Page 16 of The Duke Who Loved Me (The Duke's Estates 1)

“That was another joke. I thought you had a better sense of humor.”

Her blue eyes blazed at him. “And so you discover that you are wrong. Again.”

James had never seen her so animated, or so beautiful. Cecelia had been a fixture in his life for years, useful or frustrating, tolerable or irrelevant. But in this moment he realized that she was a woman of passion as well as intelligence. The fire in her gaze, the taut challenge of her body, made his senses flare with desire. “I am not wrong,” he said. He hadn’t seen it until now.

“You never think so.” The flame in Cecelia’s eyes died. She turned her head away. “You should go now, James. We have no more to say to each other.”

“I’ll show you,” he said.

She sighed. “You know you’re persisting just because you’ve been refused. We’ve spoken of this before. You don’t need to fight every time you’re thwarted. Some matters are best forgotten. I wager you’ll be very glad, in an hour or so, that I rejected your offer. It will be an immense relief.” Her voice trembled slightly on the last word.

James brushed this irrelevance aside. He would convince her. He knew how to frame pretty compliments and send bouquets and play the suitor, even if he’d never bothered before. He would show her that she was mistaken and have her for his duchess. And then she would see…Hewould see that fire in her eyes again. For him. James found he wanted that very much indeed. And he was accustomed to getting what he wanted.

There was no more to be done here today, however. This step of the campaign had not gone well. It was time to withdraw and prepare for the next. He stood, offered a polite bow, and walked out.

Cecelia sat on when he’d gone, stunned and shaken. She never would have imagined… But that wasn’t true. A year or so ago, shehadimagined him on one knee, his heart in his eyes, asking for her hand. She’d simply never thought that dream would come true.

As it had not, commented a ruthless part of her brain. He hadn’t shown the slightest sign of kneeling. And hearts had not been mentioned. Still less love. With a sinking sensation, she heard his description of her again: “You argue for curtailed expenditures and considered decisions. You are an excellent manager and a master of accounts.” What a cold and distant picture. He might have been describing a competent estate agent he wished to engage. He didn’t think of her with love. She’d known that.

And she’d known that she must be the same—indifferent.

She’d tried, in the last few years. Whenever he was heedless or infuriating, she’d consigned her feelings to perdition. But before they could wither away, James would do something that belied his careless surface. He’d once spent two days searching the streets for her lost dog, and found him, too, after others had given up. He’d taught her to play cutthroat whist when she asked—partly as an amusement, she knew, but he’d seemed to take real pleasure in it. How they’d laughed when she demonstrated her new skills at a card party.

He’d stayed by her side at her court presentation, a polished, devastatingly handsome young man of twenty-four. His attentiveness had eased her nerves and increased her consequence among theton. Last year, when her father had taken ill, James had actually called every day to ask about his health and showered Papa with fruit and the confections he particularly liked.

Whenever they attended the same gatherings, which was often, James talked with her and danced with her. No occasion passed without some interplay. He’d even defended her after she’d gone to that ball alone, despite his private criticism. She’d heard as much.

“But none of those are love,” Cecelia said to the empty drawing room. She’d concluded that James viewed her as a sort of possession, a connection who was not to be condemned, except by himself. But not as a woman he might truly care for. She’d accepted the disappointment, hidden her affections so thoroughly that she was certain no one suspected, and resigned herself to distance. She was no languishing miss to sigh over an unrequited passion. She got on with life.

And then he’d come here and asked her to marry him as a convenience, to…hire her in effect to take his work off his shoulders. It was like one of those fairy tales where granted wishes come in a form that makes them horrid. The fates had fulfilled her dream in a way that she could not want it. Cecelia laughed. When the laugh threatened to turn into something else, she ruthlessly cut it off.

She was certain James would come to his senses and be glad she’d refused. In fact, she would be surprised if he hadn’t already, now that he was well away. How sorry he would be if they’d become engaged! That would have added the final unbearable straw to this fiasco—to see him regretting his impulsive proposal even as he stood by his word. No, James would get over his pique and move on. He never lacked female company when he wanted it. Cecelia had become aware of that when she passed out of her first youth. There would be some awkwardness between them perhaps, and then this episode would be forgotten. Or, not forgotten. That was too much to ask. Unmentioned, rather. Receding with time until it began to seem fictional.

Her aunt Valeria strode into the room, bringing with her the sweet scent of honey. “Are you sitting here doing nothing?” she asked.

Nothing but shoring up the shattered fragments of my heart, Cecelia thought, and scoffed at her inner dramatics. “I suppose I am,” she answered.

“You might have come and helped me put the caps on the hives then.”

“We agreed that the bees and I do not get on, Aunt.”

“They don’t sting if you’re not afraid of them.”

“That is why you wear long gloves and a coat and a veil whenever you go near?”

Her aunt snorted a laugh. “Insolent girl. I do have extras of all those things.”

“Thank you, Aunt Valeria, but I shall leave the bees to you.”

Taking her customary chair at the table by the front window, her aunt said, “Very well, but you ought to develop some interests of your own.” She opened her notebook and reached for a quill.

Did she mean that Cecelia was on the road to spinsterhood? With a future resembling her aunt’s? The idea was unnerving. She did not have her aunt’s intellectual rigor or her lack of interest in people. But if she could not accept James’s chilly offer—of course not!—and she could not care so much for any other man, what was to become of her?

One of the footmen entered. “Several young ladies have called to see you, miss,” he said to Cecelia.

“Oh good,” said Cecelia, glad to have her thoughts interrupted.

“Oh blast,” said Aunt Valeria at the same moment.

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