Page 37 of A Bride for the Icy Duke
Godwin’s eyes gleamed as he caught onto the ruse. “Of course. Eliza, should you wish to go?”
Eliza glanced between them with an air of confusion. “A dinner? You said nothing about a dinner, Samuel.”
“A longstanding engagement,” Samuel replied swiftly. “With our engagement deception, darling, I’d all but forgotten about it. You’d be amenable, would you not?”
Eliza gave Lydia another of those significant glances. Although she was younger than Lydia, Alexander had the distinct impression that when it came to feminine arts, Eliza was distinctly more experienced. He didn’t know if that was a relief or a shame.
“Tomorrow?” Lydia asked.
“Would it bother you to postpone our journey?” Alexander asked, striving to keep his tone easy and lighthearted. “We can just as easily set off the morning after.”
“Oh, of course.” Her expression turned wicked. “Unless you were to, for example, over-imbibe again.”
“I assure you I have no intention of that,” he murmured wryly.
“And ifIwere?” she asked, still a little coy.
He sipped his tea. “You make me afraid to enter my cellars for fear that they have been cleared out.”
Her eyes sparked with challenge. “When you left me last year, I am certain you told me to make myself at home here. Did that not include the cellars?”
“I had no idea that your concept of comfort meant drinking me out of house and home.”
“I engage in moderation,” she shrugged, hiding her smile behind her teacup. “For instance, I made no dent in your Scotch.”
“My thanks,” he replied gravely.
“I cannot, however, promise the same with the wine.”
“It seems I must ascertain the damage, after all,” he pounced shrewdly. “After breakfast, accompany me to the wine cellars. We shall see how much preference you truly have for the wine.”
A foolish move, the rational part of his brain informed him. If he engaged her for this, in a small, enclosed place all by herself, he expected he would find himself unreasonably tempted by her proximity.
And yet hewastempted. Not to see how much wine she had—he expected she would have used some for the purpose of entertaining and very little for herself—but just to see how she would respond.
He wanted to know how it would feel between them. She had responded to his barbs with surprising spirit, and heaven forgive him, he enjoyed it.
Knowing the details of their dynamic would better help him make a decision, he told himself. If he decided they should remain in a marriage, then he ought to do it with his eyes wide open.
Godwin disguised his laugh in a cough, and he shook out his handkerchief. “We should take our leave, especially as you are not leaving yourselves,” he put in. “Come, Eliza. Let us leave them to their own devices.”
Eliza, whose eyes had been wide at the exchange between Alexander and Lydia, nodded and rose. “I confess, I amrelieved,” she added. “I would have been sorry to do without Lydia. Even another day feels like a reprieve.”
“It does indeed,” Lydia smiled, and Alexander didn’t have to know her well to hear the relief in her voice.
Lydia tucked the list she had adapted in the hidden pocket sewn into her dress, patting it to hear the reassuring rustle. Any second now, the duke would expect her to take him into the cellars. Supposedly to see the damage a year’s occupation had done—but what if it was an excuse for more?
Could she kiss him, if it came down to it?
Yes, she realized. Once, the answer had been a no, but no longer.
When she descended, Alexander was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. At the sight of her, he held out a hand, the tremor minute today. His eyes were heavy and tired, but the sharp blue of a winter morning, and her stomach did the same swooping sensation it had made that very first day he had rescued her from the pool.
How was it possible she could still want him this much after everything he had done to her? And yet it was undeniable, the way her body reacted, entirely separate from her mind.
“After our conversation at breakfast, I am expecting to see the cellars entirely wiped out,” he remarked as she took his arm. They were behaving as though they were about to set out on to a grand social setting rather than the stone steps to the musty cellars. “I confess, the entertainment in the country is not what you might have been accustomed to in the city.”
“I think, sir, you will be surprised.”
