Page 63 of To Steal a Duchess

Dorian didn’t call after her, and her chamber door closed behind her with a definite click.

While waiting for Nancy’s wedding, Eloise and Dorian made the most of walking around London and visiting old places she had once enjoyed.

“This is where I first went out to tea with Nancy.” Eloise nodded at the white-fronted tearoom, the very one Nancy and Gideon had gone to on their first courting. “And this is where my mother took me to buy my debutante necklace.”

“What was it? Something delicate to mark you as her little diamond?”

“Well, no,” Eloise laughed. “You have seen her jewelry. It was gaudy and garish, this audacious pendant that almost weighed me down. It… well—” She hesitated, blushing. “She meant for it to be so heavy and big that it…”

Dorian watched her gesture, embarrassed, at her bodice. “That it, what, Duchess?”

They’d paused before the jewelers now, and Eloise looked from side to side before whispering, “That it accentuated a certain part of my neckline and what was covered up.”

For a moment, she watched Dorian’s eyes flicker downward, past her throat, and she swatted him playfully on the shoulder. “Do not look there now! I was speaking about the necklace.”

“And I was imagining it. Vividly,” he spoke in a low, gravelly voice, the corner of his mouth tilted up in a devilish smirk.

Her face in flames, she turned on her heel, at once embarrassed and heated. Nobody had ever said such a thing so brazenly, nor had she ever read anything like it. Nancy had—she had dared beyond daring when it came to ladylike behavior—but never Eloise.

She had endured her mother’s parading her, but never once looked at the men who had looked there.

Yet Dorian had not made it feel unwelcome. Instead, she could feel the heat creeping down her neck, and the curling, thrilled feeling in her stomach.

Just as her husband caught up, still chuckling, enjoying his teasing, a familiar face strolled up to them. Gideon’s charming smile seemed to brighten the grayish street, brighter than the establishments surrounding them.

“Good afternoon,” he called out, approaching them casually. He was dressed in a pale blue suit, his hands in his pockets. “You were just the people I was on my way to call on. Nancy and I have been speaking about taking a stroll through Hyde Park, but, of course, we need a chaperone. I do not suppose the two of you would like to accompany us?”

“Absolutely,” Eloise said, jumping at the chance to speak to Nancy so she didn’t have to face her husband alone for the time being.

Dorian’s mouth was still curved with amusement. “But I thought⁠—”

“You thought differently,” Eloise interrupted him. “Come on, we can go and get Pickle, and then chaperone our friends for a short while.”

She didn’t quite look at him as she challenged him.

After a moment, Dorian nodded. “Very well. Gideon? Do come along. It seems the duchess is in much of a hurry.”

Eloise turned to walk hastily away, ignoring him pointedly.

Soon, they were strolling down a path in Hyde Park, the trees blissfully blowing in the wind. The leaves were so heavy and long that they trailed the grass, and Eloise marveled at the openness of it all. It was so different to the shore of Oldcliff.

“I do have to admit, I have missed it here,” Eloise told Nancy.

The two men strolled just behind them. There would be plenty of time to walk as couples again, as they had entered the park, but Eloise had sought a chance to tug her friend away from Gideon.

“I have missed walking with you through here,” Nancy told her, sighing happily. “Walking with Gideon is lovely, of course, but I miss our gossiping. We would always speak about who we would see on the arm of who, and what couple had snuck away beyond a tree that obscured them.”

“Well, speaking of gossip…” Eloise bit the inside of her cheek, getting Nancy’s attention. Eloise glanced back at Dorian, finding his eyes on her. His brow quirked, still amused from earlier, and her cheeks burned once more. “Dorian… was flirting with me earlier, I believe, and I do not quite know what to do about it.”

“What do you mean?”

So Eloise told her the short tale of their discussion at the jeweler’s, and how he had looked pointedly, making her heated with his words.

“Oh, Eloise!” Nancy cried.

“Shush, shush!” Eloise quickly said, pulling her friend along further away from the men. Pickle galloped after them on his leash.

“No, this is wonderful! You are aroused by him!”