Page 42 of His Stolen Duchess
“Take a break for now,” he instructed.
Georgina stopped kicking, and he gently righted her until she was standing back in the water up to her neck. If she felt cold because of it, she showed no sign.
“You have improved dramatically. The last time we were here, the water conquered you, but today you have conquered the water.”
Georgina smiled, a full smile that suggested to him why it had been so easy to win over the people in the village. There was so much unbridled happiness within that smile. As she stared at him, the wide smile stretching her lips, he felt some of her happiness seep into him.
“You are doing well,” he told her.
“I’m only doing well because I have such a good teacher,” she replied. “I would not have expected you to be so commanding in a gentle way.”
“Part of my training in the military was how to command men. Sometimes, it is easier to command an entire battalion—they help to keep each other in step. Yet, when training a single person and they listen as well as you do, it is far easier.”
“So, you’re telling me that I’m doing better than an entire battalion?” Georgina asked.
“In some ways,” the Duke admitted. “I’m not sure how well your frog kick would do against the enemy, but you are only a new recruit.”
“What was it like?” Georgina asked. “You obviously came back in one piece.”
Did I? You don’t even know me. You don’t know how many pieces the war broke me into.
“I don’t want to talk about war. Why would I want to speak about something so horrific?”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” she stuttered. “I don’t know what you went through, of course. It is only that my father was in the military, too, and that connection interested me. And I know how it can be, even if I haven’t experienced any of it. Father always said that the bayonet was the weapon he feared the most.Such an elegant weapon, he always used to say, but one with a simple honesty.”
“Then your father is a wise man.” The Duke looked past Georgina to the stillness of the water in the distance.
“I can still list the contents of a field officer’s pack.” Georgina puffed her chest under the water. “Right down to the powder flask and spare flints. Papa always told me I never listened, but I listened more than he knew.”
Lysander looked back at Georgina. “You continue to surprise me. I don’t like to make sweeping generalizations about people, but I had a notion of you before we were wed, and assumed you were like most other ladies.”
Georgina puffed out her chest some more. “I am not like other ladies.”
“I can see that now. You are far better, for you know something about the real world. Most ladies prance around in London society, sipping champagne and eating the finest food, and they forget the horrors that had to happen for them to get that. I’m glad they don’t know what war is like, but it also means they don’t know what life is really like. You know more than they do.”
“That might be the nicest thing you have said to me, Your Grace, and the nicest thing that anyone has ever said to me. There have been things said, I am sure, but they are mostly superficial. You speak of me knowing the world, and that gives me great pride.”
“It should. You exhibit courage in a lot of what you do. There is much to be proud of. How refreshing it is to have a wife who is not like the other ladies.”
“And how refreshing it is to have a husband who can see me for who I am.”
Yes, I see you, but I can’t let you see me.
Then, those eyes again, amber-brown and endlessly expressive, that watched him with a stillness that unsettled him. There was something in them that tugged at the edges of his composure. Not accusation, not even curiosity, but something deeper. Reflection, perhaps. Or recognition.
It almost felt like a trap, though one he’d laid for himself.
They floated in the water, tethered by necessity, his hand still at her waist, her fingers barely grazing his shoulder for balance. The lake remained calm, but the memory of her slipping beneath the surface still clenched his gut. He couldn’t let her drift—not yet.
They were close. Unavoidably so. Propriety had no place between the current and the bank. And to make matters worse—or better, depending on how one measured disaster—he had just paid her what might have been the sincerest compliment of her life.
Of course, she’d be looking at him like that. As though he’d done something extraordinary.
As though I meant it.
He cleared his throat, but the words caught. What was there to say? That he hadn’t meant for it to matter? That she shouldn’t be staring at him that way, as though he’d magically changed something between them simply by noticing her?
God help him, he had noticed. And now it was too late to unsee her.
