Page 17 of A Highly Unlikely Duchess
The music drew to its close around them, the final notes settling softly over the room, and the dancers slowed and stilled. Theodore released her waist. He took her hand instead, bowed over it, and pressed his lips to her gloved knuckles with a deliberateness that was a beat slower than the occasion strictly called for.
He straightened. His eyes found hers.
“Dance with me again,” he said.
She looked at him. At his hand, still holding hers. “What?” was all she could say.
“A second dance.” He said. “Dance with me again, Lady Emily.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“What do you expect? She is running out of time. She is desperate now,” Charles Pierce, the Earl of Hatcher, remarked, from behind his newspaper.
“But the Duke of Carrowell? Of all gentlemen?”
Charles turned a page. “He is a duke.”
“He is a rake,” Sarah Pierce said. She was standing by the window, her teacup held in both hands, her expression conveying the distinct displeasure of a mother who had envisioned something quite different for her daughter. “Everyone knows it. The man has never shown a serious interest in any lady. He dances with women and disappears. He charms them and moves on. He has been doing it for years, and nobody has managed to change that, and I do not see why Emily should be the one to do so.”
“She is not trying to change him,” Charles said. “She is trying to marry him.”
“Which is precisely my concern.”
Charles lowered his newspaper a fraction and looked at his wife over the top of it. “Sarah.”
“Do not‘Sarah’me in that tone, Charles.”
“The man is a duke,” he said again, as though this settled the matter entirely, which in his opinion it did. “He is one of the most powerful peers in England. He has a fortune, a title, and connections that reach into every corner of this country.” He raised the newspaper again. “Emily could do considerably worse.”
“Emily could do considerably better,” Sarah said.
“In one month?” Charles said, from behind the paper.
The room went quiet.
Sarah set her teacup down on the saucer with a small, controlled click. “One month,” she repeated.
“The Season ends in a month,” he said. “She has had the better part of it, and she has one prospect to show for it.” He turnedanother page. “I am not going to pretend that a duke is a poor prospect.”
Emily had been listening to their back-and-forth in silence from the chair by the fireplace, her hands folded in her lap, her tea untouched and cooling on the table beside her.
She had learned, a long time ago, that the most efficient thing to do when her parents discussed her as though she were not in the room was to simply let them finish. They always did, eventually.
“We only danced,” she finally chimed in, when the silence had stretched long enough. “Twice. That is all.”
Sarah turned from the window. “The rumors say otherwise.”
“The rumors always say otherwise.”
“They say he kissed your hand.”
Emily said nothing.
“Did he?” Sarah asked.
A short silence ensued. “It was at the end of the dance. It was perfectly fine.”
“Emily.”
