Page 37 of A Lady of Means
“So you lived in the Congo…for nearly a decade?”Olivia was asking Kate Herring, whom Moria had forgotten she had invited.
“My mother met my father in the Cape Colony,” the Duke joined the conversation.“They were married in a tribal ceremony, and then in our parish church when my father brought her to England.”
Moria knew this already, but she liked hearing him talk about his origins.She wanted to hear more of the man and not just the Duke, but he was like a steel vault.A pretty one, but uncrackable.
“Have you ever visited?”Kate asked.
The Duke looked away from her and at his folded hands.“No, I haven't.As my father’s sole heir, I haven’t traveled extensively.He was in ill health for a long time, and I didn’t want to leave him.”
“Such a dutiful son,” Kate said.
It was an unlikely scenario, Moria hadn’t thought that the two of them would have much to talk about, but she’d been wrong.The Duke seemed to find her stories about growing up in the African bushlands with her missionary father and botanist mother riveting, Moria felt that some of the details of her story seemed far-fetched.If anyone were to spot an imitation, would it not be her?A career false diamond?Everyone had secrets, secrets that might be useful to her purposes.
The topic of conversation moved to the Dowager Duchess and the culture she’d shared with her son.
“So, you’re the product of a love match?That must be how you got such lovely bone structure,” Moria said, eyeing him flirtatiously.The Duke’s eyes fell down to Moria’s lips.She had him on the ropes now.It wasn’t Kate that Moria was wrestling with exactly, it was Moria’s own pride she was battling.How could she let this Duke fall from her grasp, literally, when her every step the last few years had been for this very moment?
“And your hair,” she turned to the redhead watching with reddened cheeks, “Kate, doesn’t His Grace’s hair looksinfulpushed back like this?”she said, leaning to push a stray strand of The Duke’s dark hair out of his face.Was she dangling him in front of Kate?Maybe a little, just to see what she or The Duke of Andover would say.
Kate didn’t move or speak, but radiated discomfort from her seat.His Grace cleared his throat, took Moria’s hand, and kissed her fingers.Her bare fingers.
Two dimples, one in either cheek, had her own cheeks flushing.Behind them, Moria heard the sound of clattering teacups and saucers.Olivia was calling for a maid, Miss Herring was apologizing for dropping her tea saucer.The Duke asked if Kate was alright, noting her wringing her hands and downcast eyes.
In front of Moria was her beau of over a year who was still somewhat an enigma, a woman who wanted his attention, and a cinnamon bun that smelled like the man she’d kissed the night before.She chose the cinnamon bun.
“Are you going to eat that?”She broke through the melee to point at the last treat untouched on the Duke’s plate.
He gave a small laugh.“If you want it, it’s yours.”
“You might have put up a bit more of a fight, your grace,” Olivia said in a conspiratorial whisper shout.That made him laugh, like really laugh, and something about the sound had Moria laughing too, even as she stole the cinnamon bun and put it on her own plate.
“But then Lady Moria wouldn’t get something she wanted, and then where would we be?”
Moria heard the bitter note in Kate’s rhetorical question, it took Moria back to every whisper and every cold shoulder when she’d come out of mourning.There was her pride racing ahead of her good sense.She paused her sensual onslaught of the cinnamon spice bun to ask the enigma of a man before her: “Would you like to take a ride on Rotten Row this afternoon, your Grace?Chaperoned, of course.”
Moria paused to lick a jot of cream from a finger.She watched as the Duke’s Adam’s Apple bobbed.She caught Miss Kelley’s eyes, frowning at Moria at the piano.Moria set down her now empty saucer.
He gave her a rare and genuine smile.“That would be sublime, the weather is perfect.”
* * *
The weather was not perfect.
Three and a half hours later, Moria, her dark blue riding habit, her horse, her groom, and her suitor were all nearly drenched before they could make it back to Pembrooke House.
“That downpour came out of nowhere,” Moria cried, huddling closer to the duke on her horse as he held his great coat over them both where they had pulled their horses under an outcropping of trees.The edge of the path wasn’t perfect cover, but it was better than being exposed entirely to the elements, and worse, to the gossips.
“I can’t be terribly upset about it, my lady,” he said, a few drops of water running down the heavily-tanned skin of his neck and falling on the collar of her dress.“It’s been fourteen months since I stole a dance to learn your name.I haven’t been this close to you, this alone with you before.Though I’ve wanted to be.”
It had been his own badly timed and overly dramatic words on the floor of Parliament that had kept him from pursuing a match, but Moria didn’t point that out.
“Am I close enough now?”she asked.She wanted him to kiss her, so she could do a full analysis of his kiss versus Devyn’s.Did soldiers kiss better than noblemen?But not all noblemen had the same lips as the Duke.The full-bodied muscularity of Devyn led her to believe so, but she needed…harder evidence…to reach a full conclusion first.Perhaps she was terrible, in the face of how much she was starting to, okay had already come to care for Devyn, but the cautious voice in the back of her mind wouldn’t be quieted.
“Too close for society standards.Not close enough for mine.”
There was no denying that the teasing note in his voice might have tantalized a version of Moria from the past.The current one felt like a stranger watching the scene play out from above as she dipped her head and blushed what she hoped was prettily.“Your Grace, I’m sure I’m quite flattered you still hold such designs considering how utterly soaked and unpleasing a countenance I assuredly present at the moment.”
A man who laughed so openly in response, so charmingly, couldn’t be a terrible husband.The Duke met Moria’s eyes, a smile playing at his lips.He leaned in, keeping his voice low.“You are quite the actress, my lady.I can see why the men of London are so besotted with you.”
