Page 37 of A Spinster to Reform the Duke
“I was already impressed with the few scraps I read before. I think it is safe to say I will like what I read next.” He held his hand out toward her.
As Rebecca looked up into the Duke’s eyes, something broke within her. She passed the poetry into his hands, rather eager to hear his thoughts.
He returned to the bench where they had been sat, placing the two poems on his lap as he began to read. Rebecca busied herself for a minute, pouring tea for the two of them at the table, barely listening to Eliza’s and Lord Herberton’s conversation as she did so, for she could not stop glancing the Duke’s way, nervous of what he would think. When she crossed back toward him and placed the teacup and saucer on the arm of the bench for him to drink, he looked up at her, his expression different to anything she had seen before.
“What is it?” she asked nervously.
“I have never read anything like it.” His words were soft. She felt ready to leave and run, yet the Duke clearly noticed it and lifted his eyebrows. “Sit with me?” he asked. Rebecca found herself perching on the bench beside him, sipping her tea. “This one, about this storm. It is so… heartfelt.”
“Yes, it is.” She confirmed. “Did you like it?”
“Like it? My Lady, I do not think I could ever forget it.” He turned to her with eagerness, his face so full of vigor that she was taken aback. “These words, here,” he scrambled to find a certain passage, “‘No storm is as great as that a loved one weathers. We watch from afar, aghast, hearts delicate like feathers.’It is so true,” he mused as he looked up from the poem to meet her gaze. “No pain is as great as that we perceive a loved one to feel.”
“You understand it,” Rebecca said happily.
“Do I come across as very ill witted?” the Duke teased with a laugh. “You thought I would not understand it?”
“No!” Rebecca said hurriedly, shuffling toward him on the bench. “You misunderstand. I have never shown anyone these before. I do not know if what I want to say is really said. Now, I know it works.”
“Of course, it works,” the Duke said with a laugh. “It’s brilliant! You should have these published.”
“Published?” Rebecca said with so much surprise that she dropped the teacup. The Duke went to catch it in a flap, he just managed to take hold of the rim, stopping it from crashing down to the ground, yet the liquid spilled over his fingers.
“That was hotter than I anticipated.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Rebecca jumped to her feet and hurried back to the table, collecting napkins that she took back to the bench. Sat beside him another time, she mopped up the dregs of tea that had doused his fingers, as he placed the teacup down beside his own on the arm of the bench. Rebecca was so busy trying to dry the tea, she didn’t notice for some minutes that the Duke was watching her, his gaze intent. “You are staring.”
“I was just rather admiring your attempt to hold my hand.”
She pushed his hand away instantly, looking up at him with a narrowed gaze as he laughed.
“That is not what I was doing!”
“Of course, it wasn’t,” he said with a shrug. “You can just hold my hand, my Lady, you do not have to make a pretense about it.”
“Do not be charming,” she warned as she stood to her feet again. “I warned you about that before.” He laughed all the more as she collected her teacup and returned to the tea table, to pour herself another.
Rebecca was rather glad to turn her back on him for a minute, for his flirtation had made her blush, and her heartbeat had quickened.
Why is it that I cannot stay away from him?
Despite her determination to put distance between them and protect her heart from him, she seemed to be doing the exact opposite. In fact, she had now become closer to him than anyone else, by showing him something that was so intimate to her, her poetry.
“I see my thoughts on publishing shocked you,” the Duke said, leaning back on the bench as she returned to her seat beside him. “Is it really so wild an idea?”
“It is.” She tried to take the papers back from his lap, but his fingers curled around them, clearly reluctant to let them go yet.
“Why?”
“Because you seem to forget I am a woman, Your Grace.”
“Believe me, I cannot forget that,” he winked at her with the words.
“How many times do I have to tell you not to be charming?” she said boldly, trying to take the papers back with more force. He simply took them out of her grasp and held them on the other side of his body, out of her reach. “A woman is not as easily published as a man is.”
“I wish I could say it was not true,” the Duke grimaced as he spoke. “Yet it is not impossible. What of Felicia Hemans? What of Aphra Behn? Or of Miss Austen? Many names have been published.”
“You could probably count them all on your fingers,” Rebecca pointed out, placing down the teacup and rounding the bench in her attempt to take the poetry back again. He snatched it away another time, leaving her to nearly fall over the arm of the bench to get to him.
