Page 10 of The Duke Says I Do
To her surprise, he laughed. “You know, nobody else talks to me like you do. In fact, even you didn’t talk to me like this until today.”
She hadn’t spoken to him since those fraught days last year at Afton Court, the family estate, where Juliet had rejected him.“I don’t feel like I’ve got anything to lose with you anymore. I’m sorry if you don’t like it.”
Which was a lie. She wasn’t sorry at all.
A frown, more puzzlement than annoyance, creased his brow. Portia wanted to grind her teeth in frustration. Could he look any more picturesque? The Archangel Gabriel sorrowing over humanity’s foibles. The awful truth was that his beauty made her stupid stomach tie itself up in knots of longing.
“I wouldn’t say I don’t like it,” he said thoughtfully. “Compared to all the fawning toadies, it’s refreshing to know where I stand with you.”
What a relief. That sounded like she’d managed to hide her sudden and inconvenient penchant for him. “I appreciated your help today,” she said on a less belligerent note.
He laughed again, a grunt of wry amusement that she would have assumed was outside his repertoire. On the strength of earlier encounters, she’d judged him to be totally humorless, too wrapped up in his own grandeur to laugh at anything. She couldn’t remember them sharing so much as a wry smile. Then, as he pointed out, she’d been punctiliously polite to him in return. Not at all her outspoken self.
“I’m sure it hurt to say that.” Like her, he must recall their chilly interactions.
He, too, was franker than he’d been in their previous acquaintance. Perhaps they might have found common ground, if they’d ever moved beyond banalities. “I’ll survive,” she said with a hint of grimness.
“Pleased to hear it.” He pulled down the blinds. “I’ve got enough problems with this hound of humble parentage. I don’t need an expiring noblewoman on my plate as well.”
Darkness surrounded them. Warm, intimate darkness. She bit back a dismayed protest. Her heart lodged in her throat and threatened to stop her breath.
Not seeing the duke should make her less aware of his proximity. It didn’t work like that. He hadn’t shifted closer or hinted that she was anything except a nuisance. But with the blinds down, the space shrank. If she stretched out her legs, they’d tangle with his.
Portia wanted to ask him to raise the blinds. Except that was dangerous. Now that they approached the fashionable part of town, they were back in traffic. If just one person saw her sharing a closed carriage with Granville, her goose was cooked.
“My God, that dog stinks,” Granville said.
His disgusted exclamation should destroy the suggestive atmosphere. Portia swallowed to moisten an unaccountably dry mouth and struggled to sound matter-of-fact. “He can’t help it.”
“Perhaps not.”
Now that her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she watched Jupiter lie down and set his head on Granville’s lap. She waited for the duke to shove the animal away, but to her surprise, he rested one gloved hand on his neck.
For pity’s sake, she didn’t want to like Alaric Dempster. She much preferred to think of him as a one-dimensional stuffed shirt with no care for anyone but himself. If it turned out that he had a kind heart, she was doomed.
At least with the blinds down, Jupiter’s stench overpowered Granville’s evocative scent. Imagination alone must make the duke’s intriguing essence linger in her nostrils.
Portia struggled to concentrate on practicalities. She was good at that. She wasn’t a girl who melted at the sight of a comely male. Or at least she hadn’t been before. “We’ll give him a bath when we get to Dempster House.”
“You know, I’ve never taken care of a dog,” His Grace said in a musing tone. The twilight inside the carriage made her far too aware of the beauty of that baritone voice. He was renowned for his speeches in parliament. Portia understood why. Howon earth could anyone vote against him? “There hasn’t been a dog on Dempster property for at least three generations. My grandparents brought me up and didn’t want anything to distract me from my training to take over the title.”
His words held a hint of sadness. An unbidden image of a lonely little boy forced to concentrate on his studies and denied any chance of a puppy made her heart ache.
Stop it, Portia. You have no idea what his childhood was like. He was probably ecstatic to be a swot. Just because you love animals, it doesn’t mean everyone else does.
“He really will be better with someone else,” the duke said.
“He doesn’t think so.”
He sighed. “You’re pushing me to keep him.”
She was. Jupiter saw none of the flaws in the Duke of Granville that she did. At least until today, when she’d lost her mind. “I’ll see if someone can take him tomorrow, if you still don’t want him.”
That was a weasel answer, she knew. Since her father’s ultimatum about no more animals, she’d farmed her rescues off to anyone she could think of. Viola and Toby had taken a whole kennel’s worth. She doubted that she’d find a place for Jupiter.
The duke clearly had doubts about her honesty, too. His silence held a skeptical edge.
When he lifted the blind a few inches, a beam of light illuminated those remarkable features. Against her will, her gaze soaked up every detail. The deep-set green eyes, the straight blade of a nose, a mouth that conveyed iron self-control. She’d already seen all this, but today, for the first time, she noticed hints of humor.
