Page 42 of Drawn to the Duke
Chauncy hesitated. “Now that you’ve pointed her out, I won’t need your company, though I’d very much appreciate it a little later when it’s time to say goodbye, Anna.”
“You’re going to saygoodbyewhen you’ve only just come to say good day?” Anna clapped her hand to her mouth and her look was tragic. “Perhaps you shouldn’t see Selina, after all, if you’ve already decided you’re going to say goodbye.”
Chauncy regarded her in silence. Anna Boothe was lovely. Not as lovely as Selina, but with her elfin features and her bubbling happiness interspersed with unfiltered dismay, she reminded him eerily of Gwyneth.
“I want to see your sister-in-law because I need to know if I really will want to say goodbye after we meet again,” he said.
“Ah.” Anna nodded sagely. “Then I think you are perhaps as wise and kind as Selina said you were. Now, go, Your Grace, and don’t let me detain you.”
Chauncy watched Anna skip and dance away in the pale sunlight.
When he returned his attention to the path, he found he was suddenly dry-mouthed, and his palms were sweating.
If this had begun as an undertaking to discover exactly what he really felt about the woman who had overtaken his senses in such a short time, and whose hold over his thoughts was both powerful and irrational, the physical manifestations were impossible to ignore.
Still, he hesitated. Selina was about a minute’s walk away, sitting on a stool with her back to him, a large canvas on an easel in front of her. Dressed in a white muslin gown, her chestnut hair tied loosely so that escaped ringlets cascaded down her back, Chauncy was overcome by emotion. Remorse, desire, and confusion were an odd combination.
What would be the culmination of their conversation? Anna indicated her sister-in-law spoke of him kindly, when the truth was that Chauncy had farewelled her the day following the ball with nothing more than a gruff apology for having had her unfairly detained, and thanking her for the quality of her work.
At the time, she’d merely offered a small curtsy and said, “And I apologise for lying to you. We both have said and done things we regret, Your Grace.”
Their parting had felt final.
And he’d taken her words to indicate that she regretted not only deceiving him, but the intimacy between them.
Chauncy resumed his halting journey through the lush grass.
Reflecting on Lady Rushworth’s ball was to remember the deception displayed towards him by both Selina and Catherine.
But, the last month, sweeping away his anger, a new emotion had taken root, occasioned by memories of the sweetness that had infused his soul caused by Selina’s frank and unfettered enthusiasm for him.
Surely that could not have been feigned?
To Chauncy’s surprise, he found that the closer he got to the figure so thoroughly immersed in her painting, the more oddly his heart began to behave.
Quite erratically, in fact.
Like when he’d been a schoolboy; not yet in control of his manliness and unable to conceal his feelings.
A few yards away, he stopped and studied the back of her neck.
It was a very elegant neck. Graceful and swan-like before it reached her luscious bosom.
Not that he could see that from here, since he was behind her.
No, he was just remembering.
Like he did so often.
He remembered her smile, her laugh, her caresses, her honesty, and pleasure in him.
No, they hadnotbeen feigned, he told himself, even if she was pretending to be someone else.
Perhaps she was more like Anna—free and unfettered in her emotions—than she realized.
“Selina.”
She turned with a gasp, as if she knew immediately who had spoken.
