Page 11 of A Highly Unlikely Duchess
Julia gave him a look that communicated, very efficiently, that she had not lived fifty years and raised him to fall for that particular deflection. “You know who.”
Theodore looked across the room.
Emily Pierce was standing with Lord and Lady Fentworth, a small glass of ratafia in her hand, laughing at something Lady Fentworth had said. It was a good laugh. Genuine, unguarded. It was a laugh she did not produce when she was looking inhis direction. She held herself the way she always did, straight-backed, composed, every inch the diamond they had apparently called her at her debut.
He had met her for the first time through Alistair, his good friend, and spent the better part of that evening waiting for her to be charmed by him, as every other lady in the room had been.
She had compared him to a lapdog instead.
He had found that interesting, in the way unexpected things are. Most women did not do that. Most women laughed at his jests, touched his arm, and told him he was frightfully clever. Emily Pierce had looked at him with those steady brown eyes of hers, that constellation of freckles across her nose that made her look deceptively unassuming, and said exactly what she thought, which was that he was insufferable.
He had not quite known what to do with her after that.
The trouble with Emily Pierce, he had decided over several subsequent encounters, was that she was too certain of everything. Too composed, too measured, too relentlessly proper. She moved through the world as though she had read the rules cover to cover, memorized them, and then built her entire personality on top of them.
It was exhausting to watch. More than that, it was suspicious. Nobody was actually like that. Nobody was that composed all the way through without something underneath holding it all inplace, and whatever that something was, Emily Pierce had no intention of letting anyone near it.
He found that considerably more interesting than he wanted to.
“Charming,” he said, returning to Julia's question. “Is that the word?”
“It is the word I used, yes.”
“Mm.” He took another sip. “She is very proper.”
“She is very accomplished.”
“She is very correct about everything.”
“Theo.”
“She makes me feel like I am being marked on my behavior,” he said. “Like there is a ledger somewhere and she is keeping it.”
Julia looked at him with fond exasperation. “Not every woman who fails to find you immediately irresistible is keeping a ledger, darling.”
“She does not find me irresistible either,” Theodore said. “She finds me irritating. There is a distinction.”
Julia was quiet for a moment. Across the room, the musicians were setting up in the far corner, and the low, anticipatory murmur of a gathering about to become a dancing occasion moved through the guests like a gentle current.
“Dance with her,” Julia said.
Theodore looked at his godmother.
“The musicians are about to play,” she continued. “She is without a partner. You are without a partner. It would be the natural thing. I want you to dance with her. I think you both would make a good match.”
“Why?” He frowned.
“Why what?”
“Why would you think something so absurd?”
“What is absurd about it?” Julia questioned. “She is the second daughter of an Earl; she is gorgeous, disciplined, impeccably mannered, and from everything I have seen of her, she has more grace and good sense than half of the ladies on my list.” She paused. “What exactly is your objection?”
Theodore looked at Emily. “She is too proper.”
“Too proper?” Julia repeated.
“Rigidly so.”
