“I am saddened indeed.”
“Liar,” she said, the amusement tugging at her lips. “You’re a dreadful flirt. Did you know that?”
“Oh, but I wasn’t flirting with you.” He gave her a long, slow smile. “Although I am more than happy to begin.”
“You are shameless.”
“Reprehensible, in fact. Please, don’t hold back on my account. Be as blunt as you like—my ego can take it.”
Finally, she laughed, and he hadn’t known how much he had been chasing that sound until he heard it. “At least you have a true understanding of your character.”
“My mother never lets me forget,” he said grimly.
“Your mother?” She frowned up at him, concern replacing the surprise in her eyes. “Why would she slander your name?”
Now was not the time to tell her he was illegitimate. Not when she was so very shocked by the fact her mother was being unfaithful. Likely not at all; he had no desire to see the look on her face when he informed her he was a bastard, unworthy to have the title he now bore through chance alone.
“She and I have never been close,” he settled for saying, which was more than he had ever confided to another human being. It loosened something in his chest, which was a dangerous feeling. He couldn’t get too comfortable with the idea of giving away his secrets, even if the girl he was gifting them to had hazel eyes that gleamed with green and gold, and sympathy written in every press of her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
“There is no need to be sorry. I have everything mortal man could want.” In excess, too, if he wanted it. Which he frequently did.
“Do you?” When he didn’t answer, she glanced to the front again. “I have often thought that the brightest of us, the ones leading the biggest lives, are the ones most in need of saving.”
That made him snort. “I don’t need saving, Sybil.”
“No?” For once, she didn’t correct him on the use of his name. “Then you are as carefree as they say?”
He gave a smile he didn’t feel. “More so. And you?”
“I am not carefree at all,” she said with a small shrug. “But I think you knew that.”
“If I could take away your sadness, I would,” he found himself saying, and almost immediately cursed himself. He was a Duke, not a lovelorn fool facing the first lady he’d ever made love to. An act he wished he could do again.
“How gallant,” Sybil said, glancing at him again. “You are an experienced charmer, Your Grace.”
“George.”
“George,” she repeated, and damn him if his body didn’t respond to the sound of his name as though her voice connected directly to his breeches.
“Do you want to lose ourselves in the wood?” he asked, nodding to a nearby woodland. “We don’t need to keep to the path.”
The sound that left her lips as they parted went straight through him, and the look in her eyes—the hunger, the want—told him precisely how much she wanted to agree. But her tongue flicked across her lips and she hesitated. “My mother would wonder.”
“Your mother would no doubt be happy enough for you to steal a moment or two with me.”
“Only because she believes you are courting me.”
He gave her a wild and rakish smile—this one he did feel. “Perhaps I am.”
“Be serious, George.”
“I am here, with you,” he said, lowering his voice until her pupils flared as she looked up at him. “There are no other gentlemen around with you, and there are no ladies to take my attention—not that they could.” He couldn’t remove her from his mind, couldn’t even if he wanted to, and the longer they spent together, the less he wanted to remove her from his mind and life. “If this isn’t courting, what would you call it?”
“Friendship?” she whispered.
He leaned toward her. “I rarely have the desire to kiss my friends.”
