Page 11 of The Duke's Spinster

“It sounds like you’ve met your match. There might be a lady out there with higher standards than you.” Chris’ chuckles subsided. “You better be ready to bring your best game, Wes.”

“Yes. Well, I won’t be caught unprepared again.”

If only that were true, Wesley might have had more success the next day. The meal complete, a game of piquet won, Wesleywas feeling on top of his game. It was a restful evening at home and a good long sleep. He had made arrangements for flowers to be delivered to his house the next morning, thus being able to present them in person. Nothing could top hand-delivered flowers.

Those thoughts should have lent to a peaceful sleep. But instead of a deep sleep, he dreamed of peonies. Pink peonies. Not red. Not white. No other colors at all. Just a pale pink flower with soft petals and a deep fragrance. He could almost smell it in his dream. That was a first. Dreams had the potential to be a safe place. A place where no harm could reach a person. A place where one could control everything. Add what they liked, discard what they didn’t. Yet dreams rarely achieved their full potential. So, of course, when he reached out to touch the rose it had thorns. And the thorns were sharp. But it wasn’t a sensation of pain that rattled through him. It was a sense of something else. Impossible to put into words, especially when one was dreaming. And more especially because when one woke up, all one remembered was the pale pink peony.

Peonies, of all things.

Chapter Five

Boudicca spent themorning reassuring herself that she, in fact, did not need to prepare for a second visit from the duke. She could, in reasonably good conscience, tell her sisters that she had snagged a duke, alas, he had gotten away. He was a slippery one, that silky-haired, steely-eyed duke with the strong, warm hands. A tingle crawled up her spine.

It had been far too long since a man had given her any masculine attention. She hadn’t flirted in…ages. Not that she was the flirting type. Yet she felt a rather uncanny urge to stay on her toes. But that wasn’t flirting.

When the butler came to announce a visitor, she knew it was the duke. What she didn’t know was how to accurately label the energy coursing through her body. And that heated blood pumping through her veins…she wasn’t quite sure what that was all about. Except, he had better have brought flowers this time. She would feel foolish claiming another megrim. By God, she would do it…but she would feel foolish.

Didn’t she have a right to have high standards? Some women waited until they were seventy before they asserted themselves and opined on every subject. Boudicca was not waiting until seventy. She had lived through enough of the Marriage Mart to hold sky-high standards, and she wasn’t about to drop them for anyone. Not even a duke.

If she was going to marry and compromise her plans of being a foil-wielding spinster, then it had damn well better be worth the compromise.

So yes, the man needed to prove his mettle.

Confident in her resolve, Boudicca made her way to the drawing room. But with each step she took, the tingling along her spine grew. The correlation between the decreasing distance and the increasing tingles was irrefutable. This was almost akin to…nerves. How very odd.

This, she needed to understand more.

In front of the closed drawing room door she paused and rallied herself one last time.Be yourself. Keep your standards high. Submit to no man. Trust no man. Be on your guard. Better yet, put him on his guard.Ah…there it was. She breathed in and exhaled some excess energy.

Entering the room, she noticed that the duke had again been standing dead center in the middle of the room. This time though, he had a small smirk on his face. The smirk of a man with ulterior motives, to be sure. If she had had feathers, they would already be ruffled.

“Good morning, Your Grace.” She drew out a curtsy, delaying the inevitable glance up at his face. When she finally did raise her head to meet his gaze, her breath caught in her throat. Damn his warm eyes, so at odds with his stony cold demeanor.

“It is lovely. I hope you’ve recovered from yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

Another smirk. “Your megrim.”

“Of course…” How could she have been caught off guard already? But those eyes of his. They were peering into her. If his eyes were feet they would have been standing en garde in the shape of an L. She dropped her gaze to his feet. No L. Just shoulder width apart. And then, regarding the status of her megrim, she responded, “Well, that is yet to be seen.”

He belted a short laugh. “I do hope it remains at bay.”

She didn’t want to hear his laugh. And she really didn’t want to continue staring at his angular face that had a smooth cut jaw, which she was quite sure had stubble on it at the dance. Why she recalled that, and how it did something to her insides vexed her immeasurably.

So she flicked her eyes down his body instead. And she observed his hands. Large, smooth hands clasped in front of him. She didn’t look further down, not much further anyway, as she could already feel a warmth creeping into her face. Her eyes began to steal their way back up his body, across those hands again. And that’s when she noticed it. Empty.

His hands were empty. No flowers? Botheration. What did the man think of her? That she forgot? That she would reconsider her requirement to visit with him? The man was galling.

He cleared his throat. “Perchance, are you looking for these?” He stepped to the side and behind him, on the table were—not one, but two—bouquets of flowers. One bouquet of various flowers and—heaven above—one bouquet of pale pink peonies.

She gasped.

Her feet lost their place, even though they were standing still. The world had surely shifted. How had he known? What the deuce kind of sign was this?

It was not a sign she was ready or willing to concede, that’s what kind of sign it was. He was an arrogant arse. A man far too high in the instep for her. Selfish. Greedy. Lavish. Deceitful. Though she knew none of these things to be true, she had to tell herself this. The alternative was too overwhelming. He couldn’t possibly know her and be interested in her.

“May we visit this morning?” His tone was silky. And…amused. How infuriating! He knew the effect of the flowers, though maybe not the full extent of it.

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