggest it.
“Tell me where to start.” The duke’s voice dragged her attention back to the present, where animated trunks were not going to help her. From this angle, with him looming over her, he was inconveniently handsome. Though if shehadto be honest, he was handsome from all angles and that had been a secondary part of her frustration all along. He made her butterflies panic and collide into one another.
“Helping you pack is the least I can do,” he continued.
Itwasthe least he could do. He was the reason she’d had to beg and borrow for moving trunks. He could help fill them. “Over there.” She pointed to the pile by the window. He promptly knelt and got to work.But why?
As much as he deserved to be packing her things, it left her uneasy. Like she was a bad host. She was agoodhost. She was agreathost. “Would you like a drink?” she asked, hosting. Mabel and Lillian were both at work and she felt numb, drinking alone in her flat, packing up her life. At least the duke made her feel something, even if it was annoyance.
“What do you have?” he asked.
“Gin. I ran out of bourbon.”
His lips quirked. “Gin it is then.”
She waved a hand toward the doorway that led to the kitchen. “You’re going to have to dig out your own glass from a trunk in there. I left only one unpacked.” Dash it, that was not good hosting. Oh well. “Baskerville doesn’t drink, and I wasn’t expecting company.”
He cocked his head. “Baskerville?”
Eleanor gestured to where Baskerville was sitting on top of a bookshelf, his tail twitching.
“Well, hello there.” The duke reached up and gave Baskerville a scratch behind the ear. In a second, the Judas was purring and pressing his face into the duke’s hands. “Animals like me,” he said, pushing against the cat’s cheeks.
Baskerville’s eyes closed, and the purring deepened.
“I never got to have one of my own, though my siblings did,” he said in response to Eleanor’s narrowed eyes. He gave her cat one last scratch and then pulled away.
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Because I was the duke.” He bobbed down to rummage through the trunk she’d indicated.
