Chelsea did as she was asked, shielding Charlotte from view. Charlotte, meanwhile, rolled the stocking over her heel and up her leg. Every touch seemed to light her on fire, every brush of the fabric brought images of the duke and his wandering hands. She’d felt his excitement, and her body had responded in kind, leaving her tingling from head to toe.
“All right,” she said, holding onto the wall as she slipped her foot into her shoe. “Let’s go and get some food. I’m positively starved.”
She marched past Chelsea before her friend had a chance to answer. The duke hovered at the entrance, and she could feel his heavy gaze on her, but she studiously avoided it. Indeed, she planned to stay away from him for the rest of the day.
“Goodness, someone is in a hurry,” Chelsea said. “It’s only a buffet, not a sit-down meal.”
“All the better,” Charlotte said without looking back. “It will give me the opportunity to meet some of your other guests.”
She turned into the dining room to find that the mahogany dining table had been pushed to the edge of the room and laid out with a veritable feast. The chairs had been removed, guests milled around this room and others, plates of finger food in their hands.
Charlotte picked up a plate and selected a range of foods, from sausage rolls to little cubes of cheese, then she wandered away from the table, hoping to find a quiet corner. She could sense Chelsea’s curiosity.
“But what about the duke?”
Charlotte tutted, pricking her cheese with a toothpick. “Stewart forced us together for the game, knowing full well there is tension between us. There is no need to continue that now that we are within the house walls.”
Charlotte found a little couch tucked into the corner of the drawing room and settled herself on it, hoping that the guests milling around her would leave her be.
“Tension?” Chelsea asked with a frown as she joined her. “But you and he seemed to be getting on so well.”
Charlotte huffed. They had been getting on well—too well—and that was the problem.That kiss!And it irritated her that Chelsea had noticed at all. She tutted to show her disapproval.
“I do know how to be civil when a situation demands it of me, Chelsea.”
Chelsea raised her eyebrows. “I have known you since we were girls,” she said. “I’ve seen your version of ‘civil’ and I can tell you now that it is nothing like what I witnessed out there.”
Charlotte ignored her, picking of the flaky pastry that surrounding the sausage meat. “Are you not eating?” she asked.
“Are you not answering?” Chelsea countered.
Charlotte giggled. “Really, dear, there is nothing to answer. You are overthinking things, as you so often do. The game is over, and now I would like to enjoy a little bite to eat without thinking about the irritating duke. Is that all right?”
“But—”
“Lady Chelsea! Your guests would like a word,” her father called from across the room.
Chelsea huffed. “Duty calls. Do excuse me, Charlotte. We’ll finish this conversation later!”
Charlotte breathed a silent sigh of relief that they’d been disturbed. She loved Chelsea dearly, but she needed time to think.And to relive the moment his lips met mind.
The kiss had, in truth, left her reeling. The very reason she had become so excited by the remainder of the hunt had been to avoid the feelings that had begun to unravel, forcing her attention elsewhere. But now they screamed for her attention, and she needed to give it to them.
That kiss!
The word swam around her head, her heart quite unable to grasp the magnitude of it. She disliked everything about the duke. He was as irritating and cruel as he was handsome andamusing. Exceptthat kiss.And the fact that they had, as Chelsea kindly pointed out, gotten on so very well. As if they were a team made for one another.
Charlotte threw a cube of cheese into her mouth and chewed forcefully, as if that could push these new emotions away. She had finally been kissed! After all those years of waiting and dreaming, she’d been kissed—and by a man who looked like a god and was a duke to boot. But it had left her unsettled and confused and uncertain.
It was everything she had read about in fairy tales. The tingling, the burst of emotion, the tightness in the pit of her stomach. The way she had craved for him to reach inside her and pull on her already unraveling spool. Wanting to feel the pressure of his body pushed against her. It was everything she had read about, everything she had wanted, and everything that she had not believed existed in the real world.
It was… perfect.
She threw in another cube and bit down on it. Even food seemed to taste better now that she had been kissed.
Laughter filled the air, and she lifted her head, seeming to remember that she was in the midst of a party. The drawing room had begun to fill, the guests preferring it to the uncomfortable dining room. And there, across the room, she saw him.
The Duke of Ashbourne.
