Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,72
me soon enough.”
“Marry me,” he said. “That’s the answer.”
He felt her withdraw, even though she didn’t move. “I’m not that confused,” she said. “Or desperate. Stop crowding me.”
She swatted him with her fan in the same instant the prompter’s bell rang. The fan slipped from her hand onto the floor of the box. Ashmont picked it up and gave it to her. She took it, but closed it and let it rest on her silk-covered thigh, the one nearest him.
He laid his hand over hers. She looked at it. She didn’t push it away.
For a moment, he hardly dared breathe. Then he turned his hand slightly, to encompass hers. She didn’t pull away.
That was all. The smallest capitulation, but enough for now. More than enough. He felt as though he’d climbed Mount Olympus.
Though the theater was well lit, their joined hands lay in the shadows, invisible to the audience. A delicious secret, like the embrace and the laughter she’d kept back.
The drop rose and the last play of the evening began.
He scarcely saw what happened onstage. All his being was concentrated on the young woman beside him, and the hand he held.
A day had passed, no more. From yesterday and the rather daunting interview with her father to this moment. It seemed so simple now. So deuced complicated at the same time.
Didn’t matter. Her gloved hand, warm in his, and the mad embrace would sustain him while he did what needed to be done, whatever it was.
Eventually, the dire doings onstage drew his attention back to The Evil Eye, and before long, he became caught up in the play.
Even if his mind had been a degree less clouded by happiness, it’s unlikely that the Duke of Ashmont would have noticed, let alone cared about, the evil eye Mr. Owsley directed at them across the theater.
Cassandra knew she shouldn’t have done it. She knew it was highly improper at best. But when he laid his hand over hers, her heart turned over, and she thought, Why not? It’s only for now. Why not enjoy it for now?
He can be extremely winning when he chooses, and he’s especially dangerous in that mode, Alice had said.
No exaggeration.
All the same, it didn’t seem fair.
There he was, in all his golden godlike beauty, sitting quietly beside her, apparently domesticated. But she knew gods couldn’t be domesticated. They adopted all kinds of disguises to get what they wanted. Then once they got it, they went on to the next victim.
Unfair. A woman couldn’t simply surrender to perfectly natural human impulses and still be respected.
A woman couldn’t do that without disgracing the people she loved.
It was the way of the world.
He’d forgotten her easily enough years ago, she reminded herself. He hadn’t even seen her that night at Almack’s when she stood in front of him. During other rare and fleeting encounters, early on, at one social affair or another, to him she was merely another debutante in white muslin.
To marry him then be forgotten . . . She wasn’t at all sure she could bear it.
Mr. Owsley had watched the trouble unfold, but he’d been too slow to realize what was going on and too far away to act quickly enough.
He could have won further admiration from his supporters. More important, he could have changed Miss Pomfret’s mind about him.
But he was too late and too slow, and her admiring gaze was directed at the dissolute Duke of Ashmont, who didn’t deserve her or any gently bred maiden.
Owsley told himself to leave it alone. She’d humiliated him publicly weeks ago and dismissed him out of hand during the first interval. He should not have approached her. He should not have mentioned his bill.
But she was beautiful, the handsomest young woman he’d ever met. It was her face and figure as much as her words at his lecture that had left him tongue-tied and red-faced.
He, nonplussed by a woman! The majority of those supporting his efforts regarding the Sabbath were women. He was an attractive man, of good position and excellent prospects. He might have his pick of scores of young ladies.
But no. Of all times for Cupid’s arrow to strike, it had to pierce him with a witless, self-destructive desire for Cassandra Pomfret.
She was everything he disliked in a woman: opinionated, outspoken, and willful. She’d been caught behaving most improperly with the Duke of Ashmont, and did she look in the least chagrined, let alone ashamed of herself?