Page 14 of The Wicked Duke's Convenient Bride
Lady Tabitha sipped her tea, and for a heartbeat, they sat in almost companionable silence. She would not bore him; that much was clear. Matthew could not decide if that was for better or worse. Perhaps his mother and sister were right, and he had been a recluse for too long. Surely, that was the only reason why he found Lady Tabitha to be so charming. It was only that he had been so long deprived of any company, save for his relatives and the staff, that anyone was endlessly amusing.
“I do not want to make the same mistake that I made with Cas—with that gentleman,” Lady Tabitha said.
Matthew had caught that quickly cut, half-spoken name. Cas—
Who was that? Was it a lord he knew?
Lady Tabitha cleared her throat. Matthew silently decided to contemplate the name later; he would see if he could guess the identity of Lady Tabitha’s previous paramour.
“That said,” Lady Tabitha continued, “I find you to be interesting. You are an odd man. Unpredictable.”
“Am I?”
“You are, and I like that.” She paused, considering him for a long moment. “We may never love one another, but I do wonder if we might be friends of a sort. What do you think?”
“Do you typically try to produce heirs with your friends?” he asked.
“Friends with an unusual, daily pastime,” she countered.
She sounded very serious, and Matthew felt his easy smile fade. Friends with such an intimate pastime sounded a little too like—
Like having a wife who he loved. Like having a love match. Like how he and Rosemary had always acted with one another. She had been his dearest friend, his lover, his everything. In the days following her absence, he had felt like the entire world stopped. Nothing had mattered any longer.
He drew in a sharp breath and tried to force his easy smile back on his face. If he did not, he suspected that Lady Tabitha would notice, and he did not wish to reveal his innermost feelings to her. They still scarcely knew one another.
“Maybe,” he conceded. “We shall have to wait and see how our marriage progresses.”
“My terms dictate that we should try.”
“I agree to try.”
Those were empty words, and he knew it. Matthew wanted nothing to do with this young woman aside from producing an heir for the dukedom. He lied only to spare her feelings because when she looked at him with that soft, inquisitive expression and those steel-bright eyes, Matthew could not bring himself to be truly cruel to her. He might jest and tease and taunt, but he knew instinctively that he could not bear to be so unkind to her.
“I am pleased to hear it,” she said. “It seems as though we may have an excellent partnership in the future.”
A partnership. What a strange way of wording what they were going to have.
“I suppose,” he agreed.
“So it seems as though we ought to know something about one another,” Lady Tabitha said. “What do you enjoy, Your Grace? Aside from games, that is.”
“Games?”
“It seems to me that you are playing one of some sort,” she said. “Only I have not yet discovered all the rules to it. With practice, however, I am sure that I shall.”
He chuckled. “I do enjoy games. Mostly cards.”
“You are careful with your gambling,” she mused.
“Why do you say so?”
“My parents would have told me if you were impoverished,” Lady Tabitha said.
He grinned. “Perhaps I merely hide my poverty well.”
“And you spent what little money you have bringing me here,” she said, gesturing to the lavish tearoom around them. “What you do not have in sweet words, you have in gestures. Is that it?”
He chuckled, genuinely amused. “You caught me. Do not tell anyone of my terrible secret, or I shall be most vexed with you.”
