Page 107 of The Duke's Inconvenient Bride
Violet pulled a face as if she didn’t like that response, but she didn’t push the matter. She pointed at a tree up ahead.
“Look, there’s a large apple,” she said.
It was only once they were standing beneath the apple that they realized how far up it was. Violet seemed inclined to walk away, but Emma hitched up her skirts. It had been years since she’d climbed a tree, and this seemed as good a time as any to start again.
After all, no one was about, and even if they were, who would judge her? She was a duchess. There had to be perquisites.
“Emma, are you sure that’s a good idea?” Violet asked.
“Perfectly.”
Emma wedged her booted foot into a space between branches and hefted herself up. She climbed upward, getting closer to the apple, but before she could reach it, she spotted a figure hurrying toward them from the direction of the house.
“Who is that?” Emma called down.
Violet spun around. “One of the maids.”
Emma rolled her eyes. Yes, she’d been able to observe that much from the uniform.
“Mrs. Mayhew,” the maid called, panting as she closed the distance between them. Her eyes widened as she noticed Emma up the tree.
“What is it?” Violet asked.
“Um.” The maid didn’t seem to know how to react to the sight of a duchess with her skirts hiked up, climbing a tree. “The Duke of Ashford is here to see the duchess.”
Vaughan restedagainst the back of the sofa, grateful for the physical support as he waited anxiously to discover whether Emma would grace him with her presence.
They’d been polite to each other when she’d departed, but it hadn’t been under the greatest of terms, and the knots in his gutwere tangling themselves ever tighter because he feared she’d refuse to see him.
He shouldn’t be here.
He was supposed to stay away from Emma. But perhaps he was taking after his father, as Henry White had suggested, because he’d been unable to keep his distance. He missed her too much. He longed to see her pretty face and hear her soothing tones.
His mouth tasted of brandy from the flask he’d left in the carriage, and the wait seemed to go on forever. Yes, that was a slight exaggeration on his part, but as he watched minutes tick by, he grew more certain that Emma planned to just leave him waiting here.
When she appeared in the doorway, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shining—and was that a twig caught in her hair?—he’d never seen anything more breathtaking.
Relief engulfed him.
Perhaps he hadn’t completely ruined whatever was between them. Suddenly, he realized he ought to be standing. He wasn’t showing his wife the proper respect. If anyone else disrespected her, he’d gut them, so why should he be any different?
He lurched to his feet, but his vision swam, and he stumbled. Emma caught him and steadied him.
“What’s happening?” she asked. “Is everything all right?”
“It is now that you’re here,” he said and leaned down to plant a kiss on her mouth, except she sidestepped at the last moment, and he landed on his ass. His tailbone throbbed, and he grunted as pain shot up his spine. That would hurt later.
But then his gaze flew back to his wife as the meaning of her actions sank in.
She’d rejected him.
He’d tried to kiss her, and she’d rejected him.
He stared in disbelief, a fissure forming in the walls of his heart. In a moment of perfect clarity, he saw himself as if he were hanging from the ceiling, looking down. There he was, sitting at the duchess’s feet, making a fool of himself over her.
He’d never felt more like his father, and he’d never been so ashamed.
Yet even that couldn’t make him leave.
