“Lord Kilhone was one of them. He praised my performance and made so bold as to tell me I was beautiful. And... well, when someone tells you you’re beautiful, it’s only polite to graciously receive such a compliment, and perhaps return it somewhat in kind?”
“I cannot say, as I’ve never been accused of such a thing,” he said dryly.
“Well, then everyone’s been remiss, Your Grace.”
His slow smile was so unexpectedly, wickedly sensual, it shocked the breath from her.
She began to suspect, with a certain thrill and uneasiness that accompanies walking the ledge of a tall building, that he was, in fact, capable of devastating charm. He just hadn’t seen fit to expend any of it on her thus far.
It occurred to her that this was likely a mercy.
She did not think this was a man who did anything by halves.
“Do youseethe difference?” she said. “Thatwas flirting, Your Grace. And now we’ve both learned something today.”
“It’s a mystery why duels spontaneously happen around you, Miss Wylde.”
“Ithink so, too,” she said earnestly. “But mind you, it was just the one. Sometimes flirting seems the polite thing to do. Isn’t it rude not to say or do a thing about it when men flirt? That is, theywillflirt, won’t they?”
“Do I really strike you as the sort?”
“Oh, I suspect you’re capable of anything, if you really put your back into it, Your Grace.”
She wanted another one of those smiles the way she’d wanted another sip of champagne that fateful night. And what did that say about her? Both were potent. Neither was wise.
He gave her another one. Fleeting and patient.
She was reminded he was a castle. All but impossible to breach with her meager weapons.
And as far as he was concerned, she was still on trial.
“Lord Revell heard this exchange, and he was outraged that Lord Kilhone would dare to compliment me in his presence, which is frankly ridiculous, as he had no claim on me at all, though they were both... ah, foxed.”
“You don’t say,” the duke said cynically.
And even as she said the words, the story seemed unspeakably frivolous and sordid even in her own ears; how must it sound to him? But oddly she feltstronger as she unburdened herself, which spoke to how heavy it had weighed upon her.
“Iwasn’t,” she hastened to add, primly. This was true, but mainly because they had run out of champagne. “They used me as an excuse to go outside with pistols and shoot at each other,” she said bitterly. “While their friends looked on. While their friends looked on! The papers were wrong. Ididn’twatch. I couldn’t bear it. But neither of them gave a da... fig about... me.” She took a breath to steady her voice; she heard the rise in pitch, the stifled anguish in it. “It was about two spoiled men and their pride and reckless tempers that they felt free to indulge like children throwing tantrums. Something I would never dream of doing, and never,everget away with doing.”
His eyes were cool and remote, as if he was watching the entire sordid scene inside his mind, the way he might an enemy army amassing on a faraway hillside.
“If they cared at all for me, wouldn’t they have minded or noticed that I was terribly frightened?”
Damnation. She kept her chin up, but her voice broke on the last word, anyway.
“You were frightened?” he said sharply, after a moment.
She nodded wearily.
His face was pensive now. Lips pressed together.
She took a breath, and dared to ask the question she’d yearned to ask all along.
“So that is the story, and I swear it on my life.I am sorry it happened, but I cannot see how I caused it. But what I’d like to know is this, Your Grace. You ought to know. Is it honorable, what they did?”
She asked it as if she were indeed on the dock and he were the magistrate.
Her heart was pounding.
