Page 21 of Mr. Cavendish, I Presume

Oh, how lucky I am to be your bride.

Or if not that then—

Will I be required to make conversation?

Or at the very least—

Your cravat is askew.

But of course she didn’t.

Because he was the duke, and she was his betrothed, and if perhaps she’d managed a small show of spirit the night before…

That was before he’d kissed her.

Funny how that changed everything.

Amelia stole a glance at him. He was staring straight ahead, and the line of his jaw was impossibly proud and resolute.

He hadn’t looked at Grace in that manner.

She swallowed, suppressing a sigh. She couldn’t make a sound, because then he would turn, and then he’d look at her in that way of his—piercing, icy—really, her life would be so much simpler if his eyes were not quite so blue. And then he’d ask her what was wrong, but of course he would not care about the answer, and she’d know that from his tone, and that would just make her feel worse, and—

And what? What did she care, really?

He paused, a slight break in his stride, and she glanced up at him again. He was looking over his shoulder, back at the castle.

Back at Grace.

Amelia suddenly felt rather sick.

This time she was not able to suppress her sigh. Apparently she cared rather a lot.

Blast it all.

It was, Thomas realized almost dispassionately, a spectacular day. The sky was equal parts blue and white, and the grass just long enough to ruffle gently in the breeze. There were trees ahead, a peculiarly wooded area, right in the middle of farmland, with gentle hills sloping down toward the coast. The sea was more than two miles away, but on days like this, when the wind came in from the east, the air held the faint tang of salt. There was nothing but nature ahead, left as God had made it, or at least as the Saxons had cleared it hundreds of years ago.

It was marvelous, and marvelously wild. If one kept one’s back to the castle, one might be able to forget the existence of civilization. There was almost the sense that if you kept walking, you could just go on and on…away. Disappear.

He had pondered this on occasion. It was tempting.

But behind him lay his birthright. It was huge and imposing, and from the outside, not particularly friendly.

Thomas thought of his grandmother. Belgrave wasn’t always particularly friendly on the inside, either.

But it was his, and he loved it, even with the massive weight of responsibility that came with it. Belgrave Castle was in his bones. It was in his soul. And no matter how much he was occasionally tempted, he could never walk away.

There were other, more immediate obligations, however, the most pressing of which was walking at his side.

He sighed inside, the only indication of weariness an ever so slight roll of his eyes. He probably should have danced attendance on Lady Amelia when he’d seen her in the drawing room. Hell, he probably should have spoken to her before addressing Grace. In fact, he knew he should have done, but the scene with the painting had been so farcical, he had to tell someone about it, and it wasn’t as if Lady Amelia would have understood.

Still, he had kissed her last night, and even if he had a perfect right to do so, he supposed that required a bit of postencounter finesse. “I trust your journey home last evening went without incident,” he said, deciding that was as good a conversational introduction as any.

Her eyes remained focused on the trees ahead. “We were not accosted by highwaymen,” she confirmed.

He glanced over at her, attempting to gauge her tone. There had been a hint of irony in her voice, but her face was magnificently placid.

She caught him looking at her and murmured, “I thank you for your concern.”

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