Page 3 of It's All About the Duke
Maybe she was upset at first that he’d caught her in the garden? Certainly not a place a proper lady should be with a pair of clippers and cuttings in her basket. Frustrated by his failure to ease the tension between them, Rath rubbed the back of his neck once before saying, “All right. Why does my visit disturb you?”
“I’ve asked several times why you are here and you’ve ignored me each time.”
“Three times I think, but wait.” He paused as an idea came to him. It was completely unacceptable, not to mention risky, but he’d never let anything such as unacceptable consequences stop him. “Shh,” he said softly, putting his forefinger to his lips to quiet her when she started to speak. “Be very still. You brought something from the garden with you and it’s on your cheek.”
Her fan-shaped brows flew up again. Uncertaintyfilled her eyes before she quickly lowered her lashes and tried to look down her nose at her face.
“What is it? I don’t see anything. I don’t feel it crawling on me.”
She took one hand off the basket and started to lift her arm, but he said, “No, don’t move.” He stepped closer to her.
“Is it a bee or ladybug?” she asked quietly as her hand settled near the other on the basket handle once more. “A spider then? Please tell me it’s not. They are creepy and I hope it’s not one. Is it still there? I don’t feel it moving around.”
“Shh,” he said again and moved still closer.
“Or even a wasp,” she continued, ignoring his soft command for her to be silent. “There are many different kinds, you know. They won’t hurt you if you don’t try to hurt them. Though it is much too early in the year for a bee or a wasp to be out. Not any of the insects that fly and crawl about in the garden, but I’m not afraid of them.”
He believed her. A young girl who would hold a frog or follow boys into a cemetery wouldn’t be worried about a bug. Though she kept talking, she remained still.
“They land on me from time to time when I’m outside. Especially on hot, dry days in midsummer. Wasps sting sometimes, but the pain doesn’t last long. I’ve learned that a cloth dipped in vinegar helps keep down the swelling.”
It usually irritated the devil out of Rath when anyone kept up a nervous chatter, but Miss Fast was entertaining him with her brave assertion that insects didn’t worry her.
He pulled a neatly folded handkerchief out of his coat pocket. Without considering what the miss, or the housekeeper who stood just inside the doorway, might think, he lightly wiped across her cheek.
Her head snapped up. Her long, dark, and velvety lashes fluttered.
“There,” he said in a satisfied tone.
“Is it gone?” she asked anxiously.
“Yes.”
“What was it? A ladybug? Did it fly away?”
He held the bit of white cloth up and showed her the soil from her cheek.
She glanced down at the handkerchief, took it from his hand for a closer inspection, before looking up at him again. Suddenly her eyes widened with indignation. A storm of anger gathered in their depths.
“Dirt!” she huffed, squeezing the cloth into a wad in the palm of her hand. “Is that all that was on my cheek?”
He nodded.
She puffed her annoyance once more and fiddled with her gardening basket yet again. “You forced me to be still and quiet so you could—”
“Wait, wait, please,” he said, holding up his hands to stop her from saying more. “You? Still? Quiet?”
“Yes,” she declared, exasperation flowing from her breaths and her determined glare.
If he thought her fetching with eyes sparkling and full of curiosity when he first saw her, she was now captivating with indignant irritation swirling through her like a fierce, icy wind.
“Now, that I must take exception to, Miss Fast. You never stopped talking though I urged you to more than once.”
“I’m sure I did.”
She paused as if to think over what she was saying. Rath remained silent.
“Anyway,” she continued. “That is neither here nor there. You are obviously guilty of everything I have heard and read about you.”
