Page 44 of Tamed By her Duke

“No,” she said, startled into speech rather than truly intending to interrupt. She cleared her throat. “I mean to say… You look very nice. Are you coming to the banquet, then?”

Again, his look questioned her intelligence.

“Aye,” he said—for the third time now, Grace realized with a flush. “Where else?”

Where else indeed?

There was no chance now, Grace thought with a note of hysteria, of people failing to notice that she wore her husband’s house colors. They were a matched pair, after all. Such a thing would look foolish in London but here, among the wind and the trees and the sea…

It just felt right, in a way Grace was pointedly not thinking about.

Nor could she manage to look directly at her husband, resplendent in his formalwear—more formal, she noted, that what he’d worn for even their wedding, which did sting a bit—until she was at the banquet and with a cup of punch in hand.

She gulped a large swallow, then fought back a cough. Apparently, hosts were far more liberal with spirits at entertainment in the North than they were in London. As a relaxed, warm feeling coursed through her, however, Grace decided she didn’t mind all that much. She took another gulp.

“Your Grace!”

Grace turned to see Lady Fenwick approaching, looking so round that it was a miracle that she didn’t topple directly over. Despite this, Lady Fenwick was surefooted and pink-cheeked as she approached Grace.

“Hello, Lady Fenwick,” Grace said. And then, because that punch had been potent indeed, and her tongue was suitably loosened, she said what she’d been thinking for days now. “And my given name is Grace, did you know that? Being called‘Your Grace’ seems maddeningly redundant. And confusing. Bordering on stupid.”

Lady Fenwick smiled, amused, though the expression froze on her lips as Caleb let out a grumbling sound thatmighthave been a hastily suppressed laugh.

“You shall have to forgive me, then, Your Grace, for formal redundancies,” Lady Fenwick said, eyes darting nervously to Caleb. “For the sake of propriety. But do excuse me. I think my husband is calling me.”

As the woman bustled away, Grace let out a disgruntled sound of her own.

“You scared her away,” she accused her husband, who looked like a mountain of a man in his regalia. “Do you intend to scare off everyone? All evening?”

He paused very deliberately. “Mayhap.”

“Mayhap!” she cried, outraged, though the comment died on her lips as her husband put one very large, very warm hand to the small of her back and used it to steer her more deeply into the banquet hall.

When Caleb frightened off the second person to come speak to her, she was infuriated. At the third, she drained her punch in a fit of pique. By the fourth, she realized that she had never seen her husband ever look so entertained.

“You’re doing it on purpose!” she exclaimed. “Just to devil me!”

“I daenae know what ye mean,” he said, straight faced.

“Liar!” she hissed—because even with a full cup of the strong punch muddling her head, she knew better than to insult her husband audibly while in public.

No matter how quiet her words, however, for a second she thought she’d overstepped. He bent down very close to her until she could feel his breath against the shell of her ears. Instead of scolding, however, or promising retribution he muttered two words.

“Prove it.”

When he pulled back, he was fighting a smile, though his glower was perfectly fixed by the time the next couple, a successful wool merchant and his wife, came over to greet them.

If he could have fun, Grace decided then, so could she. So as the merchant, face white with nerves, bragged that he only ever used Scottish wool in his trade—as he was a big fan of Scotland, he was, and the Scottish, and scotch, of course—Grace looped her arm a little more tightly through her husband’s. And then she stepped a little closer to him, and then a little more, until she was just on the far side of improper.

And then she just sort ofleaned, so that she was, to put it bluntly, pressing her breasts against him.

The merchant, lost in raptures about sheep, did not notice. The merchant’s wife, who squinted as though she was dreadfully nearsighted, did not notice.

Caleb noticed.

He glanced down at her, gaze startled, though he quickly covered it up. Grace fluttered her eyelashes at him like the worst coquette.

This time he could not hide his grin entirely.

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