Page 35 of The Jilted Duchess
Alexandra nodded, pathetically grateful for the direction. "Yes. I think that is for the best. His Grace is likely too busy to continue this today. Thank you, Jenny, Gracie, Barnes. We will pick the lessons back up another day."
As she strode from the room, trying to seem as unbothered and put together as always, Alexandra couldn't brush off the overwhelming thought that had somehow burrowed its way into her mind. What if she was beginning to have feelings for her husband?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Well, you aren’t yourself today,” Theodore commented, stepping back to the edge of the boxing ring and raising his eyebrows at Hector. “You had a perfect shot at me, and you didn’t take it. It’s as if you’re not even present. How do you account for it?”
Hector frowned. “I dinnae realize we’d come here for ye to give yer opinion on me behavior.”
“I’m your friend, aren’t I?”
“And what of that? Friendship means I’m required to hear yer assessment of me boxin'? Friendship means that ye can call me to account for a bad day in the ring?”
Theodore folded his arms across his chest and waited.
“He’s right, Hector,” Gabriel said. “I’ve noticed it as well. You’renotyourself. Usually you’re the strongest of any of us, but todayit seems as though your mind is simply not on what you’re doing.”
“You don’t have to answer the question,” Theodore said. “But I ask you this—what kind of friend would I be if I saw you suffering and didn’t even attempt to find out what was going on?”
“And who said I was sufferin'?”
There was no answer to that.
Hector sighed. “I have a few things on me mind, that’s all it is. Nothing for ye to trouble yerselves about.”
“The rumors,” Cedric chimed in sagely.
Hector frowned. “Rumors?”
“Don’t tell meyouhaven’t heard? I would have thought everyone in the city had heard those rumors,” Cedric chuckled.”
“Ye best tell me what rumors ye mean.” Hector cracked his knuckles, but he knew by the smirks on his friends’ faces that he hadn’t seemed threatening in the least.
Cedric glanced at Theodore. “Do you want to tell him, or me?”
“Well, someone had better tell me.”
“All right, all right, don’t lose your temper.” Cedric grinned. “What they’re saying is that you and the duchess have fallen in love.”
“That’s mad,” Hector said quickly.
“Is it? I don’t know. You do seem highly distracted, you know, and while I know you said you didn’t have those feelings for her, such things have been known to happen unplanned. Tell me, how do things stand between yourself and your duchess these days?”
“She’s perfectly satisfactory to me,” Hector said stiffly.
Butsatisfactorywas not the word for what he felt, of course—not really. The truth was that he hadn’t been able to focus on the boxing match because all his attention had been on the memory of their dancing lessons, and of what it had felt like to hold her in his arms. That was a thing he’d not be forgetting any time soon. The way she had blushed when she’d thought him too forward…just the recollection of that lovely hue on her cheeks was enough to make him forget what he was doing.
“Get out of the ring, Hector,” Theodore said. “If you’re not going to be able to focus on the match, I don’t want to spar with you. I don’t want to risk causing you harm.”
“Oh, stand and fight,” Hector said, falling back into his stance.
Theodore raised his eyebrows. “As you say.”
They began to circle one another once more, and Hector truly did try to keep his mind on what he was doing. But it was impossible, and when inevitably Theodore landed a blow against his cheek that snapped his head around, he was forced to concede that he simply wasn’t here.
“Hector!” Cedric yelled, jumping up into the ring. “Stand down, Theodore, for God’s sake. Look at the state of him.”
Hector laughed and spat. It was slightly bloody—he’d bitten his tongue when the blow had landed—but that was all right. He’d been through worse, and at least it had jolted him well and truly back into the present. “Again,” he insisted.
