Page 32 of The Haunted Duke

“Yet you still have your doubts,” he gently prodded.

Helena nodded. She sank a little more into her chair, causing her thigh to slide next to his knee instead. He instantly became acutely aware of the soft flesh beneath the skirts of her gown, and though alarm bells began to ring in his ears, he ignored them.

Not yet. I will pull away soon… but not yet.

“I suppose I do,” she confessed, clearly unaware of the effect her subtle movement was having on him. “A little boy needs his father, does he not?”

“Not necessarily,” Evander replied, his focus zeroing in on their contact. “He will have Jeremy soon as a brother-in-law. Surely that will suffice.”

Helena’s smile returned, and she turned a little more toward him, her thigh now sliding against his own thigh instead of his knee.

“Yes, that is true,” she agreed. “And Jeremy is wonderful with children, I hear.”

“Is that why you are marrying him?” he asked.

“I… It would not be the only reason,” she admitted.

“Why are you marrying him, then?”

For the briefest of moments, Evander could have sworn he saw a hint of hesitation in Helena’s green eyes, and he hated how seeing it caused a shiver of hope to pass through his heart. Then her sweetness returned, so bright and so quickly, that he wondered if that hesitation had truly been there, or if he had imagined it.

“Why would I not marry Jeremy?” she whispered cheerily.

Evander’s right brow perked slightly. He waited for her to finish, but when she did not, he realized that was her response.

“That is not really an answer, is it?” he asked.

Helena’s pink cheeks were turning crimson now, and her eyes once more cast down to her hands.

“Of course it is,” she replied loftily. “I have known Jeremy for many years now.”

He let out a soft, wry chuckle, trying not to once more draw the scolding attention of Patricia and Mary-Anne.

“By that logic, I could marry him,” he retorted. “I have known him much longer than you have.”

Helena’s dainty brows rose up as she pressed her plump lips together, as if trying to hide her laughter.

“Do you want to marry him?” she asked, her whispered tone full of amusement.

“Of course not,” he chuckled, his grin widening. He could not help it. He liked this cheeky side of her, and he loved that he had made her smile. Still, he was not going to allow it to dissuade him from his questioning.

“Answer me, Helena,” he gently pushed. “Is knowing him for many years a good enough reason to marry him?”

She sighed, her smile fading a little.

“It is just what is done in our society,” she said with a shrug. “When a lady and gentleman of a certain age have spent a sufficient amount of time together, the ton expects a wedding.”

More questions burned in Evander’s mind. He wanted to ask, do you love him? Do you desire him? Do you feel meant to be, or is this marriage all for society’s sake?

Yet as his questions multiplied, he could not bring himself to ask them, too afraid of what those answers might be.

Chapter 11

‘Is that why you are marrying him?’

Even though she tried her best to talk around an answer, Helena heard Evander’s question over and over again in her mind. In the distance, she heard the music she was supposed to be paying attention to as well. Yet her focus was drawn somewhere else. There had been no overt attempt to touch one another, yet somehow, yet again, her body and Evander’s were once more connected—and always, it felt… right.

She was drawn to the heat of his muscled thigh that pulsed into hers, even through the fabric of her layered skirts and his trousers. Her eyes were drawn to the outline of his muscles visible through those trousers, and she suddenly wondered, was there not a single part of him that was small or soft? What would it be like to have permission to trace her fingertips over such hard planes of muscle? To use her hands, her lips… her entire body. What would it be like to press herself fully upon him and have those big arms wrap around her not out of necessity, but out of want?