Was he content because he had finally found peace with Joanna? Joanna was exactly the kind of woman who loved to adorn herself in powder and rouge.
But the Duke made no positive comment on her face or hair. Were the same embellishments not as nice on Deborah? She felt herself grow disappointed and decided that she should not remain in his company any longer, as it only led her to overthink and feel poorly about herself.
“Your Grace, you must excuse me.” She began to take her leave.
“Wait!” Henry said, his voice laced with urgency. “The next set is beginning. My Lady, may I have this dance?”
Deborah blinked at him twice, wondering if she had misheard.
“I…” she stammered, and the Duke held out his hand for her to take. His large blue eyes looked at her expectantly, awaiting an answer.
“Of course,” she finally spluttered out. Even if she wasn’t harboring secret feelings for him, saying no to a duke for a dance was unheard of.
He led her to the dance floor, and the quartet began to play the music. As the two danced together, Deborah couldn’t help but notice how in sync their movements were.
Never once did he step on her toes, unlike Lord Macaulay. Instead, it seemed as though they had danced together many times before.
“I did not know you were such a good dancer, Your Grace.”
Henry danced together with Deborah. He had asked her at the last minute, when he had feared that she was about to walk away from him.
Competitiveness ran in the Duke’s blood. When he had seen Deborah dance together with Lord Macaulay, it had occurred to him that he had never actually danced with her. He felt that by dancing with her, he was claiming back his territory, even though she did not belong to him, in the first place.
“I am sure you must find my dancing skills better than your previous partner,” Henry remarked, observing her face closely to see if she showed any emotions at the mention of Lord Macaulay.
Instead, her face just wrinkled into a smile.
“Umm, Lord Macaulay was a tad…” She paused to find the right word. “Uncoordinated, shall we say? I do not think he is a fair comparison.”
“Uncoordinated, or perhaps simply incompetent,” the Duke said, sourly. “If this the level of his dancing skills, I shudder to think of him in other areas of his life.”
Deborah’s face lit up with curiosity. “I didn’t know you had such strong opinions about him. In fact, I didn’t even know that you knew of his existence.”
“I am a duke,” he reminded her, “I have the privilege of having an opinion on all sorts of people, unfortunately so in this case.”
“If you say so.”
Henry found himself growing annoyed at her. Usually, she didn’t stop talking. But now that he wanted to extract information about what she thought about the gentleman, she was being suspiciously tightlipped.
“Of course, my curiosity is not genuine. I would be more comfortable classifying it as morbid,” he said, hoping that by sounding disinterested, Deborah would not catch on how jealous he felt.
“Morbid curiosity?” The words elicited a small chuckle from her, and the Duke found himself admiring the sound of her laugh.
What had gotten into him? Surely, Cupid’s arrows had hit him square in the face, causing permanent damage to his perception of the world.
“At least, that is still better than sheer boredom,” Deborah continued.
“You must tell me,” the Duke said bluntly. “Do you plan on marrying Lord Macaulay?”
Deborah did a double take. Surely, she had not been expecting him to ask her that.
She pursed her lips. “I do not see how that is any of your business.”
“I do not see why it is such a big secret,” the Duke pressed, feeling his heart drop.
Surely, she couldn’t be considering marriage with a man like Lord Macaulay. She had said it herself that she was not interested in marriage.
“Why are you so curious?”
