Page 15 of Her Sort of Scoundrel
Raising his hand to wrap on Fiona’s door, Dash paused a moment and prepared himself. He’d dreamed of Fiona the last two nights, and he’d spent a good deal of each day with her on his mind too.
He would not lose himself in smitten foolishness as he had when he was a young man, but he was struggling to ignore the desire he felt for her now.
I’ve taken lovers.
“My lord?” Rose asked quietly. “Are you unwell?”
Dash rapped on the door. “Quite well.”
He was just a bloody fool. That’s all.
A harried-looking, gray-haired servant opened the door, immediately taming his frustrated expression into a calm mask of pleasantness.
“Lady Fiona invited me for tea,” Aurelia got out before Dash could say a word.
“Miss Forbes, you’re expected, of course.” The older man took Dash in, and one salt-and-pepper brow flicked upward. “Lord Granford,” he intoned. “Will you be joining Miss Forbes?”
“He wasn’t invited.” Fiona’s voice echoed in the foyer before her clipped steps echoed on the pale marble floor.
When she came into view, the air froze in Dash’s lungs. Were they back to being enemies? But she locked her robin’s egg blue gaze on his and smiled.
He drew in a sharp breath so loudly that both Aurelia and Rose glanced at him.
“I’m not staying,” he finally said.
Was that disappointment in Fiona’s gaze?
“Good,” she said as she swept forward to greet Aurelia. “That will give Miss Forbes and I a chance to gossip about you relentlessly.”
Dash gaze snagged on Fiona’s cheeky smirk.
“I thought we’d take tea in the conservatory, Miss Forbes. Will that suit you?”
Aurelia glanced at Dash, then fixed all her attention on Fiona. “Of course. That sounds wonderful.”
She sounded as thunderstruck as Dash felt the first time he’d met Fiona.
“Then let me lead you back.” She offered her arm as if the two of them were about to make their way across a ballroom, and Aurelia clasped Fiona’s elbow eagerly.
Before starting off toward her conservatory, Fiona shot him a glance over her shoulder.
“Off with you then, Granford.” The teasing tone he’d missed so much was music to Dash’s ears.
He sketched a bow, turned on his heel, and headed back out the front door. After a dozen steps down the pavement, a man’s voice called to him.
“My lord, will you be walking to your club then? It’s quite a distance.”
Daydreaming about that smile of Fiona’s, he’d walked past his own bloody carriage.
Dash strode back, climbed inside, and settled onto the squabs.
Somehow, he had to get his feelings under control. Perhaps he needed to talk to Whitmore as much as the man needed his advice.
Better yet, a trip to his box salon. Or fencing?
Something, anything, to work off this impossible hunger for her.
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