The Virgin Who Vindicated Lord Darlington - Anna Bradley Page 0,64
bawdy drinking songs to your employer’s guests of an evening, do you?”
She peeked up at him from under her lashes. “Bawdy? As to that, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, my lord. It’s simply a drinking song, isn’t it?”
“I can see by your blush you know perfectly well what I mean. Where would a young woman such as yourself learn such a wicked song?”
“Oh, we used to sing it—” Cecilia broke off, biting her lip. She’d learned that song years ago from the mudlarking boys on the Thames, but it wouldn’t do to blurt that particular truth out to Lord Darlington. For pity’s sake, one half-hearted smile from him, and she was ready to confess her every secret.
“I, ah…I learned it from one of Lady Dunton’s footmen,” she finished lamely. “He was a dreadfully wicked young man, I’m afraid.”
“I’ve no doubt.”
Neither of them seemed to know what to say after that, so they stood there staring at each other, until the silence became so awkward Cecilia found herself rushing to break it. “He was forever singing wicked songs. I might have done worse than I did, and sang “The Fair Maid of Islington,” or the one about Mother Watkin’s Ale, or…”
She trailed off, her cheeks burning again. Lord Darlington stared at her for a moment, eyebrow raised, but just as Cecilia braced herself for a stern lecture about the evils of bawdy pub songs and the unspeakable sin of singing one in a drawing room full of company, the unthinkable happened.
He grinned at her.
Not his usual joyless twist of the mouth, or the pallid echo of a smile, but a true, unreserved grin that started at his lips and spread over his face, warming his bright blue eyes and revealing a pair of fetching grooves at either side of his lips.
Dimples. Lord Darlington had dimples.
Cecilia stared at him, her breath hitching in her throat. “Oh.”
Isabella’s wide, irresistible grin, that grin Cecilia adored, the one that always coaxed an answering grin from her…it was her uncle’s smile.
The sweet curve of Isabella’s lips, the brightness in her eyes, those fetching dimples at the corners of her mouth…it mirrored the smile now gracing Lord Darlington’s lips. Isabella didn’t look like him, but she’d learned to imitate his smile.
How could Cecilia not have seen it before now?
Because I’ve never truly seen him smile.
His smile faded into a look of uncertainty as she continued to stare at him. “Is something wrong?”
“I…no. No, my lord, it’s just…well, Isabella’s smile is just like yours.”
Lord Darlington went quite still, his eyes going as dark as a midnight sky. His fingers flexed at his sides, and for one wild moment she thought he would come to her. Cecilia’s breath stopped, every inch of her aching for him.
He didn’t, but he didn’t turn away, either. Impossibly, his grin widened. “I might even venture a laugh if you sing “The Fair Maid of Islington” to me.”
Cecilia stared at him. Was he teasing her? “Oh, no. I couldn’t. It’s terribly improper.”
“As opposed to Down Among the Dead,” which I’ve heard sung in drawing rooms all across England.”
Oh, he was certainly teasing her. Cecilia had never been teased by a marquess, or by any gentleman, really. She wasn’t certain what to do, so she just stood there like a peahen, her cheeks on fire and a foolish grin on her face.
He didn’t seem to expect her to do anything more, however. He gazed at her as if her smile was enough to please him, before he straightened and eased away, murmuring, “It’s late. Go to sleep, Cecilia.”
He crossed the room and went into his own bedchamber, but Cecilia stopped him before he could close the door between them. “My lord?”
“Yes?” His face was half-lost in shadow, but she could just discern the quirk of his lips.
She wanted to say, I’ll sing you any song you like. She wanted to say, I believe you’re a good, kind man. She wanted to say, I wish for you to have more reasons to smile.
But in the end, she didn’t say any of those things. Instead, she drew in a quick breath and said, “Good night.”
Chapter Fifteen
It was a day for being overwrought, it seemed.
After those breathless moments with Lord Darlington—moments in which she’d had to fight an overwhelming urge to trace her fingertips over his lips to commit that rare smile to memory—Cecilia knew sleep would elude her for the rest of the night.
After pacing from one end of her bedchamber to the other