“Consider this,” she said. “You enter a ballroom with a problem that can only be solved by those within it. You wander about, talking and listening. You gather information piecemeal, here and there over the length of the entire night. By the time the day dawns and everyone makes their way home, the room is empty, but your hands and mind are filled with ideas. Things you can shape until they make sense.”
“Inefficient.”
“Sometimes efficiency simply makes a mess.”
“If you know the right path to begin with it, take it. Meandering wastes time. The correctness of my strategy is not in question. It was merely that… merely that I did not understand…” He bit off a curse.
She fluttered her eyelashes. “What, Your Grace? What is it you did not understand?”
She knew. Damn it to hell, sheknew, and she wanted him to say it.Women. He did not understand women. But he would not give her the satisfaction. “I did not understand everything then, but I learned much. I daresay I could competently coach a man in courtship now.” Why in hell had he said that?
Standing once more, she leaned a little over his desk, letting her fingertips graze across the wood. She wore gloves today,slightly fraying at the tips as if she’d worn them several Seasons. The most delicate bit of embroidery followed the hem of the glove at her wrist. White blooms in a white field below the plum purple of a velvet pelisse. “Thank you for your time, Your Grace. But it is clear you will not be able to keep your promise to avoid interfering.”
She turned, not even making it a single step before he said, “Please.”
He shouldn’t beg, but he would do anything for his sisters. He’d seek the advice of a woman he wanted to kiss, a woman who thought him a fool, a woman who made him equal parts angry and aroused. A woman who made him beg.
He would resist her, too. Easy enough to do now they truly knew one another. What he’d felt last night—a trick of the silver light. No soul-deep understanding there, only wayward lust he could snuff out. Or ignore.
“Please,” he said again. He’d already humiliated himself once in front of this woman. What was once more? “Please.” One more pitiful petition because she may be a disapproving harridan, but more than any other woman of his acquaintance, he needed her.
Chapter Five
He was supposed to be an old bachelor! Aunt Georgie’s own words! Bachelor… yes, butold? Emma had envisioned some slightly bent, white-haired curmudgeon. Not… not…
Her garden gentleman, more handsome in daylight than he had any right to be. She’d known his hair was black as night, but now she knew it shined, glinted light, and likely wouldn’t fall out of place unless he commanded it to. It curled slightly at the ends, though, as the strands ached to be touched, tousled. Likely, they drove ladies astray. Who wouldn’t be moved to kisses in gardens by hair like that? And his eyes… She’d known they would be dark as well, but that not quite right. They were a shifting gray, storm clouds inspiring fear and awe and, right now, as he pleaded with her from across his desk, looking a bit desperate.
She’d thought him a gentle man last night, playful and teasing with a touch like feathers.
Now she knew him to be hard. Like the blade he’d tossed with such precision across the room.
She should not have been so very saucy with him, taunting him, challenging him. But each fact, clicking into place one by one, offered a new layer to the avalanche of shock.
He was the duke.
She disliked the duke.
She hadn’t disliked him last night.
She’d told him things she’d never told a soul; things she wanted no one to know.
He knew them, no. No gathering them back and locking them up.
She was working for him (no matter her claims to the contrary).
He’d kissed her.
And she’d kissed him back.
Then dreamt about it later.
Then ached for more in the morning.
And now if she did not walk out that door and refuse him, she’d likely ache for it every time she saw him, which promised to be often.
No! Not if she remembered his cocky words written in such confident ink, treated as truth instead of highly inexpert opinion.
She adjusted her gloves, anything to look away from him. He clouded her judgment, and she must remember the facts. And they were these: She was in dire straits, her sisters’ happiness was at risk, his own sister was heartbroken, Emma needed the duke to repair her reputation, and he needed her to find a husband for his sister.
