Page 46 of The Duke's Promise to Her Child
Frances began to play, and they moved into the first figure.
“Look at me,” he said quietly.
She raised her eyes to his. It did not help matters.
He leaned in slightly, his breath warm, touched faintly with strawberries and something stronger. “We are going to convince every last one of them,” he said. “When we leave for the country seat tomorrow, we will leave behind the impression of the happiest couple anyone has ever had the pleasure of witnessing. And by the time the season resumes, every whisper will have found something newer and more interesting to attach itself to.”
“I find that rather difficult at present,” she said. “I am so aware of everyone staring that I fear I look like a woman being marched to the scaffold rather than one who has just married the man she loves.”
“Then let us give you something more agreeable to think about. Sir Franklin is here,” he said, with a slight tilt of his head toward the door. She glanced over. There he was, standing apart from the crowd, watching them with an expression that was difficultto read. “He is almost certainly imagining himself dancing with you and wondering whether you have made a terrible mistake.”
“Actually,” she said, “I think he may be rather more occupied with Mary.”
He blinked. “Your Mary?”
“I saw them talking in the lane near our house a few days ago. I thought it an accidental encounter. The following day he sent flowers. To her, not to me.”
His eyes went wide. “You are not serious.”
“I am serious.”
“Well,” he said, and delight crossed his face. “I wonder whether my matchmaking skills might be called upon once more.”
“May I remind you,” she said, “that your matchmaking skills have not thus far been what one might call a resounding success.”
“I beg your pardon — you are married to a Duke as of two hours ago. I would call that a considerable triumph.”
“I was supposed to be making a match with somebody else. That was rather the original plan.”
“That,” he said, “is what is commonly known as semantics. The outcome is what matters, and the outcome is that you are married and provided for. After this dance, everyone in this room will be persuaded of how devotedly in love we are. And when we leave for the country, they will find something else to occupy them. By the time the season resumes, the rumours about your heritage and the haste of our marriage will be quite forgotten.”
“We can only hope so,” she said.
“And on the subject of Sir Franklin — perhaps we ought to invite him to come to the country. If he and Mary are developing an attachment, it could be quietly encouraged well away from prying eyes, and any arrangement they came to would be settled before the season began.”
“No,” she said firmly. “Mary does not wish to be married again. She was married once before to a man she truly loved. I cannot imagine she wishes to go through all of that again with someone she has only just met.”
He considered this. “I too was married to a woman I thought I truly loved,” he said. “And you were married to — another man.” He said it carefully, without finishing the sentence. She appreciated it more than she could say. “One never quite knows what is waiting around the corner.”
They danced on, the conversation meandering lightly between them as it always did. By the end of it she had almost forgottenthey were being watched, which she suspected had been his intention all along.
When the music stopped, the room broke into warm applause. She was about to step off the floor when his hand caught her waist and held her back.
“That will not do,” he said.
“What will not do?”
“Walking away without giving them what they truly came here for.”
“Which is?—”
He did not answer in words. Instead he placed one arm around her back and the other at her waist, bent her backward in a smooth, confident arc — so far that she thought for one vertiginous moment that she might fall — and pressed his lips to hers.
For a moment she heard nothing but his breathing close to her ear and the sound of her own heartbeat, which had decided, without consulting her, to conduct itself in a most undignified fashion. Her eyes had closed of their own accord. She saw nothing.
By the time he had her upright again and she opened her eyes, the room had erupted. Applause, laughter, a few appreciativecheers from the direction of where Nathaniel and Rhys were standing.
“That,” he said, with great satisfaction, “ought to do it.”
