Without warning, the duke reached out and cupped her chin. His countenance a study in concentration, he turned her head from side to side, then brought their faces intimately together. Another half-inch, and their noses would be touching.
“Remarkable,” he breathed.
Her chest rose and fell in quick succession. “What–what is?”
“Your eyes. The color of them. I’ve never seen the like before. Like the hazy light of dawn after a night filled with storms when everything is wet and ruined except for the sky. It’s neither blue, nor gray, nor violet. But a combination of all three that tells the sailors the danger has passed and they can set their compasses for home.” His thumb traced the edge of her jaw in a feathery-soft touch that caused her breath to quicken, and then stop altogether. “That’s what color your eyes are, Rebecca. The color of home.”
He gazed at her a moment more. And for an instant, Rosemary actually thought she might be kissed by the Duke of Hanover. Then he shook his head, as if waking from a trance. He grinned, gave a wink, and then he was gone, whistling a merry tune under his breath as he sauntered out of the parlor, leaving an open door and a shocked wallflower in his wake.
“Rosemary,” she whispered, running her fingertips across her cheek where his hand had burned into her flesh. “My name is Rosemary.”
Weston was goingto murder Evie.
After falling face first into the mud and crawling his way to shore, he had collapsed, exhausted, onto the bank…whereupon, he’d been chased away from the pond by a pair of hissing swans. Vowing to place swan stew on the dinner menu, he had retreated to the manor. But no sooner had he placed one muddy foot inside than Brynne had ordered him to go clean up in the stables.
“Youstink,” she’d told him, her nose wrinkling as she waved a hand in front of her face. “What happened? Never mind. I don’t even want to know. I’ll have your valet send out a change of clothes. Just make yourself presentable. And be sharp about it, as the breakfast is about to start and you are performing the opening toast.”
And that was how the esteemed Earl of Hawkridge found himself to be bathing in ahorse troughwhile dreaming up all sorts of ways to make Evie suffer for having the audacity to walk away from him. When he saw her again…when he saw her again, he had half a mind to draw her over his knee, flip up her skirts, and spank her bottom red.
Although that was likely to be more of an enticement than a punishment.
Bloody hell.
Even when he was furious with her, he still desired her.
Closing his eyes, Weston dunked his entire head into the cold water and ran his fingers through his hair. When he was finally cleaned, he emerged from the trough and met the amused gaze of his valet, Albert Jenkins, who’d been in his employ for the better part of a decade.
“Don’t say a word,” he warned.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, my lord,” Jenkins replied even as his brown eyes twinkled with merriment.
Cursing under his breath, Weston toweled himself dry and dressed quickly in the attire his valet had provided. Jenkins, always mindful of small details, had even brought out a jar of pomade and Weston used it to slick his hair straight back in a stern, formidable style that perfectly matched his current mood.
“Has everyone assembled in the solarium?” he asked.
Jenkins nodded. “Everyone but you, my lord. Lady Smethwick and her daughter, in particular, are looking forward to seeing you.”
Weston didn’t know why that information should cause his mouth to sour, as if he’d bitten into a lemon. He liked Martha. She was an excellent conversationalist, mostly because she never argued or tried to provoke him. Unlike a certain American that he knew. Time spent with her was akin to a pleasant ride through Hyde Park during the height of the promenade hour. Alternately, being in the company of Evie was like a wild, reckless ride through the Scottish moors with perilous cliffs looming at every turn.
“When did Lady Martha and her mother arrive?” he questioned absently. Proper decorum dictated that he should have been there to welcome them personally to Hawkridge Manor. And Martha’s mother, a thin woman with prominent eyebrows that he suspected (but had not yet confirmed) were drawn on, was nothing if not properly decorous.
“Half an hour ago, my lord,” Jenkins replied.
No so long, then. Surely his future mother-in-law wouldn’t harbor a grudge over thirty minutes. Not that he particularly cared either way; he wasn’t marrying Lady Smethwick, after all. But neither did he care to be the recipient of passive aggressive glares across the table while he was trying to enjoy his bacon and poached eggs.
It went without saying that hewouldhave greeted them…if he hadn’t been trapped waist-deep in mud. For that, he blamed Evie. As well as that troublesome lamb of hers.
He never should have gotten involved to begin with. But when he’d heard Evie cry out, his first instinct had been to run to her as fast as humanly possible. And when he saw those luminous blue eyes wet with tears…how could henothave held her? In that moment of heartbreak and hopelessness, he would have gladly traveled to heaven itself if that’s what it took to get Posy back. He’d have traded his wealth. His title. His properties. Everything–anything–to heal Evie’s hurt.
Then it turned out that Posy wasn’t dead, just missing. But instead of calling up a footman to go searching for the lamb, as any reasonable earl would have done, as heshouldhave done, he’d gone to find her himself. In the midst of a house party. With his esteemed peers waiting for him below stairs and his soon-to-be fiancée arriving any second, he had raced off with Evie. As if she were the only person that mattered. And the worst part…even worse than the filthy muck and the attack swans (however, they came in a close second)…was how terrifyinglyrightit had felt to do so. To abandon all of his commitments and responsibilities to focus solely on Evie. To make her, for however brief a time, the center of his universe. To put her needs above all else. And, most importantly, to make her smile again.
That was all he’d wanted to do when he had set off to find Posy.
To take away Evie’s tears…and replace them with a smile.
The kind that lit up her entire face and made the corners of her eyes crinkle and her nose scrunch.
Like when she’d gotten foxed and doubled over with laughter at absolutely nothing. Or the wondrous grin that had captured her mouth when he’d caught her peering over the stall at the newborn foal.
