A Duchess a Day (Awakened by a Kiss #1) - Charis Michaels Page 0,13
my life is my own, and I value my right to choose a husband, not someone arranged by my parents. Or Titus Girdleston.” She made a face of disgust.
Shaw looked away and blew out a weary breath.
“If you are a spy, and you expected me to be impulsive or recalcitrant or daft, you were wrong,” she said.
He looked at the floor and then to her. His face was a complicated mix of concern and . . . conflict. Looking into his brown eyes was like reading a language she almost knew, like when she could almost read Spanish because she spoke Italian. The words were different but the roots were the same.
“How do you intend to get out of it?” Shaw asked.
“Out of what?”
“The marriage.”
She laughed. “How utterly reckless would I be to reveal that?”
“Forgive me if you strike me as the reckless sort.”
She sniffed, edging backward and slipping from his grasp. The loss of heat and touch was immediate, like pulling a shade against the sun. She tried, “But why does it matter how?”
“If it explains your purpose in this library, well then we had a deal, didn’t we? And honestly, I’m . . . intrigued.”
Something about those words elicited the oddest little flip in her belly, like she’d jumped a fence on horseback. She considered the notion of intriguing him. She thought of the months and years she’d schemed, working alone. No one else cared, except to oppose her.
If he is a spy, she thought, his entire purpose is to oppose and thwart me. She glanced up at him. He raised his eyebrows. He did not seem like an opponent.
He is the soul of opposition, she thought, but she heard herself say, “I’m going to find some other, more suitable girl for the duke to marry. I’m going to haul her in front of him and have her somehow . . . enchant him.”
She swallowed hard. When she said it out loud, with Shaw staring so intently at her, with the unconscious duke just steps away, the plan sounded . . . ambitious.
She plowed on. “After he is enchanted by this . . . better girl, he will defy his uncle for the first time in his life, and he will throw me over for her. The girl he really wants. That is my plan.”
Shaw’s brown eyes narrowed, searching her face. She thought again of how long it had been since anyone had considered what she said. Even the crofters in the forest, her closest allies, listened only to comply or revere. There was no consideration, they simply followed.
She could see him struggling to comprehend the plan—the finding, the hauling, the enchanting, the jilting. If he dismissed it, would she care? Would she lose heart if he naysayed or laughed?
“And how,” he asked, “do you intend to realize this plan?”
“Well . . .” she said cautiously, acknowledging that he had not dismissed or laughed, acknowledging that he had asked for more. “First I must locate a group of suitable potential duchesses to tempt him.” She glanced at the slumbering duke. “Five or six, perhaps seven—if so many potential duchesses exist.”
He exhaled wearily. “And then?”
“I will determine the most suitable ones. I don’t want to pass on my terrible future to an unsuspecting girl. It must be a young woman who can tolerate him, obviously. Who aspires to be the Duchess of Lusk so intensely she can abide all the rest. For life.” She made a horrified face. “When I find this person, I will acquaint them. The duke seems most interested in provocative, sort of . . . er, festive women. I mentioned that he must be enchanted. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Shaw repeated. “And what role does the library play in this plan?” He looked at the shelves around them.
“Oh,” she said, glancing at the books, “I’d hoped to discover a little more about him—beyond his interests in provocation and festivities. If I understood his passions or what type of girls he enjoys—I mean, besides buxom and giggly and, er, half-dressed, traits he has mentioned to me on more than one occasion—I could better seek out the correct, most tempting girl. I thought his library might hold some insight into his soul.”
“You’ve asked me if I could bloody read and then comb through a library looking for the passions of this person?” He cocked a thumb at the snoring duke.
Lusk stretched and scratched his crotch with an idle hand. He belched softly and flopped over, snoring at the ceiling.