Page 24 of A Highly Unlikely Duchess
He smiled at her. Gently. Lovingly. Entirely without useful information.
“I am going to call on her, Lady Birks,” he said. “This afternoon. I do not want to be late.”
“Theodore.”
“I will keep you informed of how it progresses.”
“You will sit down and tell me what you meant right now —”
“Goodbye, Aunt Julia.” He bent, kissed her cheek, and straightened before she could catch his arm. “Try not to worry. Everything is perfectly fine.”
“I’m a changed man, remember?” he said cheerfully, and walked out of the room before she could fire another word at him.
He was smiling before he reached the bottom step.
“My parents are not at home at the moment, Your Grace,” Emily said. She stood in the center of the drawing room, her hands clasped loosely in front of her. “I am afraid your visit is ill-timed if you intended to speak with my papa.”
Theodore handed his hat to the butler and followed Emily further into the drawing room. “I would have liked to say hello to them,” he said. “Another time, perhaps.” He glanced at her. “ We can talk instead. I came to see you, Emily.”
Emily gave him the look she reserved specifically for him, the one that sat somewhere between mild irritation and a deep, practiced patience. “How gracious of you, Your Grace.”
“I thought so.”
She gestured to the chair across from the settee and sat down, folding her hands in her lap. She was in pale green today, a morning dress with simple lines and no particular ornamentation, her dark hair neatly pinned, every inch of her finely arranged.
Theodore sat and looked at her calmly. She looked, he thought, exactly like herself. Which was to say she looked composed and entirely in control of her immediate surroundings. The pale green suited her in the way that simple things suited people who did not need assistance from their clothing. Her posture was, as always, impeccable. Her expression was, as always, pleasantly unreadable.
Then there were the freckles.
They were always the thing that caught him slightly off guard, no matter how many times he had been in the same room as her. A scatter of them across the bridge of her nose and onto her cheeks, light and unassuming, the kind that belongedon someone who laughed easily, spent afternoons in gardens, and did not spend considerable energy being this relentlessly composed. They were entirely at odds with the rest of her. They belonged, he had thought more than once, to a completely different woman. Someone softer. Someone who did not hold herself like she was bracing for something.
On Emily Pierce, they were deeply incongruous. He found them oddly entertaining.
“You are staring,” Emily said, without looking up from her hands.
“I am observing,” Theodore said. “There is a distinction.”
“Is there?”
“Your freckles...” he said. “...do not match the rest of you.”
Emily looked up. “I beg your pardon?”
“They do not fit. That’s the best way I can put it,” he said simply, gesturing vaguely at her face. “Everything else about you is very precisely arranged, but then there are the freckles, just sitting there, entirely unbothered by all of it.” He tilted his head.
Emily stared at him. “You came to my home... to comment on my freckles?”
“I came to your home to talk,” he said. “I am merely observing things while we begin.”
“My freckles are not a subject of conversation, Your Grace,” Emily said, with great composure.
“They are perfectly pleasant freckles. I meant it as a compliment.”
“It did not arrive as one.”
“Most compliments require a certain openness to receive,” Theodore said pleasantly. “You might try it sometime.”
Emily looked at him for a long moment. “Was there something you wanted to discuss, Your Grace? Or shall we continue talking about my face?”
