Page 77 of The Lost Duke of Wyndham

It was to this room that he retreated after his embarrassing encounter with Grace in the great hall. He did not like to lose his temper; to be more precise, he loathed it.

He sat there for hours, tucked into place at a reading table, occasionally rising to stretch his legs. He was on his final volume—a study of the French rococo style—when a footman walked by the open doorway, stopped, then backed up.

Jack looked back at him, arching a brow in question, but the young man said nothing, just scurried off in the direction from which he’d come.

Two minutes later Jack was rewarded for his patience by the sound of feminine footsteps in the hall. Grace’s footsteps.

He pretended to be engrossed in his book.

“Oh, you’re reading,” she said, sounding surprised.

He carefully turned a page. “I do so on occasion.”

He could practically hear her roll her eyes as she walked in. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

He looked up and affixed a smile. “And yet here I am.”

She stood hesitantly in the doorway, her hands clasped tightly before her. She was nervous, he realized.

He hated himself for that.

He tilted his head in invitation, motioning to the chair beside him.

“What are you reading?” she asked, coming into the room.

He turned his book toward the empty seat at the table. “Have a look.”

She did not sit immediately. Rather, she rested her hands at the edge of the table and leaned forward, peering down at the open pages. “Art,” she said.

“My second favorite subject.”

She gave him a shrewd look. “You wish for me to ask you what your favorite is.”

“Am I so obvious?”

“You are only obvious when you wish to be.”

He held up his hands in mock dismay. “And alas, it still doesn’t work. You have not asked me what my favorite subject is.”

“Because,” she returned, sitting down, “I am quite certain the answer will contain something highly inappropriate.”

He placed one hand on his chest, the dramatic gesture somehow restoring his equilibrium. It was easier to play the jester. No one expected as much from fools. “I am wounded,” he proclaimed. “I promise you, I was not going to say that my favorite subject was seduction, or the art of a kiss, or the proper way to remove a lady’s glove, or for that matter the proper way to remove—”

“Stop!”

“I was going to say,” he said, trying to sound beleaguered and henpecked, “that my favorite subject of late is you.”

Their eyes met, but only for a moment. Something unnerved her, and she quickly shifted her gaze to her lap. He watched her, mesmerized by the play of emotions on her face, by the way her hands, which were clasped together atop the table, tensed and moved.

“I don’t like this painting,” she said quite suddenly.

He had to look back at the book to see which image she referred to. It was a man and a woman out of doors, sitting on the grass. The woman’s back was to the canvas, and she seemed to be pushing the man away. Jack was not familiar with it, but he thought he recognized the style. “The Boucher?”

“Ye—no,” she said, blinking in confusion as she leaned forward. She looked down. “Jean-Antoine Watteau,” she read. “The Faux Pas.”

He looked down more closely. “Sorry,” he said, his voice light. “I’d only just turned the page. I think it does look rather like a Boucher, though. Don’t you?”

She gave a tiny shrug. “I’m not familiar enough with either artist to say. I did not study painting—or painters—very much as a child. My parents weren’t overly interested in art.”

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