“And it wasn’t the roof, Your Grace,” she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “It was the ceiling, and only a part of it, at that. The rest of the house is safe enough, and as it happens, the ice skates are in the stillroom, far away from my bedchamber. I’ll just pop through the door in the back courtyard and fetch them. I’ll be back out again in a trice.” She gave him a sunny smile. “See? There’s nothing at all to worry about.”
Worry?Who was worried? Not him.
She marched to the door and would have left the study, as cool as you please, if he hadn’t stopped her with a hand on her arm. “One hour, Miss St. Claire. One hour, and not a moment longer. Do you understand me?”
She grinned, and his gaze caught and held on the sweet curve of those pink rosebud lips. She had the most damnably distracting mouth.
“You’ll come, then? How wonderful!” She clapped her hands together, gleeful. “You won’t regret it, Your Grace.”
“On the contrary, Miss St. Claire. I already regret it.”
“Nonsense! It’s the most pleasurable thing ever, gliding about the ice.”
“I won’t be going anywhere near the ice, I assure you.”
Disappointment flickered in her eyes, but the irrepressible smile was soon back. “When you said an hour, you meant an hour ofskating, of course, didn’t you, Your Grace? Because it will take us at least half that time to get there, and that would hardly be fair, you know.”
She was still talking as she made her way into the hallway, but he paid her no mind as he trailed along after her, letting her prattle on as he ordered Monk to have the carriage made ready. What was the use in arguing, when every day that passed showed more plainly than the one before it that Miss St. Claire would have her way, no matter what he said?
He’d thoughthewas stubborn.
He hadn’t had the faintest idea what he was getting himself into when he’d brought her here. She was too cheerful, too tempting, with that wide smile of hers, and that glint of mischief in her lovely green eyes. She was too skilled at wrapping people around her little finger, just as Ambrose had been.
He’d do well to remember that.
CHAPTER14
The Duke of Grantham wasn’t pleased. No, he was most decidedly displeased, so much so one would think he were on his way to witness a hanging, rather than to enjoy a lovely afternoon of ice skating on a sunny winter’s day.
“It’s fortunate it’s been so cold lately, is it not, Your Grace? The pond is certain to be frozen all the way through, even in the middle, where it’s deepest. It’ll be ever so spacious for your guests.”
Silence.
Rose turned to him, a determined smile on her lips, but it faded at the sight of the duke’s dark glower. Oh, dear. His grim frown was enough to frighten the sun itself behind a cloud.
“We’ll have to fetch the rest of the skates from Hammond Court on our way back, so everyone might skate together if they wish,” she went on, with determined cheerfulness. “Why, it’ll be like the frost fair on the Thames five years ago, with all of us out on the ice together. Perhaps we might even have warm cider.”
No response. If the duke had any opinions about the frost fair, he didn’t share them.
“I daresay you must have seen the frost fair, Your Grace?” He would have been in Town at that time, and nearly all of London was meant to have turned out for it. “From what I heard of it, there was skating and dancing, hot apples and gingerbread, and even nine-pin bowling on the ice. Oh, how I would have loved to have seen it myself! Do you suppose we might attempt to recreate it? I daresay your guests would be delight—”
“Do youevercease talking, Miss St. Claire?”
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. His dark brows were drawn together in a frown, his lips were tight, and the hint of warmth she’d thought she’d glimpsed in his eyes last night was nowhere to be seen today. Those gray depths were as frozen as the thick layer of ice over the pond.
Perhaps she’d imagined it.
His words, and the quelling tone in which he said them would most certainly have silenced many a young lady, but she’d never been one to hold her tongue, no matter if it was a duke who’d hushed her.
In any case, he’d likely had enough silence to last him a lifetime.
“Not often, no,” she replied cheerfully, as they made their way down to the pond below Hammond Court, the skates she’d thrown over her shoulder bouncing against her back as she walked. “Have you any ice skates of your own at Grantham Lodge, Your Grace?”
Somehow, she doubted it. They didn’t even have citron for the Christmas pudding at Grantham Lodge. It seemed wildly optimistic to imagine he kept a pair of ice skates.
“Humph.”
She waited, but that solitary grunt was the duke’s only reply.
