Page 39 of Wedded to the Forbidden Duke
“Hm.” She pressed a finger to her lips, eyes lifted to the heavens as she pondered what to ask. “What is your favorite color?”
He laughed. “I give you full permission to ask me anything at all, andthatis what you wish to start with?”
“I thought to go easy on you!” she exclaimed, though she joined him in laughter. “And I will even answer first to make things easier still. I am rather partial to blue.”
He nodded but said nothing.
“Well?” she prodded, leaning in closer. “Do you really mean to not answer?”
He leaned in as well. “Green,” he said, looking at her eyes. “I have always loved the color green, but even more as of late.”
It was true, he thought. He had never considered himself a particularly sentimental person—indeed, after the deaths of his parents, he had quite stringently avoided sentiment in any of his affairs. But he could not deny that it was difficult not to get lost in his wife’s eyes.
Particularly when it conjured up so many thoughts of all the ways he could make those eyes fill up with lust and longing.
“Now,” he said, pulling back. “Am I allowed to ask a question about you? Or is that against the rules of your game?”
She tilted her head, considering. “Well,” she said finally, “I suppose it would be unfair of me to say no. So, yes.”
“Excellent.” He clapped his hands, rubbing them together. “In that case…you said you wished to travel. Why have you not?”
“It is more difficult for a young lady,” she said. “You must realize that.”
“Your friend Miss Banfield went. Surely your family would have been able to manage to find a chaperone for you?”
She smiled sadly. “I could not leave my mother,” she finally admitted. “The death of my father nearly destroyed her. I couldn’t bear the thought of her without Zachary or me there. She is much improved now, of course, but…” She shook her head. “It would not be right.”
“I see,” Ian said softly. After a beat, he continued, “Well. Perhaps when we have a bit of free space—between all of your musicale and balls, of course—we could travel, you and I. As husband and wife.”
She looked at him, surprised. “You would do that? For me?”
“It is customary for a couple to travel for a honeymoon after the wedding, is it not? And besides, it would hardly burden me to get to see some of the sights of the world again.”
Cecilia squinted at him. “Are you certain I am your ideal traveling companion, Your Grace? I seem to recall we have very different ideas of what constitutes an interesting sight of the world.”
He leaned in closer, eyes suddenly dark. “I doubt I shall be rather picky with our itinerary,” he said lowly. Lust pooled low in her abdomen at the look on his face, and the memories it conjured up. “Given I shall be traveling with the finest sight of all.”
Even as she made a show of rolling her eyes, she could not help but flush within. “My turn again,” she said, fumbling to sound calm. She looked at him so intensely, it was as though he could feel her gaze penetrating to the very depths of his soul. “Can you tell me more about your family?”
He stiffened. “Surely you have another question.”
“You said I could ask anything you like,” she replied.
“Yes, but I never promised I would answer,” he said, attempting to return to their previous teasing play.
But Cecilia kept her eyes on him. “Mr. Ainsworth said you lost your parents very young.”
“Yes,” he said shortly. “When I was nine.”
Cecilia sucked in a breath. “I am so sorry,” she said gently.
He shrugged. “It has been a long time,” he said quietly, looking down at the picnic blanket below them for a moment before he lifted his gaze back up to meet hers. The amount of gentleness and empathy in her eyes was almost too much for him to bear.
“Yes, but you were old enough to remember them,” she said softly. “Can you tell me what they were like?”
When Ian visibly hesitated, she lowered her voice to an even gentler pitch. “I know it can be difficult,” she said. “But what I have found, in healing from my grief, is that the thing that helps most is—to talk. It makes me feel like a piece of him is living on, for a moment, when I speak to others about my memories of him. It is as though, for a moment, he is still here with me.”
Ian nodded, eyes still fixed on hers. Then he cleared his throat. “My parents were very much in love,” he began. “It was a love match, between them, or so I was told, and no one could have doubted it, to see them together. They were positively besotted with each other. Even from so long ago, I cannot help but remember that.”
