Page 41 of A Wicked Duke's Arranged Marriage
After all, why shouldn’t he have? They were engaged to be married. It was hardly out of the scope of things.
But he had intended it to be a chaste, exploratory sort of gesture. Not at all what it had turned into once his lips had actually touched hers.
Because she awoke parts of him that he had forgotten even existed.
“Because I like her.”
Muttering it aloud into the chill of the night air felt like confessing to a priest.
Maybe, in a way, it was.
Because he did like her. More than he had anticipated was possible.
It wasn’t like with Martha.
He didn’t set eyes on her and know they were destined for one another. It wasn’t a fire that caught in his chest and swept him away.
It wasn’t like he was suddenly imagining himself in love with her.
But he was certainly realizing that he might actually be able to develop real feelings for her. Feelings that went beyond only being able to stand one another and produce heirs.
That went beyond even that heated magnetism that existed between them.
He was attracted to her, surely. But, more than that, he also found her interesting. He hadn’t expected to share so many things in common with her. He hadn’t thought about enquiring after her tastes when it came to reading, and the fact that they held such similar interests in authors and shared opinions on some besides was a boon he hadn’t even known to look for.
As in so many other aspects of her personality, Martha had been much more of a romantic than he was. She had enjoyed reading romances of all types. And while she would read, on occasion, a book that he had thoroughly enjoyed, she had never shared the same verve he did for it.
“Sir?”
Harbuttle’s voice interrupted Henry’s musings, jerking him back to the present as he turned away from the road he hadbeen staring at to look where his butler stood in the doorway framed by the lamplight behind him.
“Did you require anything?” Harbuttle asked carefully, his voice impassive as he looked Henry over.
Only as he did so did Henry realize how long he must have been standing there staring after the long-departed carriage.
“No,” he sighed, casting one last glance over his shoulder before stepping back up the front steps to enter inside again. “Just thinking, Harbuttle.”
Gooseflesh had lifted over his arms from how long he had been standing outside without a coat, his fingers chillier than he had realized as he curled them into the palms of his hands and readjusted to the warmth within.
“About Lady Josephine?” Harbuttle spoke plainly, crossing that threshold once more with the familiarity that only one who had worked so long for Henry’s family could manage.
Henry’s lips twitched. “Yes. About Lady Josephine.” Thoughts that were both chaste and otherwise. The former of which he had no intention of sharing with the old butler.
“And Lady Brisby?”
Henry’s gaze flickered quickly to Harbuttle, his eyebrows lifting high on his forehead in surprise.
“The walls have ears, Your Grace,” Harbuttle murmured, not looking the least bit ashamed for having said it. “And servants are much more easily missed than those of your social standing.”
Henry almost flinched. He didn’t need that reminder, making him wonder what else the servants might have overheard or witnessed. This night or any other. Lack of privacy was something that he had long ago given up mourning, yet there were still times that it grated on his nerves to think about.
“I did not think her so far gone in her grief,” Henry admitted with a sigh as they crossed back into the sitting room.
Without a word, Harbuttle crossed the room to gather Henry’s glass from before, pouring another glass of port for Henry and handing it over before Henry had even realized what was afoot.
“Lady Brisby has always been of a singular disposition,” Harbuttle said cryptically. It was the most that he was going to say, Henry knew. He didn’t speak about those ‘above his station’ – never carrying gossip that the other servants may know on account of how discreet a man he was.
Henry snorted at the phrasing of it, though.
