Page 27 of A Highly Unlikely Duchess
“You just said you were not interested in marrying me.”
“I might consider it, if you stop hiding things!”
“It is relevant...” Emily said, then stopped to take a deep breath. “It is relevant when there is something concrete between us that makes it relevant. Right now, you have not committed to anything. You have not agreed to court me. You have not agreed to anything at all.” She held his gaze. “So at this stage, with respect, you are simply a man sitting in my drawing room.”
Theodore stared at her. “A man sitting in your drawing room?” he repeated slowly.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“I am a duke.”
“Fine. You are a duke sitting in my drawing room,” Emily said. “The title does not change the absence of commitment. Do you have commitment issues, Your Grace?”
Theodore scoffed and placed his palm on his forehead. He thought to himself that Emily Pierce was, without a doubt, the most infuriating woman he had ever sat across from.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” he asked.
“That is not your concern.”
“How old?”
“Not your concern.”
“Is the child —” he began.
“Not...” Emily said. “...your concern. Your Grace.”
Theodore leaned forward slightly, his elbows on his knees, and looked at her with direct attention. He studied her face. The steadiness of it. The way she held his gaze without blinking, without shifting, without giving him so much as a thread to pull.
She was very good at this, he noted to himself.
“You are hiding something,” he said.
“You have said that before. I want you to make a decision. Court me or do not court me. Those are the options available to you.” She tilted her head slightly. “Everything else follows from that.”
He was still looking at her when he heard something. A small sound. Barely anything. Like a soft, hesitant creak of a door that had been pushed open by someone who had not intended to be heard.
Theodore turned at the same time Emily looked behind her. She seemed to have seen something he did not. She was looking at it just beyond the drawing room door.
He followed her gaze.
The door was open perhaps four inches. No more than that. Just enough to suggest that someone on the other side of it had pushed it and then thought better of the decision.
Emily rose from the settee.
“I need to excuse myself, Your Grace,” she said.
Theodore looked at her. Then at the door. Then back at her. “But I have not finished.”
“I have something to attend to. My apologies,” she said. She was already moving, not quickly, not in a way that would look like flight.
“You have a habit,” Theodore said. “A habit of dismissing me.”
“That is not my intention.” She stopped. Turned. Looked at him. Then she curtsied. “Your Grace.”
With that, she walked hurriedly towards the door and slipped out.
Theodore stood in the middle of the drawing room for a moment. The door she had gone through was slightly ajar, and the house beyond it was quiet. He looked at the chair she hadbeen sitting in, the cup of tea on the table beside it that she had not touched since he arrived.
