“Derrick,” she said slowly, and a thrill of pleasure shot through him upon hearing his name spill from her perfect pink lips. “Very well. You may call me Annalise, if you’d like.”
He did like.
He liked it a great deal.
He likedhera great deal.
Maybe… just maybe… her idea of love at first sight had some merit.
Not for him, of course. But for a duke with a heart.
Surely, for a duke with a heart, there were far worse fates than falling in love with an utterly enchanting, goose-befriendingwoman he’d met on a whim in a park. Like traveling through his whole life whilst only living half of it.
He cleared his throat. “From the sound of their raised voices, it appears as though a congregation of young, able-bodied gentlemen is around the next bend arguing about whose horse is fastest. Should we see if your future husband is among them?”
Annalise nodded and began walking, the three emperors waddling in her wake. “Oh, and Derrick,” she called out suddenly over her shoulder when she reached the end of the bridge. “Iamlooking forward to proving you wrong.”
“Challenge accepted, my dear Annalise,” he murmured as a grin cracked the corners of his mouth. “Challenge accepted.”
Part III
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk through my garden forever.”~Lord Alfred Tennyson
Her first kiss.
Herfirstkiss.
Her firstkiss.
If Annalise were alone, she would have thrown out her arms in giddy excitement and spun in a circle until her skirts billowed around her in a curtain of violet. As it was, she made do with a quick, giddy skip and shared a conspiratorial smile with Marcus who affectionately pecked her shoe before veering off the path in search of clover.
Oh, what a dream come true! And what akiss. Soft, passionate, gentle, consuming. It had lifted the downy hairs at her nape and made her toes curl. Hertoes! She hadn’t known they would do that. Or that her lips would still be tinglingminutes after. Or that whenever she stole a glance at Derrick she couldn’t help but blush, even though he had called Constantine a name, andthatwasn’t nice, but the kiss… the kiss had been better than nice. It had been everything she’d ever hoped it would be and more.
If only he liked poetry.
Still, she surmised as they wound their way along the trail in pursuit of prospective suitors, if the duke could help her find a man who kissed half as well as he did and checked off most of the wants on her list, she would consider the day a success. And if she could prove to Derrick that true lovedidexist, well, that would just be the icing on her favorite lemon cake.
He was far too handsome to be so cynical. Or perhaps he was cynical because he was so handsome. Regardless, she was determined to show him that the length of time you knew someone had little to do with how much they meant to you… or how much theycouldmean, given the right circumstances.
There did have to be a bit of luck involved, she acknowledged. If the person you were meant to love lived in another city, or - heaven forbid - another country, that could certainly put a knot in things. But there were carriages, and trains, and ships. Why, even if they lived next door, there was no guarantee that paths would cross. All things considered, it was a small miracle in and of itself that she’d met Derrick this morning. Under normal circumstances, this might have been their eleventh, twelfth, or even thirteenth meeting. How many balls had she missed? She’d given up count long ago. Because nothing about her upbringing had been normal. Wasn’t the very fact that they were walking beside each other, that he’dkissedher, proof that the type of fate poets devoted entire sonnets to really did exist?
If only he liked dancing.
“What do you think?” Crouching behind a thicket of forsythia, Derrick gestured for her to join him. “The one on the gray does not appear diseased.”
Gathering her dress to avoid trotting on the hem, Annalise joined the duke in peering through the hedgerow of tiny yellow flowers at four men on horseback. “I don’t thinkanyof them look diseased. What do you think, Marcus?”
The smallest of the three geese honked in agreement.
“You can never be too careful,” Derrick said ominously. “Look at the one in the middle. Has smallpox all over his face.”
She squinted. “I believe those are freckles.”
“And the one on the bay mare? Gout.”
“How can you possibly-”
“Now that I’ve taken a closer look, the fellow on the gray is clearly suffering from an advanced case of syphilis.”
