Page 60 of Anything But a Duke
“Yes.” He couldn’t look at two smitten fools and not feel some niggle of sentimentality.
When he turned, he found Miss Ashby staring at him, her lips slightly parted, her blue eyes lit with a tantalizing gleam.
“Love should prevail,” he heard himself say, almost as if he was listening to another man speak.
He expected the sentiment to shock Diana. Would she ever believe he wasn’t heartless when he’d claimed marriage should be as simple as any other business transaction?
It was only her response he wanted. He didn’t care if anyone else heard his answer. His gaze lingered on her while he waited for her to reply.
She started to speak and then fell silent, and he cursed the fact that they weren’t alone and he couldn’t press for those words she held back.
Finally, she sucked in a breath and turned to her friend. “Grace, we should return to Grosvenor Square.”
Miss Grinstead made no argument and parted from Mr. Hambly with a few whispered words. The two ladies began striding off toward Regent’s Park. Diana had offered him no formal leave taking, and the omission left him feeling irrationally bereft.
“We have an appointment tomorrow, Miss Ashby,” he called to her. “Don’t forget.”
He wondered if she heard him and considered calling out again, more loudly. Hambly watched him quizzically out of the corner of his eye.
His heart skipped a beat when she turned back. Across the short distance, he could see that a bit of the warm gleam had gone out of her eyes. “Of course, Mr. Iverson. Our business arrangement is what matters most. I won’t forget.”
Chapter Eighteen
When Diana knocked on Mr. Iverson’s Mayfair town house door the next morning, the maid who greeted her seemed completely unprepared for what met her on the other side.
The girl tittered and gasped as Diana maneuvered the case containing a perfect working model of her device through the front door, but made no move to assist her. Diana focused mainly on trying not to scratch the door’s pristine sapphire paint.
“You needn’t do that alone.” Iverson emerged from a room midway down the hall and joined them in three long strides.
Her instinct was to demur. Being rescued wasn’t her way, but doing everything on her own was exhausting too. On the verge of accepting his help, Diana turned to glance at him and was struck speechless.
He looked... different.
Every moment she’d spent with the man, he’d been immaculately dressed. Even that night in the rain.
Today he was garbed in tall boots, worn trousers, a simple black waistcoat, and a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He looked like a country gentleman who’d just come in from taking a gallop across the heath. His hair was disheveled too, sun-kissed auburn waves hanging looser near his brow.
“Thank you,” she said, and made no move to stop him when he gracefully hefted the oblong wooden case onto his shoulder. His waistcoat hugged the muscled contours of his chest and pulled snug at his waist. When he turned to head down the hall, she couldn’t help but let her gaze dip lower to where his trousers shaped themselves across his taut backside.
“How in God’s name did you transport this on your own?” He looked back, but she couldn’t tell if he’d caught her staring.
“I didn’t,” she said a bit too huskily. “Dominick helped me.”
He peered at the empty space behind her. “Where did you lose him?”
“At a coffeehouse in Piccadilly.”
“He often leaves you unchaperoned, Miss Ashby.”
The words sounded like a chastisement, yet there was a glint of mischief in his eyes.
“I’m quite safe here, am I not?” As soon as the question was out, an odd energy charged the air between them.
He didn’t give her the reassurance she expected. Instead, he hefted the rectangular box higher onto his shoulder.
“You should have asked the maid to let me know you’d arrived. I would have helped you get the machine out of the carriage.”
“I managed on my own.”
