Page 6 of Tempting Harriet
“Lady Wingham?” He bowed to her as she and her whole court turned to look at him. He had almost the feeling ofbeing on the stage, of having the whole room watching thelittle drama unfold. “My set, I believe?”
“Thank you.” Her eyes were green. Their color had been one detail of her appearance that he had not been able to recall. Though looking into them now, he could not understand how he could have forgotten. They were such a verydistinctive shade of green. They were wide eyes, disturbingly and perhaps unwisely direct. Perhaps that was thereason for his forgetting their color. Somehow Harriet’seyes drew one beyond their color and their form into thewoman herself. She appeared to have no defenses as almostall other people of his acquaintance did. Another of her undeniable attractions, perhaps. One felt immediately protective of her. At least he had. And did.
Her arm was light along the top of his. The tips of her fingers extended beyond the lace of the ruffles that partlycovered his hands, and brushed against his bare flesh.There was something distinctly erotic about her touch,though he was sure it must have happened dozens of timesbefore when other women had taken his arm. He led her outonto the dance floor. The top of her head reached barely tohis chin. And yet in memory she had seemed even smaller.Perhaps it was the girlish slimness of her body that gave theimpression of excessive smallness. She smelled of someappealing perfume, and yet when he tried to identify it tohimself it seemed to him like nothing so much as cleansoap.
She turned toward him when he stopped, and fixed her eyes on the neckcloth his valet had tied earlier in theevening with great artistry and greater pride. The musicbegan almost immediately. She raised her arms and set onehand very lightly on his shoulder. He could feel it there likea lover’s touch on bare skin. He raised his eyebrows at thefanciful thought. He set his hand behind her waist and feltits smallness, its warmth, the feminine arch of her back.Her palm touched his and he enclosed her hand in his own.They moved to the music.
“Well, Harriet,” he said softly, “we meet again, my little blushing charmer.” The old words that he had used to use.He had not intended to say them now.
Her eyelashes lifted and her eyes looked into his, almost setting him back on his heels. “Yes, my lord,” she said. Hisheart did strange things as the predictable blush made itsappearance. “Yes, your grace.”
Chapter 3
She felt like a girl fresh from the schoolroom, in the company of a young man for the first time, noticed by one for the first time. She felt weak-kneed and breathless andtongue-tied. She was a woman of eight-and-twenty, she reminded herself. She was a widow. She had known manymen as friends and acquaintances. She had known one manas a lover. She raised her eyes to his again.
Silver. They were pure silver. And they were watching her, a mocking smile lurking somewhere not far from theirsurface.
“Is it so hard to realize that I have become such a grand personage?” he asked. “My grandfather died quite soonafter you sent me away from Ebury Court.”
“I am sorry,” she said.
“That he died?” he asked. “Or that you sent me away?”
“That he died,” she said. “Were you fond of him?”
“Ours has always been a close family,” he said. “And now they are all mine. All my responsibility—a grandmother, a mother, uncles and aunts and cousins galore.Were you ever sorry that you sent me away?”
Yes. To her shame, yes. Sorry at the time and sorry for painful weeks and months afterward. Sorry even after shehad married Godfrey and he had somewhat surprised her bymaking a real marriage of it and she had wondered what itwould have been like...
“No, of course not,” she said.
He was smiling at her. “You hesitated a little too long and have allowed a little too much color to flow into yourcheeks,” he said. “I have regretted it, Harriet. And I amready to kill out of jealous rage. Where is he? Is he in theballroom?”
“Who?” She looked at him blankly.
“Lord Wingham,” he said. “Your husband.”
He did not know. Obviously he knew as little about her as she knew about him. For the same reason? she wondered. But no, of course not. What reason would he havehad to remember her and deliberately avoid pursuing anynews of her?
“Godfrey,” she said. “He died fifteen months ago.”
“Ah,” he said. “You are the merry widow, then. And you have come to take thetonby storm and to enjoy yourselfquite ferociously until the Season’s end.”
He made the truth sound rather sordid and her rather heartless. “I loved him,” she said.
His eyes roamed over her face. His voice was almost gentle when he spoke. “Did you, Harriet?” he asked. “Didsome accident take him from you?”
“It was heart failure,” she said. “We found him dead in his bed one morning.” His valet and she. The valet hadbeen alarmed by his stillness in bed and his lack of response to having the curtains drawn back from the windowand to the man’s discreet cough to announce the arrival ofthe baron’s shaving water. The valet had come for her,afraid to check more closely for himself. Godfrey had beencold to her touch. He had been dead for several hours.
“Ah,” the duke said.
She knew that he must be wondering. But of course he would not ask the question. “He was sixty years old,” shesaid. “His heart had been weak for years.”
It was only after she had spoken and he continued to look at her while she gazed beyond him that she heard the echoof what sounded like defiance in her voice. It would seemto him that she had married an older, ailing man for hismoney and for position. It would seem that she was conniving. Here she was little more than a year after his death inLondon enjoying herself at one of the grand balls of theSeason. And there would be some truth in his assumption.But only some. She would not have married Godfrey if shehad not liked him and if she had not believed in her heart that she could and would make him a good wife.
She looked back up into the Duke of Tenby’s eyes, defiance in her own now as well as in her voice. “I loved him,” she said again. “He was good to me.”
“I am glad of both facts,” he said softly. “I never said otherwise, Harriet.”
