Page 16 of Lady Lilias and the Devil in Plaid
“My, aren’t you observant. But that does not answer my question. What. Are. You. Doing?”
He smiled. Heactuallysmiled. And it was blindingly beautiful. Hating him was becoming easier by the second. Whyever was he smiling at her? He needed to stop instantly.
“Stop smiling at me.” When he accommodated her immediately, it was even more vexing. He had not once been accommodating since she’d met him. He did not need to start now, not when she was planning to hate him forever. “Stop being accommodating.”
He arched twin perfectly formed, dark, thick eyebrows. Everything about him was annoyingly perfect, except his heart.
“Do you want me to smile or not?” he asked, amusement in his voice.
She served him what she knew from experience with Nora and loads of practice in the looking glass was her best scowl. “I want you to tell me why you are following me.”
“I cannot very well allow you to walk home by yourself. That would not be very honorable of me.”
“Ah yes, you and your honor,” she snipped. It was his blasted supposed honor that had first made her tumble into love with him when he’d made that little speech by the stream so many years ago about not allowing her to aid him in teaching Owen to swim because she could have been hurt. He was honorable, she begrudgingly acknowledged. Which also meant he was good. She begrudgingly acknowledged that, too. What he wasnotwas besotted with her, and he had told her as much. Plainly. Years before.
She felt like such a fool. Again. “I order you not to follow me.” She prayed he’d listen. She wanted to cry, and she absolutely could not do so with him at her heels like a guard dog.
“I’m not the sort of man to follow orders, Lilias. Just as you are not the sort of lady to follow commands.”
“You know nothing about what sort of lady I am now,” she snapped, though what he’d said was true. She had never been good at following commands. She blamed that on her father. He’d always said his biggest regret in life was following the course for his life that his parents had demanded instead of the one his heart had wanted.
For one moment, Nash looked as if he might argue, but then he simply nodded. “You are quite right, but that does not change the fact that I am going to ensure you get home safely.”
“Do as you wish,” she grumbled. “But I vow I won’t speak a single word to you.”
She could have sworn his lips started to tug upward into a smile, but he very quickly schooled his features into the most serious expression. “I’d be disappointed if you did.”
She opened her mouth to insist upon his telling her what he meant by that, but she promptly snapped it shut, realizing that such an action would break her just proclaimed vow to herself. She whirled away from him, started toward her home, then changed course to make her way back to Guinevere’s home on Picadilly. She needed a shoulder to cry on.
“Where are you going?” Nash asked from behind her.
The desire to tell him it was none of his business nearly burst from her, but she pressed her lips together, determined not to speak to him.
“Lilias, this is not the way to your home.”
She almost tripped at the realization that he knew where her home was. They were not in the Cotswolds any longer. So how did he know such a thing? For a man who’d been away for seven years and had never been to her family’s home in Mayfair, Nash should have no notion which way her townhome was. Had he made it a point to discover where she lived?
Stop it.She would not allow herself to live in a fantasy any longer. Seven years was quite enough.
She squared her shoulders and strode forward as fast as her swishing skirts would allow. When she reached the steps of Guinevere and Carrington’s townhome, she thought to simply march up the steps without a goodbye, but it occurred to her that by behaving as she was, she was letting him see how much his rejection had hurt her. She would not be such a fool as to tell herself he did not know she had liked him. At least he did not know she loved him. Oh, she still did. She couldn’t simply turn it off. But she would smother it until it no longer had life.
She forced a smile to her lips that made her cheeks hurt, turned, and offered a curtsy. She came up and—
Was that admiration she saw in his eyes? Stop. Stop. Stop.
She really needed to sit and think upon why she kept imagining things in regard to him so that the next time she saw him, she’d see what was really there and not just what she wanted to see. “Thank you for walking me home.”
“This is not your home.” His smile could have melted the thick ice of the River Eye in winter.
Blast the man. He had her mind in a swirl. She gritted her teeth. “Of course not,” she said sweetly. “I was testing you to see if you knew where I lived.”
Do not ask him. Absolutely do not.
“How do you know this is not my home?” she asked, arching her eyebrows expectantly and cursing herself for the inability to control her tongue.
“Because this is the Duke of Carrington’s home,” Nash said, surprising her.
She frowned at his knowing Guinevere’s husband and that he managed to dash yet another bit of hope that he may have inquired as to where she lived. She absolutely should have known better. “How do you know Carrington?”
