Page 2 of Starlight and the Duke
Robert offered his arm and led her back toward the house, but stopped as they were about to climb the terrace steps that led into the crowded ballroom. “Need I say it?”
She looked up at him, her features easily discerned because not only torchlight filled the garden on this summer evening. The night sky was almost cloudless, one of those rare skies where one could see the diamond sparkle of starlight against an ink-black emptiness, and silver moonlight under the moon’s crescent glow.
“You are angry with me, aren’t you?” Fiona asked. “I can feel the tension in your muscles.”
He let out a breath of frustration. “What in blazes are you thinking? Do you have no clue what impression you are giving Dexter and every other dolt you flirt with?”
She tipped her chin up. “I made it quite clear to Lord Dexter that we were only to take a turn about the garden and nothing more.Nothingmore.”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, of course. And you expect him to believe this is all you want when you flutter and chirp andsmileat him?”
“What is wrong with my smile?”
Nothing, other than it was achingly beautiful.
“He’s drunk, and you think he did not take your flirtations and fluttering fan as signals of something more?”
She huffed. “I did not do anything with my fan other than use it as a weapon to swat his hand away. Rest assured, I would have shoved it up one or another of his orifices had he not taken the hint. How dare you reprimand me.”
Robert stared at her incredulously. “How dare I? Fine, I’ll let the next oaf manhandle you and won’t interfere. Fight him off on your own.”
“I shall do so quite capably without your interference.”
“Is that so?” He grunted in exasperation. “Then fight off as many of those old buzzards as you wish, for I will not stop them anymore.”
He turned to walk away, but she held him back. “All right, it was stupid of me. I admit it, Rob. Thank you for coming to my rescue. I sincerely appreciate it.”
He let out a breath. “Why did you do it, Fiona?”
“Because…”
“Oh, that is an excellent explanation,” he said after a prolonged stretch of silence between them. “That clarifies everything for me.Because.That is a completely understandable motive.”
She pinched his forearm. “Do not be insufferable. I did it for you, as you ought to know by now.”
He felt a lurch in the pit of his stomach because he did know, and the reason was inescapable.
I did it for you.
She had done it for his sake because she knew he would never move on from loving her unless she were no longer available.
She had done it to him once—not her fault. How was an eighteen-year-old girl ever to pay attention to an eleven-year-old boy who was on the cusp of turning twelve? Nor would he ever have thought to stop the Earl of Shoreham from marrying Fiona when he had no idea of the damage it was about to do to his own heart.
That damnable six-year age difference between them was insurmountable back then.
But now?
His frustration returned, for she still believed it was insurmountable and he was too young for her, even though he was a man full grown and in his early thirties.
A man who knew what love meant and what it felt like, that inability to breathe around this woman who radiated sparkle and sunshine.
He hated the irony of it.
While every other woman in England wanted him, thought he was sinfully handsome, and was desperate to have him, Fiona still saw him as the toddler whose bottom she had powdered when he was the age of two. And whose bloodied knees and elbows she had tended when he had fallen out of an apple tree when he was seven.
Or whose wounds she had nursed when he returned from the Napoleonic War, shipped home before the final, decisive battles because he was too injured and battered to participate.
She had not hesitated to care for and protect him as she had done all of her life, for he and Fiona had grown up as neighbors and their mothers had been best friends, which constantly threw them in each other’s company.
