Page 6 of Drawn to the Duke
Edward had tried to persuade Selina not to attend the small dinner party the duke was holding tonight. He’d begged her to plead a megrim. If people saw that Selina, his supposed wife, was adept at table talk, he said, then Edward would be criticized for continuing to keep his real wife supposedly under lock and key. Not that Anna really was under lock and key, though her freedom was limited.
As was Selina’s. But this visit to Lord Chauncy was going to change all that. Selina wasn’t going to squander her one opportunity to wear the lovely gown she’d been refashioning each of these last three years since her widowhood. She intended to ensure Edward’s commission was the first of many. Edward would realize her worth and Selina would no longer be forced to molder away in the country like poor Anna.
Of course, Selina would also be wise to balance expectations and appear ‘just sufficiently mad enough’ that she’d not be considered an outright threat but could still go out and about with Edward. Still, that shouldn’t be hard. Being a littleoutspoken was enough to concern society. Ladies who spoke their minds were—quite frankly, Selina had realized to her cost—a danger to themselves.
“Lady. Boothe.”
She rose slowly. Lord Chauncy eyed her cautiously. As if she were a creature as strange and exotic as the pineapple he was attempting to cultivate in his hothouse. Despite his striking looks, the breadth of his shoulders, and his disconcerting magnetism, Selina supposed he was little different from her late husband and her brother. He would tolerate an opinionated, outspoken woman as little as they.
“Your Grace.” She held his gaze because he was, to her surprise, still looking at her, a small furrow between his eyes, as if she did not match what he was expecting.
And Selina responded with a small thrill at his interest. Not interest that suggested he perhaps found her comely. But that he found her interesting.
Interesting, she supposed, because he thought her mad.
She felt Edward’s concerned stare and wavered between doing something that poor Anna might have done before Edward decided to entirely deny her any involvement in society—or whether to keep her head down.
She chose the latter, but not before matching his Grace’s stare with a long, hard look of her own.
Why not? If he could stare, so could she, and he’d not think anything of it other than that he was looking into the eyes of a woman whose mind was with the fairies.
But, as she lowered her gaze, she could not resist a remark that not only came surprisingly from the heart but was indeed something poor Anna would have said.
“You have eyes I could drown in, Your Grace,” Selina murmured, staring pointedly now at the ground so thatshe could hide her smile as she felt Edward’s horror and embarrassment scorch her from a full three feet away.
CHAPTER 6
“If I am to be seated opposite a mad woman and must make small talk, at least suggest how I might begin,” Beth said as they waited for their guests to gather in the drawing room prior to going in to dinner.
They were to be a table of eight, including Lord Saunders, Catherine, and Catherine’s sister and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Piggott.
Chauncy frowned. “I cannot say, Beth, since she spoke barely ten words to me.”
“Ten? So more than simply, “Your Grace”? What exactlydidshe say?”
Chauncy’s mouth turned up as he told her, and Beth repeated the odd compliment with a giggle before saying, “I do think your eyes are your best feature, Chauncy, so I would hope Sir Edward does them justice. I think it must be very difficult to produce a likeness quite so true that one can recognize it as the person being drawn. Painters always have to flatter the subject.”
“Sir Edward’s honesty and accuracy is, apparently, what sets him apart. While I find him not particularly prepossessing, I am told that, as a portraitist, he is a master.”
“I daresay he doesn’t feel like smiling very often with a mad wife who says embarrassing things in public,” replied Beth. “He’d not know what she was going to come out with next, which is why I’m so interested in seeing how she conducts herself at dinner.”
“She’s not one of the Prince Regent’s menagerie to gawk at, Beth.”
“That is usually the caution I would make, Chauncy.” Beth’s eyes danced. “Don’t tell me you are not as intrigued as I to know what she will say when she is not ruled by convention like the rest of us. She will say what she thinks, I daresay. And does that make her mad? Or honest?”
It didn’t take longto find out.
Seated between Edward and Mr. Piggott, Selina was conscious of all eyes upon her. There was a nervous anticipation, as if word had gone around that she was some strange, wild creature who might say or do something to bring down the sky.
She was also conscious of Edward’s seething anger, which had not abated since her impulsive words of earlier. He’d taken her to task when they’d dressed for dinner. In fact, he’d tried outright to forbid her from making an appearance until she reminded him that her opportunities of observing the duke close up were rare enough. At the table, he’d be only three seats away.
“I promise I will speak only when spoken to, Edward, and I will use my few snatched opportunities to study the duke’s interesting physiognomy to commit to the paper you know I carry at all times, which I will hide beneath the table,” she’d assured him.
“Meaning, you will be looking down; demure and compliant?”
“Whenever I am not being directly addressed, Edward. Yes! Now, I’m perfectly respectable, but I will need your help with the buttons at the back.”
Her earlier frustration with her brother was now replaced by sheer pleasure at feeling the weight and soft, silken texture of her exquisite gown as she stroked the pale pink overdress. It was the gown she was to have worn for her debut. Running away with Samuel had put paid to any opportunity to ever wear it.
