She lowered her gaze, toying with the buttons on his coat. “It did, didn’t it?”
“Did it to you, as well? I never would have guessed it. It seemed as if you could go along quite happily as we had been for at least another year or so.”
She laughed. “A year? Goodness, no.”
“I can see now I was doomed from the start.” When it came to his wife, he was hopeless at wagering. Hopeless at seduction, too. He’d never had any trouble either at the gaming tables or in the bedchamber before, it was true, but then, he’d never before made the grave mistake of trifling with his duchess.
His stunning, exquisite, enticing, maddening duchess.
But despite the past ten days of frustration, her wager had turned out to be a stroke of pure genius. If it hadn’t been for the wager, he never would have spent all that time alone in his bed, thinking about her and missing her. It had given him the time he needed to come to his senses and reach the conclusion he should have reached from the start.
The fencing at Angelo’s had never really been about fencing at Angelo’s, just as her visit to Tattersalls, the shooting at Manton’s, or her ride on Sampson that day at Basingstoke House had been about any of those things.
They weren’t merely things shedid. They were who shewas.
She’d tried to explain it to him, that day he’d dragged her away from Angelo’s, when she’d told him if he wanted a duchess who’d spend her days shopping and gossiping, then he should have married another lady.
Why had it taken so long for him to understand what she meant? Unless it was that, for a rake who’d spent a good portion of his adult life bedding one lady after another, he hadn’t ever spent much time talking to any of them.
Listening, either.
In the end, all she’d asked from him that day was for the freedom to be who she was.
And he’d refused her. He could no longer remember why, now.
His wife was extraordinary. Why in the world should he wish to make her otherwise?
“I have a gift for you, Your Grace.” He touched her chin, tipping her face up to his. “May I bring it to your bedchamber tonight?”
“I think you’d better, yes.” She laid a hand on his cheek, her gaze growing serious. “I—I’ve missed you, Jasper.”
He caught her hand and pressed it to his lips. “I missed you, too.”
But as the carriage rolled through the dim streets of London, her hand still clasped in his, he knew it was more than that.
It was love. He’d fallen in love with his wife.
* * *
“It’s, ah, it’s terribly crowded, is it not?” Prue cast a nervous glance over the mass of fashionably dressed people crowding the ballroom, her stomach lurching, then turned her gaze to Franny. “So many people.”
The ballroom blazed with light, the harsh glare playing over what seemed to be hundreds of people, all of them dressed in the height of elegance, the ladies in extravagant silk gowns, their fingers, wrists, ears, and necks flashing with colorful jewels.
And a great many of them had their curious gazes pointed ather.
Perhaps this ball hadn’t been such a wise idea, after all. “I thought everyone was meant to be at their country houses. Doesn’t thetonhunt in September?”
“Generally, yes, but they’re curious about you, dearest.” Franny squeezed her hand. “They’ve all come to see the mysterious new Duchess of Montford for themselves.”
“You mean to say they’ve given up their grouse hunting so they might hunt duchesses, instead?” She attempted a laugh, but it set the butterflies in her stomach aflutter again, and a wave of nausea gripped her.
She would not cast up her accounts. She wouldnot.
Not with all those prying eyes on her at once.
“I’m no friend totongossip, as you know, Prue, but it must be said that youhaverather earned something of a name for yourself.” Lady Diana, Basingstoke’s eldest sister gave Prue a mischievous smile. “Thetonhas worked themselves into a passion over you. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the like of it before.”
Apassion? Goodness, that sounded ominous. “I can’t think why. They’re sure to be disappointed when the mystery is dispelled at last.”
