She gave a tiny growl, and he grinned again. Couldn’t help it.
“You are not Felicity, Your Grace. And I will only share my notes with her. Unless…” Slowly, she twisted to face him. “If this is our weekly meeting, I will prepare a concise summary of my observations so far, and—”
“No. It is not our weekly meeting. That is entirely separate. We will meet in my study. Alone. Five days from now.”
She snapped back around. “We will meet five days from now with a chaperone. I may be a spinster, but I’m not immune from scandal. I will give you my summary then. There is not much to tell as of yet. And you are distracting me from my observations.”
He paced the length of the bench and back. Less like pacing, more like a silly dance with a single step in either direction. “Then tell me whatsortof information you’re putting there.”
She sighed, a long, drawn-out affair, and he settled his feet into the earth just at her shoulder and caged the restless bit of him that needed to wear a trench in the ground behind her. “Notes about his family I discovered while speaking with his mother. Notes about his disposition and how his mother and father spoke of him. Do they beam with pride, or do they seem irritated? Does he act the gentleman when they are not looking?”
“He’d better,” Samuel growled.
“Do you care?”
He rounded the bench and sat in one violent motion. “What in the devil’s name do you mean? Of course I care!”
“You let her fall in love with a man who rejected her. I assume you approved him, and—”
“I did not know about him.” There must have been something dangerous in his voice or countenance because sheflinched, leaned away from him. He took a breath, reached for calm, and spoke with greater caution. “I knew him, naturally, but I was unaware of Felicity’s… emotions for him. They had danced a few times, but”—his jaw locked—“I was attempting to ignore my sisters’ suitors.”
“An inattentive protector leads to disaster, Your Grace.”
“I know,” he snapped. “I paid attention enough to know she was not leaving ballrooms with the man, enough to know they were acquaintances, and he seemed interested. Enough to know his background and character were agreeable. I was not inattentive. Merely refusing to meddle. I’ve learned better than to meddle. Didn’t you tell me not to?”
She closed her notebook, pencil inside. “I see. I should commend you, then. And it is true, a man can never truly know a woman’s heart. I apologize for thinking ill of you. It is also true that a woman may be deceived by a man, so it follows that her brother may also be deceived.” Something in her voice spoke of experience with deception.
“Have you been deceived before?”
“Of course. Everyone has. But I never make the same mistake twice.”
“I do.” He barked a hollow laugh. “Sometimes three or four times before I get it right.”
“Very good of you to admit it.”
Easy to admit things to her, easy to open doors of himself he always kept shut, locked.
“Look there.” She pointed toward Felicity where she stood with a different gentleman than before. “She’s quite popular.”
“Of course she is,” he said gruffly. “Those men should count themselves lucky to have a single word from her.”
“Yet she does not feel wanted.”
“What?” He bolted to his feet. “What do you mean? How do you know? How could she think—”
“Sit down.” She laughed.
“How can you laugh?” He retook his seat, but he could not sit still, throwing an arm across the back of the bench, turning this way and that, crossing and recrossing his legs.
A light touch on his shoulder did it, calmed the storm inside him.
Her fingertips like a butterfly—there, then gone again once she began to speak, her voice soothing and playful. “Calm down, you silly old duke.”
He did. Miraculously, hecould.
Silly old duke, indeed.
“I can laugh,” she said, “because you continue to show how little you understand women. Most of us feel unwanted at one time or another.” Said not with pain but as if it were a truth as plain as the blue sky above, as well-known as two and two make four or a man’s heart must beat to live.
