“Lady Amelia.”
She composed her face. She turned around. “Your grace,” she said, with the blank smile she knew was required of her.
He took her hand and kissed it. “You look lovely this evening.”
He said that every time.
Amelia murmured her thanks and then waited patiently while he complimented her sister, then said to Grace, “I see my grandmother has allowed you out of her clutches for the evening.”
“Yes,” Grace said with a happy sigh, “isn’t it lovely?”
He smiled, and Amelia noted it was not the same sort of public-face smile he gave her. It was, she realized, a smile of friendship.
“You are nothing less than a saint, Miss Eversleigh,”
he said.
Amelia looked to the duke, and then to Grace, and wondered— What was he thinking? It was not as if
Grace had any choice in the matter. If he really thought Grace was a saint, he ought to set her up with a dowry and find her a husband so she did not have to spend the rest of her life waiting hand and foot upon his grandmother.
But of course she did not say that. Because no one said such things to a duke.
“Grace tells us that you plan to rusticate in the country for several months,” Elizabeth said.
Amelia wanted to kick her. The implication had to be that if he had time to remain in the country, he must have time to finally marry her sister.
And indeed, the duke’s eyes held a vaguely ironic expression as he murmured, “I do.”
“I shall be quite busy until November at the earliest,”
Amelia blurted out, because it was suddenly imperative that he realize that she was not spending her days sitting by her window, pecking at needlework as she pined for his arrival.
“Shall you?” he murmured.
She straightened her shoulders. “I shall.”
His eyes, which were a rather legendary shade of blue, narrowed a bit. In humor, not in anger, which was probably all the worse. He was laughing at her. Amelia did not know why it had taken her so long to realize this. All these years she’d thought he was merely ignoring her—
Oh, dear Lord.
“Lady Amelia,” he said, the slight nod of his head as much of a bow as he must have felt compelled to make,
“would you do me the honor of a dance?”
Elizabeth and Grace turned to her, both of them smiling serenely with expectation. They had played out this scene before, all of them. And they all knew how it was meant to unfold.
Especially Amelia.
“No,” she said, before she could think the better of it.
He blinked. “No?”
“No, thank you, I should say.” And she smiled pret-tily, because she did like to be polite.
He looked stunned. “You don’t wish to dance?”
“Not tonight, I don’t think, no.” Amelia stole a glance at her sister and Grace. They looked aghast.
Amelia felt wonderful.
She felt like herself, which was something she was never allowed to feel in his presence. Or in the anticipa-tion of his presence. Or the aftermath.
It was always about him. Wyndham this and Wyndham that, and oh how lucky she was to have snagged the most handsome duke in the land without even having to lift a finger.
The one time she allowed her rather dry humor to rise to the fore, and said, “Well, of course I had to lift my little baby rattle,” she’d been rewarded with two blank stares and one mutter of “ungrateful chit.”
That had been Jacinda Lennox’s mother, three weeks before Jacinda had received her shower of marriage proposals.
So Amelia generally kept her mouth shut and did what was expected of her. But now . . .
Well, this wasn’t London, and her mother wasn’t watching, and she was just so sick of the way he kept her on a leash. Really, she could have found someone else by now. She could have had fun. She could have kissed a man.
Oh, very well, not that. She wasn’t an idiot, and she did value her reputation. But she might have imagined it, which she’d certainly never bothered to do before.
And then, because she had no idea when she might feel so reckless again, she smiled up at her future husband and said, “But you should dance, if you wish it.
I’m sure there are many ladies who would be happy to partner you.”
“But I wish to dance with you,” he ground out.
“Perhaps another time,” Amelia said. She gave him her sunniest smile. “Ta!”
And she walked away.
She walked away.
She wanted to skip. In fact, she did. But only once she’d turned the corner.
Thomas Cavendish liked to think himself a reasonable man, especially since his lofty position as the seventh Duke of Wyndham would have allowed him any number of unreasonable demands. He could have gone stark raving mad, dressed all in pink, and declared the world a triangle, and the ton would still have bowed and scraped and hung on his every word.
His own father, the sixth Duke of Wyndham, had not gone stark raving mad, nor had he dressed all in pink or declared the world a triangle, but he had certainly been a most unreasonable man. It was for that reason that Thomas most prided himself upon the evenness of his temper, the sanctity of his word, and, although he did not choose to reveal this side of his personality to many, his ability to find humor in the absurd.
And this was definitely absurd.
But as news of Lady Amelia’s departure from the assembly spread through the hall, and head after head swiveled in his direction, Thomas began to realize that the line between humor and fury was not so very much more substantial than the edge of a knife.
And twice as sharp.
Lady Elizabeth was gazing upon him with a fair dose of horror, as if he might turn into an ogre and tear someone from limb to limb. And Grace—drat the little minx—looked as if she might burst out laughing at any moment.