Page 18 of An Innocent Bride for the Duke

A sudden impulse seized her and Louisa rose and pulled on her dressing-down and slippers, belting it tightly about her waist and sliding her feet into her slippers. Before she could lose her nerve, she crossed the corridor to the duke’s suite and rapped firmly on the door.

It opened so quickly that Louisa gasped and forgot to speak. She had imagined waking the duke and dragging him from his bed while he was sleepy and at a disadvantage. Instead, he was fully awake, entirely alert and still dressed, although in his shirt sleeves.

“Lady Louisa!” his deep voice rasped as astonishment, alarm and some other powerful but unfamiliar emotions crossed his face. “What are you at?”

“You should not treat people as you do, Your Grace,” Louisa managed to say in a low and trembling voice. “You ought not to treat me like a naughty child for example.”

“You are not a child,” his husky voice said as his uniquely handsome eyes looked her up and down with simultaneous bewilderment and a strange kind of fascination. “I have never thought of you so.”

“Then why do you scold me like a child? It was not just tonight. You did it at the inn too. Can you really not understand how humiliating that is for me?”

The duke’s handsome face was red with feeling, although Louisa was sure it was not embarrassment or regret. Was he angry? Confused? Or only wishing to be left alone to sleep? Something in the intensity of his gaze seemed to pull inside her, as though he was touching her invisibly. It was most disconcerting.

“Can you really not understand what I might feel around you, Lady Louisa?” he asked, and Louisa felt as though he had drawn closer to her without moving.

There was indeed only a matter of inches between them, across the threshold of his room. Louisa could feel herself breathing faster as though she had run instead of walked into this confrontation.

“Not unless you tell me what you are feeling, no,” she replied. "I suppose you will never do that any more than you will ever apologize to anyone.”

The Duke of Northwick took a long breath and exhaled slowly, leaning on the doorway and regarding Louisa with narrowed eyes. He was always a handsome man, but his present dishevelment and lack of collar, stock and jacket somehow enhanced his looks and made him even more appealing to gaze upon. How strange, when people usually dressed up and tidied to present themselves to company…

“You are right, Lady Louisa,” he told her at last. “I have no intention of sharing my present feelings with you. It is clear that you cannot understand them, and it would endanger both of us if I tried to explain.”

“That is your excuse then?” Louisa demanded hotly. “You may not think me a child, but you believe me deficient in understanding.”

“I believe you deficient in no way whatsoever, Lady Louisa,” he retorted with a passion that blazed briefly in one green eye and one blue, again generating that odd feeling that he was touching her inside without making any physical contact. “On the contrary, you possess something more any other woman I have ever met…”

Now, the duke did take a step toward her and Louisa stumbled backwards, almost overwhelmed by the surging, pulling and throbbing of her blood in response to his words and looks. She felt like there was an ocean inside her and this tall, dark and handsome man was somehow influencing its tide.

“I must go to bed,” she babbled, retreating to the nursery bedroom from which she had emerged. “Goodnight, Your Grace.”

Louisa was relieved that the Duke of Northwick did not try to follow her, even although she could not say clearly why she thought he might. Closing the door behind her, she trembled against its frame, unable to make any sense of her most recent encounter with the duke.

What on earth was happening to her?

Chapter Eight

“Islept wonderfully last night,” pronounced Lady Esher as she sipped her morning coffee with an air of great contentment. “I do enjoy traveling but it is so good to be back in my own bed again. Don’t you think so, Louisa?”

Feeling awkward in front of the Duke of Northwick after their double confrontation last night, Louisa made some polite and non-committal words of reply and kept her eyes on her plate. Did he not feel even the slightest bit out of joint today? Or was he only better than Louisa at dissimulation?

It was hard to look the duke in the face long enough to gauge his present temper. Louisa looked more at his feet, noting that he wore riding boots and had likely risen early.

“Well, I slept very well indeed,” the duke pronounced, indeed seeming very well-rested and rather handsome, although his hair was somewhat disordered from his ride. “I must also compliment you on your stable and your local country, Lady Esher. My morning ride was quite the tonic after so many days in a carriage.”

“Yes, I used to be quite the horsewoman when I was younger,” commented Lady Esher, her face crinkling in pleasure as it always did at compliments towards Rosemere. “My own mounts are as old and staid as I am now, but I do keep a few more lively beasts, for breeding stock as well as riding.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Louisa saw the duke nodding and glancing towards her.

“Yes, the grey stallion I took out this morning could match any of my own stable for liveliness and fleetness of foot,” he remarked. “I think I saw your mare too, Lady Louisa, unless there is another mare heavily in foal? She is a fine animal too.”

“Storm,” Louisa replied automatically with a smile, the thought of this beloved horse always lifting her mood. “Yes, you must have seen her for we are not expecting any other foals here this summer. I must take the children out and give Storm a carrot or two later.”

“I already gave her an apple this morning,” the duke replied, returning Louisa’s smile. “The stable lad said she liked them and I hoped you wouldn’t mind her having an extra treat or two at this time.”

“Thunder, the horse you rode, and Storm are a fine pair,” mused Lady Esher. “He has such spirit and she has such sweet temper but both are strong and healthy. I do look forward to seeing their foal.”

“Ah, so Thunder was the stallion that…”