A Duchess a Day (Awakened by a Kiss #1) - Charis Michaels Page 0,63
were on a schedule, and Helena resumed their progress down Oxford Street. “Joanna Keep lives in a world where she’s at the mercy of almost every man and any woman older than she is. She could gain control through shallowness or manipulation, but she has not. If I thought Miss Keep was inauthentic or a schemer, I would have been more prudent. I also would have happily dangled her before Lusk without a second thought. But she is clever and earnest and genuine. She is better than Lusk deserves. And we can trust her.”
A trio of boys darted in front of Helena, their hats overturned and filled with stolen eggs. One boy tripped and fell, making a mess of yolks and shells and a string of profanity. Helena tsked and stepped around the mess.
“My situation is not exactly like Miss Keep’s,” she went on, winding her way through scrambling boys, “but I am more like her than most young women. Enough to know that she’ll not gossip about me. I’m vying for some control over destiny, just as she is. The flirting demonstration was for her benefit, and as strange as it was, I believe it was useful. She will not betray the favor.”
“You hope she will not,” Declan said.
“I have very good instincts about people. Look how right I was about you. I trusted you on the first night.”
“That was sheer luck. One-in-a-million chance that Girdleston posted me to your detail instead of any of a hundred men who would’ve delivered you to him on the spot.”
“You call it luck, I call it a gut feeling.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She felt strongly about her intuition, but she was beginning to believe this wasn’t a quarrel about her instincts; it was about her taking advantage.
“Look,” she said, opening her eyes. “I can acknowledge that it was . . .” and now she searched for the correct word, “. . . exploitative to summon you and drape myself upon you. I was trying to be nimble. And opportunistic.” She walked a few steps, thinking about his complaint. Heat crept up her neck; she felt her face go red. His point was valid. As her groom, he was at her mercy. In full view of the public, he must do what she said.
She stopped walking. She pivoted back. “Perhaps now I can see that it may have been . . . poor form to portray the lesson in flirtation. Oh, Declan, I’m so sorry.” She bit her lip until it stung.
Declan stopped short and stared at her. He began shaking his head.
“What?” she demanded.
He walked around her.
“Do you reject my apology?” she called.
“No, I don’t reject it. I—” He made a growling noise.
“You what?” She followed him.
“You are too trusting,” he said. “And too honest.”
They were striding down Oxford Street at a fast clip. Declan must have realized their appearance and paused, ducked his head, and allowed her to precede him.
“This was a mistake,” he said to her. “You shouldn’t have apologized. It was better when we were at odds.”
“Who is better off without an apology?”
“Look,” he sighed, “Lady Helena, our plan can continue—obviously we have no choice now but to see it through—but you and I? We cannot be so . . . so enmeshed.”
She missed a step, momentarily unable to comprehend. “What do you mean, ‘enmeshed’?”
“It’s my fault,” he said. “I’ve indulged too much. I . . . I never should have touched you. And I’ve revealed too much. If we quarrel, we quarrel. There’s no need for apologies. Perhaps we simply do not get on.”
Helena was speechless. She rolled his statement around in her head.
“Do not get on?” she repeated blankly. “Is that what you think?”
“I think it’s best if we do not examine it from every angle. Instead, we restrain. We cannot touch, my lady. Ours should be a very simple groom-charge relationship.”
“But you are not really a groom, and I’m not really your charge. We have this very important thing we are doing, and . . . and there is more. Do you deny there is more?”
They’d reached the busy corner of Oxford Street and Bloomsbury. To their left, the museum sprawled like a marble plateau in the center of an expansive lawn. Carriages and wagons clattered around them. The museum grounds milled with the lazy day-trippers. Declan gestured to the looming building and led them along the network of walkways to the front steps.