Page 62 of Duke of the Sun

“What is?” Michael blinked rapidly as he gained control of his blushing.

“Running indoors!”

Michael finally met her gaze again, his mouth twitching between a smirk and a frown. “You’re dreadfully late,” he suddenly said.

“Hunters told me,” she replied.

“I happened to tell him quite long ago, you know. It’s why I began to come up myself. I thought you managed to wrap him up in whatever was already making you late.”

Cordelia raised a brow. “What could I possibly be doing that manages to involve Hunters?”

“Perhaps you wished to make him the focus in one of your upcoming paintings.”

She gawked, her mouth opening and closing a few times before she realized he was only fooling around. “My, my,” she drawled, “I never realized the beastly Duke happened to be a tease.”

Michael smirked. “What if I was serious? How would poor Hunters feel knowing you wouldn’t paint him?”

“I’d gladly paint Hunters, thank you very much,” Cordelia snapped, raising her nose obnoxiously towards him.

Michael let out a loud laugh, one that filled the entire hallway.

The last time he had laughed was at the ball and they danced together. Cordelia thought of that moment often, she realized, once he laughed a second time and she already knew the sound by heart. For a second, Cordelia assumed she heard it in her own head, as if she wanted to imagine him laughing at their bantering. She gazed up at him with a growing smile as the emotion remained on his face, the laughter still evident around his eyes.

It was a beautiful sight, one that Cordelia was nowhere near intending to be rid of.

Michael cleared his throat. “I believe we will bequitelate at this point.”

“Perhaps that would be better.”

“And how might you suppose that?”

Cordelia shrugged as she began to continue down the hallway, Michael respectively beside her. She willed herself to ignore the feeling of her arms brushing against each other. “It will give the Ton something else to talk about,” she replied. “The couple that was so lost in love they forgot to check the time. It is practically Shakespearan.”

Michael chuckled. “Then,” he paused, his breath stammering, “Perhaps we should take our time to convince them further.”

As Cordelia walked alongside him the rest of the way through the estate, neither one of them spoke. There was a lulling calm between them, all the way a bouncing energy grew larger and grander with every step they took. Cordelia tried to focus on her footsteps, but could only think of Michael’s hand continuously brushing against her own, the jutting scars pulling shudders out of her back. And there was the neverending need to have him plant another kiss on her lips, the phantom feeling of the first one still lingering in the back of her mind.

Cordelia, overcome with emotion, followed Michael out the front doors and to the awaiting carriage. He helped her inside before getting in himself, and Cordelia caught a glimpse of the cloudless sky behind his head. When the carriage door snapped shut, she pinned the curtains to the sides, her eyes falling upon Mrs. Bellflower waving at the bottom of the steps. The words the housekeeper spoke came flooding back to her, filling her with an even deeper emotion that she could still hardly understand.

Love is about taking a leap of faith into the unknown.

You will never know until you try.

CHAPTER18

For the first time, Cordelia wore a smile all the way from Solshire into London. By the time they arrived in the city, her face ached from the wideness of her lips. She reached for her face, touching her cheeks to make sure the smile was really there. It hardly felt real. But there was Michael, sitting across from her, looking pleasantly content himself. There was an unusual ease in his shoulders, a relaxed aura from the way he rested his hands in his lap, how he watched the world go by from the window.

Cordelia watched and couldn’t help but feel as though it had to do with her presence.

As they drew closer to the recently opened gardens within London, Cordelia felt momentarily stunted. She didn’t know a thing about where they were headed or who would be at the event, other than her sister. They were very public things, and garnered the attention of most every member of polite society. If any rumors still circulated the Ton regarded Cordelia’s marriage to Michael, they would be effectively silenced in that single afternoon. Her brow furrowed at the idea of her Aunt and Uncle attending, after the tumultuous dinner party at Pembroke.

“Do you know who will be at the gardens?” Cordelia suddenly asked.

Michael pulled his gaze from the window as if he were stuck in a trance. When his eyes landed on her, the ease did not fade or slip away. “I told you about Irene, didn’t I?”

“You did.” She tilted her head curiously. “Anyone else?”

Michael smirked. “You look like a conniving creature in search of information.”

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