Page 23 of The Hero

“When have I ever given you the impression I felt otherwise?” Especially now, when Gideon’s proximity was causing her heart to pound and her pulse to race.

He looked every inch the handsome and powerful duke this morning. His dark hair was perfectly styled, gray eyes warm as he gazed at her, his angular jaw clean-shaven. His clothes were expertly tailored over wide shoulders, powerful chest, narrow waist, and long and powerfully muscular legs. He was also wearing some sort of cologne with a woodsy citrus smell that added to rather than detracted from his already alluring male musk.

It made Harry’s mouth dry, both to look at him and breathe him in.

She was also very aware her own appearance was far from being elegant. She had not returned to her bedchamber to tidy herself before coming down to breakfast. Consequently, several curls had escaped their pins during the night and now rested against her nape, from where her head had lolled back when she occasionally dozed in the chair drawn up to her father’s bedside. Her gown, the same pale peach day gown from yesterday, was very creased from all that sitting.

“I like you too.” Gideon’s smile was rueful.

“You do?” Despite her denials to Edward, she had hoped Gideon returned her liking. Even looking as disheveled as she did.

He nodded. “But I certainly felt, despite our previous agreement to it being otherwise, more than a little anger being generated toward me from you when we parted yesterday.”

“You had just told me you suspected my father of murdering your friend!”

“A statement which I seem to recall you found highly amusing.”

“Because it is.” She chuckled again before sobering. “My brother, on the other hand…” She shook her head. “Edward has always been selfish, but recently, he seems changed in ways that are most disagreeable. He has certainly never spoken to me so scathingly as he did just now.”

“Does he have more gambling debts, do you think?”

“I am certain of it.” She sighed. “And Papa told Edward the last time this happened that he would not be responsible for paying them again. That he would also stop Edward’s allowance altogether.”

“Creating a desperate man.”

“Yes,” she confirmed heavily.

“How is your father this morning?”

Harry smiled her gratitude for the change of subject. “I believe he is a little better. Not well enough to answer your questions as yet but improving slowly.”

“That was not my reason for asking about his health.”

“Then I believe his fever is not as high as it was.”

“Did you sit with him all night?”

Her smile was rueful. “My appearance gave me away, hmm?”

Gideon eyed her teasingly. “Have you forgotten my first sight of you was of you sitting on the bank of a river, your skirt drawn up to your thighs, your legs and feet bare as you dangled them in the water?”

Harry felt another blush warm her cheeks. “And almost my first of you is of you sitting in the middle of that river, wet from head to toe, after being thrown from your horse!”

Gideon chuckled, causing Harry’s eyes to widen at how much younger he looked with his austere features softened. The gray of his eyes was no longer as steely, those chiseled lips curved into a warm smile.

She had brought about this change in him, Harry acknowledged happily. Not only Gideon’s laughter, but hearing him laugh at himself, something she would not have believed possible when they first met.

Gideon sobered. “Did you sit with your father all night?”

She nodded. “My aunt has offered to sit with him again this morning so that I might have a few hours’ sleep once I have had something to eat and drunk some of this delicious tea. Which I have now done.” She placed her cup in the saucer and her used napkin on the tabletop.

He frowned. “Your brother is not going to take a turn sitting with your father today?”

“Edward believes such things to be a woman’s duty. In any case, he is far too busy to trouble himself with such things as sitting beside our Papa’s sickbed,” she dismissed.

“Doing what?”

“I believe there is to be another shoot this morning,” Harry revealed dryly.

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