Page 46 of A Deal with the Broken Duke
“Yes, that’s right. She’s feeling faint.”
“Yes,” Juliet agreed, realizing what Harry was doing. “Yes, that’s right. I’m feeling faint.”
“Well, I’ll take her,” Lord Stickland stated, and to Harry’s shock and indignation, he reached out and put a hand on Juliet’s arm as if to pull her towards him.
Harry pulled her away. “I’m taking her to sit down,” he said firmly. “You’re not needed in this.”
“But I have a chair just over—”
“Lord Stickland, you do realize I’m courting Lady Juliet, don’t you? You’re not needed. Now, go force yourself on someone else.”
Lord Stickland looked highly indignant. But what could he say? He stood there stammering and sputtering for a moment, and then he turned and walked away.
“I’ve never seen him rendered speechless before,” she murmured. “That was a new one.”
“Perhaps I ought to be given some kind of award for having pushed him beyond the ability to form words,” Harry said with a smile.
He had liked watching Lord Stickland go incoherent—he found it amusing.
“If someone should get an award, I think it ought to beme,” Juliet objected. “I’m the one who has been putting up with him for the last year. They ought to build a monument in my honor. I think women who have had enough of overly persistent gentlemen would come from miles around to see it.”
“Perhaps they would! And I’m sure there are plenty of gentlemen who wouldn’t mind traveling a long way to gaze up at the likeness of a beauty such as yourself, either.”
“Stop that.” He could tell she wasn’t annoyed with him because she was laughing. “I don’t really need to rest, but perhaps we should get off the dance floor anyway. We wouldn’t want Lord Stickland to decide that we weren’t being honest with him and that it’s all right to come back.”
“No, I don’t want to see him again,” Harry agreed. “All right, why don’t we go get a drink?”
“That sounds perfect. And maybe this time I’ll even be permitted to finish it!” Juliet said.
Harry smiled. “I promise not to ask you to dance again until your glass is empty.”
Juliet laughed. “You ought to be careful making such promises. Now I can just take hours to finish my drink if that’s what I want to do and avoid dancing with you altogether.”
She clearly intended it as a joke, but Harry shook his head.
“If you don’t want to dance with me, then you shouldn’t,” he said. “You wouldn’t have to evade me through technicalities. You could simply tell me you didn’t want to dance, and I would accept that.”
“You’d be the very first.”
“That’s because you’ve been associating with gentlemen like Lord Stickland.”
“Well, not by my choice, I can assure you! I want nothing to do with that man.”
“And I can understand why.” Harry picked up a drink from a table and handed it to her, then took one for himself. “I just hope that you realize you can expect a completely different behavior from me. I will never try to compel you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
Juliet nodded. “I know that. Whatever problems you and I might have, that isn’t one of them.”
She turned away before Harry could ask the question those words had given rise to in his mind.
What problems do we have?
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
The following day was a frenzy of excitement for Juliet, as gentleman after gentleman stopped by Halsway Manor. Juliet, Daniel, Matilda and Lord Linford spent the whole morning and part of the afternoon in the sitting room greeting the parade of guests and entertaining each for a length of time before they went on their way to make room for the next.
It was completely unexpected, and Juliet and Matilda couldn’t stop laughing together between each visit. And every time they had done so, their father had scolded them.
“Of course, you know why this is happening,” the viscount said to his children. “That is, why we’re having so many guests today.”
