Page 59 of The Lady Was Lying
“Belinda doesn’t intend to marry,” Jane informed him.
“She what?” he asked, even though she wasn’t sharing anything he didn’t already know.
“She intends to remain a spinster,” Jane clarified bluntly. “She’s quite adamant about it. Won’t even discuss potential suitors for herself. Gets a bit irate when I bring it up.”
“Why are you sharing this with me?” He could only imagine Belinda’s reaction if she caught them gossiping about her. It wouldn’t be pretty.
Jane laughed. “I’m not blind.”
It was the same thing his mother had said. Was he really so transparent? “And that means…what exactly?”
“Belinda doesn’t intend to marry and since?—”
“And since…” he prompted when she didn’t finish her thought.
She waved her hand in the air. “Never mind. It’s not important.”
He leaned closer, dropping his voice so he couldn’t be overheard. “Please explain. I’m…uh…curious about your…family.”
“My family?” She pressed her lips together, sneaked a glance over her shoulder, and then whispered, “You like her.”
“I do.” It was a relief to admit it.
“Belinda is convinced she isn’t meant to marry. It’s total nonsense of course, but she won’t listen to me. She probably won’t listen to you either. If you try to convince her she’s wrong, she’ll either ignore you or twist your words so that she only hears what she wants to.”
Belinda’s opinion on marriage wasn’t exactly news to him, and thus far, Jane hadn’t been much help, only confirming that he wasn’t very good at hiding his interest and that she was more observant than he had realized.
The urge to peek at Belinda again rose, but he resisted. Furtive glances would only make it obvious that they were talking about her, and he didn’t want her to interrupt until after he learned something useful.
“She told me that you want love and made it sound both ridiculous and important,” he told Jane. “It seems as if she expects everyone to find love except herself.”
Jane visibly relaxed. “I’m so relieved you noticed. I could be wrong, but I think that she’s dedicated to finding me a husband so her life can return to the way it was before. And when Louisa debuts, I assume she’ll try to do the same thing with her.”
“Louisa is going to debut next year?” he asked.
“That was the plan, but she mentioned earlier this evening that she’s in no rush, so I can’t say for certain.” Jane paused, a frown on her face, and then steered the conversation back to her elder sister. “Belinda didn’t want to debut at all. She was one and twenty when Sebastian dragged her to London.” Her voice dropped conspiratorially as she leaned close. “She was furious with him, and her season did not go well. She returned to the country months sooner than she should have.”
The information Jane seemed determined to share with him matched what he already knew. But it also didn’t. It felt as if he was missing something. Something critical.
Suddenly, unable to resist, he glanced at Belinda again and, for the first time all evening, found her staring directly at him.
She raised her eyebrow, and a wave of guilt hit him squarely in the chest. It was unforgivably rude to gossip about her while she was in the room. Or gossip about her at all, really. What was wrong with him?
Even though he didn’t want to, he forced himself to change the subject. “Do you think the warm snap will continue?”
Discussing the weather was always appropriate, and although Jane looked at him strangely, she replied, “I try not to speculate about the temperature. Although I can admit that I’m grateful that we’ve had so much sun lately.”
He breathed a sigh of relief and kept his gaze firmly averted from the corner as he and Jane continued conversing about nothing at all.
Belinda was in hell. In all her years, she had never been so aware of a man. She didn’t need to look at the duke to know exactly where he was. Since they had danced together, she had been frightfully aware of his presence.
And it was only getting worse.
Ignoring him with every fiber of her being had somehow heightened her awareness. She could sense the very air that escaped from his lungs, and it took every scrap of her control to continue to ignore him when Jane stopped him with a hand on his sleeve and engaged him in an intimate conversation in plain sight of the entire room. Her sister had treated him with nothing more than casual affection since he had arrived. No special attention. No longing glances. Nothing to indicate that she viewed him as more than a friend.
Until now.
Belinda forced herself to stare out the window as if it held the mysteries of civilization. It was the only way she could maintain the façade that she didn’t care and wasn’t jealous. Her control lasted until the whisper of her name floated through the air. It was so soft that it could have been nothing but her imagination, and yet it gave her the perfect excuse to turn her head and look directly at him.
