Page 59 of The Duke Not Taken

“I wasn’t looking at you. I was looking into space for wont of something better to do and you happened to occupy that space.”

She stared at him. “Do you really expect me to believe that?”

One corner of his mouth tipped up. “I certainly would hope not. All right, I was looking at you. I was looking at you just as was everyone gathered in the drawing room. You are, after all, a beautiful woman.”

The compliment was unexpected and made her blush again.

“And I wondered what had happened to your tiara.”

Amelia was tempted to touch the top of her head to assure herself she wasn’t wearing one. “It seemed like a lot of trouble for an intimate gathering.”

“Everything seems like a lot of trouble for an intimate gathering,” he said under his breath as they entered the dining room.

“Is it really so awful?”

“What?”

“Dining with your neighbors. With friends. Withme.”

“Dining here with friends and neighbors and even you is not at all awful. Here is your seat.” He dropped her hand and pulled out the chair.

“But you don’t enjoy it. You don’t find it diverting.”

“No.”

She gathered her skirt and sat. “If you don’t find these occasions awful or diverting, then how do you find them?”

He pushed her chair in, leaned slightly over her shoulder and said, “Enjoy your meal, Your Royal Highness.” He walked away from her chair.

That was when it occurred to Amelia what was left. “Boring,” she murmured to his departing back. He wasbored.

She watched him skirt the table, looking for his name card, and finding it, and the dawning realization of where that put him at the table. He glanced up. Amelia smirked.

He sat down, directly across the table from her.

People were still moving around, finding their places. Amelia leaned forward. “You’re bored.”

The Duke of Marley cupped his hand around his ear, pretending not to have heard. Amelia refused to repeat herself. When she would not, he leaned back, shrugged indifferently, then turned to speak to the tiny Miss Carhill, who had just been seated to his right.

Verdammt,as her mother would have said.Damn him.Amelia was highly piqued, but also highly intrigued because she herself was uninterested, and she couldn’t imagine how the two of them, as opposite as night and day, could be the same in this.

Whatever the answer, she was now full of interest and pique. And it was wildly inexcusable that she couldn’t seem to think of anything else, particularly as no one else appeared to have noticed him and his ennui.

It was especially aggravating because Mr. Swann was everything Lila had promised him to be. He had thick black hair and lashes, brown skin, and brown eyes. He surprised her by speaking Weslorian to her. He was a student of languages, he said. He was not at all dry as she’d feared, but far livelier than one might expect of someone who spent a lot of time with kerosene. He was well traveled, he loved horses, said he’d once attended the Royal Lentkin in Wesloria, an annual event featuring horse racing and trading.

“It was a few years ago, admittedly,” he said in his deep, silky voice. “But I recall seeing you there, in the royal box. You were the beauty of them all.”

The overserved compliment quelled Amelia’s curiosity about him a notch. It was what everyone said and had said all her life—Justine was the queen; Amelia was the beauty. Her looks defined her in her own country, her attributes and talents and anything she might actually offer the world boiled down to that. She had long passed the point of being able to demur and blush as her mother would have liked when someone remarked on her appearance. But in moments like this, it made her wish thatshe’dbeen the one to squeeze kerosene from coal. Imagine that conversation.Thank you. Did I mention that I improved the method of squeezing kerosene from coal?Or however that was supposed to be stated.

“That is very kind,” she said, and mustered a smile.

“However, if I may be so bold, I’d like to know more,” Mr. Swann said. “Beauty in a woman is certainly appreciated, but there is so much more to a person than the casing, wouldn’t you agree?”

Had he just been inside her head? “I would.”

“Perhaps after supper we might stroll the grounds and you can tell me more about yourself,” he said to her in Weslorian. “I understand there is to be a lunar eclipse this evening.” He smiled.

“Je,perhaps.” She smiled back.

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