Page 76 of A Bride for the Icy Duke
“You recall Miss Parsons and me announced our engagement a few weeks prior?”
“You have finally decided to go ahead with the match?”
Godwin’s brows drew down over his eyes. “How did you know?”
“With respect, I have been waiting for this ever since you first told me the news.”
Godwin frowned, glancing over to where Miss Parsons stood with Lady Harrogate and Lydia, no doubt giving them the same information. As he looked, Miss Parsons glanced over with a surprisingly soft smile on her sharp face.
Alexander had always seen her as somewhat of a cutting character, more than capable of slashing through egos and putting men down with a mere word or two, but there was something new in her face as she looked at Godwin now.
Adoration.
Lydia glanced up, finding Alexander watching her little group, and her brows pulled down over her face. In contrast to Miss Parsons’s look, her expression seemed cold to the point of remoteness.
Being in this house must be harder for her than he’d thought.
“So the wedding will go ahead as planned?” he asked Godwin as a distraction.
“It will,” Godwin confirmed. “And I was hoping you would be there.”
“Wouldn’t miss it. Just give me the time and place.”
Godwin clapped him on the back. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down. So, how are things with the lovely duchess? Are you ready to tell her the truth?”
“Tonight,” Alexander replied, trying to quiet the ball of nerves at the base of his stomach. He’d never made himself quite so vulnerable before anyone until now, but if anyone deserved to have everything, it was Lydia. He just still couldn’t predict how she would take it, especially after her recent behavior. “At least, so I’d planned. But she has been…offlately.”
“Could it be this place?”
“That’s what I thought. So maybe tonight isn’t the best plan.” He scrubbed at his hair, trying to sort through what might be going on inside Lydia’s mind. “I don’t want to broach the subject when she is already not feeling at her best.” And there could be no doubt about that.
Even if what had transpired in the carriage still made his head spin and uncomfortable arousal spread through his body.
Later.
Maybe he’d try broaching the subject after they’d sated themselves in each other. Would that be better? When they were warm together and he held her in his arms and all the tension that she’d been holding in her body for the past few days finally melted away.
“Why don’t you have a tour?” Godwin asked him, interrupting his thoughts. “Ask Harrogate; he’d be happy to take you. This is your wife’s former home, after all. Could help you know her better.”
“I don’t know. It… it wouldn’t feel right.”
“Nonsense! Don’t you want to know where she came from?”
“Well, when you put it like that…” Alexander let the thought trail away.
Hedidwant to see more of where she had come from, but although he would rather she showed him, he didn’t want to subject her to anything else that might distress her.
“Why not?” he said at last. “I might as well make the best of the time here, if she won’t dance with me. I hardly feel inclined to dance with anyone else. And I need a distraction.” Patting his friend on the back, he went in search of Lord Harrogate, unable to keep himself from glancing at Lydia as he went. She hardly even looked in his direction anymore, her face pale and set, and he gritted his teeth, forcing himself not to go to her.
Later.
He would tell her later.
Then she could decide if she wanted him to stay or leave once and for all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Has he gone?” Lydia gritted to Marie.
