Page 51 of Wedded to the Beastly Duke
A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, which he had been spending altogether too much time thinking about.
“Everyone will think you’re brooding.”
“Then let them think it.”
She tilted her head. “You won’t smile even for me?”
He could feel the beginnings of a smile and reluctantly let it show. “There. Satisfied?”
“Heavens above, I thought it impossible.”
“You wretch.”
Her smile turned into a full-blown grin he could have looked at forever. “Don’t speak to me as though you don’t enjoy it.”
“I don’t enjoy your impertinence.”
“I beg to differ,” she said archly, reminding him of their last intimate encounter. “I believe you enjoyedthata great deal. I know I certainly did.”
He almost closed his eyes and groaned. “When we married, I had not known you would be such a bold minx.”
“That’s because you made no effort to get to know me before we married. Are you sorry?”
“That I married you?” He held her gaze. “Do you think I am?”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“No, Emmeline. I’m not sorry. I believe we did better than I ever would have done with your sister.”
“She would have been terrified of you,” she said matter-of-factly. “And I am not.”
“You must be the only one,” he said dryly. “Even your friend Rickard seems to think I’m the devil.”
“Well if you would butsmilemore,” she started, and laughed as he pulled her in a little closer—indecently close. “He wants nothing more than to become better acquainted, Adam.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes! And save for the first night, you have not been forthcoming.”
“Do you not think that might be because I’m wary of him? And that I do not like sharing my home with a man I know so little about?”
He swallowed the worst of his frustration. There were some advantages, he could concede. Dancing with her was not wholly unpleasant.
“And what about him? What has he done to reassure me of his intentions?”
“Why can you not take the high road?”
“What about our interactions thus far have convinced you that I know anything about the high road?” He had intended the question to be arch, but the way she looked at him with wide eyes made him realize she was considering the question seriously.
“The fact that when you heard me scream, you came to save me,” she said. “Without a single thought except that of my safety.”
“You are my wife,” he said testily. “I hardly wish for you to die.”
“And because you showed your tenants kindness. You have shown me patience and kindness when I have done everything I can to provoke you into behaving differently.”
She half smiled, and again he thought he could watch that expression on her face forever. There was this odd feeling inside him, a desire to make her smile again. To be the reason behind her smile. Behind her joy.
“You have given me countless reasons to believe you are, at least, not an ogre.”
