“Joanna? Please, do not play games with me. I am not in the mood for hide and seek,” she said, assuming her sister was trying to jest as she sometimes did.
Passing the fireplace, where a warm fire crackled, she spotted a selection of books on the table. Curious, she peeked at them. They were poems, along with a few books about the stars. Not Joanna’s usual fare.
Still, clearly, she’d been here. Then, it came to her. The reading nook. In an effort to repair his strained relationship with his daughters, Lord Carlisle had added a new section to the library, giving up his beloved upstairs drawing room for the purpose of creating a reading nook.
Sally approached the reading nook, a secluded portion with a secondary fireplace and a small shelf that served as a resting place for books currently in progress, along with a table for sweetmeats and tea.
“I should have known, the moment you had a chance to get away from you children you’d be in here reading,” she teased as she headed around the corner. “Is that becoming of the Duchess of – Oh!” Sally let out a shriek as she rounded the corner and staggered backward, her back banging into the corner of the bookshelf behind. Pain seared through her, but she hardly noticed it for sitting before her was not her beloved sister but a man. A stranger.
And as he rose to turn his face in her direction, Sally’s stomach dropped to her knees for his was the last face she’d expected to see here this night.
CHAPTER2
Leonard
Leonard rose from his seat, a smile playing on his lips as his eyes fell upon Lady Sally Blackmore. He’d recognized her voice the moment she called out for her sister but now that she stood before him he was reminded of how lovely she looked. It had been almost months since last he’d laid eyes on Sally or any of her sisters and he’d almost forgotten that twinkle in her eyes that always seemed to be there. Although in this very moment she wasn’t smiling.
Quite the opposite. She looked flabbergasted. Leonard grinned.
“I have been called many things, Lady Sally, but a Duchess is not one of them,” Leonard remarked with a grin, the teasing words hanging in the air. His gaze lingered on Sally’s gown for a moment too long. It wasn’t because he was taken in by her beauty, he already knew she was a lovely looking woman. No, it was her gown. He didn’t know Sally, the sister of his best friend’s wife, very well. But he knew her well enough to know such dazzling attire was not something she usually wore. Though it suited her very well indeed.
He looked away when he noted that his stare was driving a rush of color rise to her cheeks.
“Your Grace,” she said, a little breathlessly. “I hadn’t expected you here.”
“Here in the library? Or here in town?” he asked, stopping a few steps away from her. A sweet lemony scent entered his nostrils and he smiled for it invoked memories of the last time he’d seen Sally, a year ago at his godson Peter’s sixth birthday celebration. He’d been in England for a short period before setting off on his travels again and they’d spent a wonderful evening playing games in the garden of Kenneth’s estate.
“Both,” she replied without moving. “You have been rather illusive these last two years or so. Indeed, at times I have to remind myself that you are in fact real and not just a figment of the scandal sheets imagination.”
Leonard grimaced, not keen on the stories he’d read about himself in the broadsheets.
“I assure you, I am quite real and you will be seeing more of me, that is a promise.”
They looked at one another without speaking for a moment and he noted the way she was standing with her back against the wall, as if she had thought him a robber of some sort.
“Is that so?” she replied, head dipped to the side.
“It is so, I assure you.”
“Well, then I will be better prepared next time. Pray, you have not answered my question. What are you doing here?” she asked, licking her lips so that a shimmer remained on them.
Leonard leaned in slightly, narrowing the distance between them. “Why, my dear, I’ve been invited. Isn’t that what people commonly do when graced with an invitation? They show up,” he replied, his tone light and filled with a mischievous charm. “How could I decline an invitation to your mother’s birthday celebration? It would be downright rude not to come. Besides, Kenneth would have given me a hiding.”
Sally blinked, her eyes reflecting a mixture of emotions. “I mean in the library. Guests do not customarily lurk in dark corners to frighten their host’s daughters,” she fired back with a bit more spirit than he was used to from her.
“You did not seem particularly frightened by me,” he replied with a smile.
“How dare you tell me if I am or am not frightened?” she asked and Leonard could not help but find some intriguing amusement in their exchange. This wasn’t how he’d imagined his return to London’s society to go – an odd argument with Lady Sally in the library.
“Well, for one you did not go running out of the room while calling for help. That is typically how one reacts when frightened by an intruder. And number two, there is a perfectly handy weapon right beside you and you did not see fit to use it,” he nodded his chin toward the fireplace poker that leaned against the wall. She looked at it, a lock of hair falling into her face. It grazed her sharp jawline for a moment before she banished it back behind her ear.
“You seem well versed in the ways a lady might fend of unwanted advances, Your Grace,” she replied. Leonard detected a hint of cheerfulness in her voice now. Perhaps he had indeed frightened her. Or perhaps she simply remembered their prior conversations, none of which had been hampered by misunderstandings or animosity. “Perhaps what the scandal sheets say is true and you have turned into a rake.”
This elicited a sarcastic laugh from him. “I am wounded you should think this of me, Lady Sally. I did not think you were so easily swayed by what is written about people, especially when you yourself do not know them well.” He looked at her intently. He wasn’t sure why it bothered him that she’d mentioned the unfortunate rake stories that had been circulating around him, but it did. He didn’t generally like it when people passed judgment without knowing the subject of their ire, but with her it bothered him even more.
“Be that as it may,” she replied and crossed her arms. “You still have not answered my question. Why were you up here in the library instead of downstairs with the guests?”
“I might ask you the same thing as well. Why wereyounot downstairs with the guests? This is your home after all and I was unaware sections of it were declared off limits to visitors,” he replied. There was a strange enjoyment in vexing her, he noted.
