Page 28 of A Chance to Dance with the Duke
For her.
But he understood her concerns, and the last thing he wanted was for her to feel pressured into marrying him when the whole point of this was to ensure that she had options.
His chest constricted at the thought of her choosing another.
But that was the price he would pay. It was only fitting after the horrid way he’d treated her.
He cast a quick look in her direction.
But if he could use this time to convince her that he truly deserved a chance to woo her…
She met his gaze with a frown. “What is it?”
“Pardon?”
She lifted a hand and tentatively touched her silken brown hair that artfully piled atop her head and falling around her shoulders. “Is there something on my face?”
A chuckle escaped before he could stop it. “No, I was just…admiring you.”
Her gaze was wary.
Fair enough. He deserved that.
“I’m being sincere, Miss Taylor,” he said, hoping against hope that the next time she glanced his way, the wariness would be gone.
But she didn’t glance his way again.
She turned her head to scan the group picnicking in the distance, and he wasn’t even certain she’d heard him. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Miss Taylor?—”
“Meg, please,” she said.
He hesitated, and finally she turned to him with a smile.
“Call me Meg. Everyone does. If we truly are…becoming better acquainted,” she hedged. “Then surely you’d be using my given name, would you not?”
“I hope we are truly becoming better acquainted,” he said. “And please, you must call me Ian.”
“Ian,” she repeated it as if trying it out, and his silly heart flipped and flopped at the sound of his given name on her lips. “That’s what your friends call you?”
“No.” And then, when he realized perhaps he was saying too much without saying anything at all, he added, “But I’d like it if you called me by my given name.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Even your cousin who you’re so close with…”
“Kal? He calls me Carver. Everyone does.”
“I see.”
He fidgeted, and some part of him felt like…she really did see. “I don’t mind. The title is…well, it’s who I am. It’s who I’ve been since my father and brother died on the same day, in the same carriage accident.”
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured.
“It was a long time ago.”
“Still sad though.”
“Yes. I suppose so.”
“You suppose?”
