Page 76 of Her Duke By Accident
“Don’t tease, Juliet.”
“Perhaps I should fetch Mr. Porter!” the maid squealed. “He’ll know the cure for a lady’s first kiss!”
“Oh!” Alicia exclaimed, burying her face in the fluffed pillows. “You’re too much,” she said into the fabric.
Juliet’s giggles filled the room like birdsong. “I barely slept myself,” she spoke as she sat at the edge of the bed.
“Why not?”
“I was so excited for you, Your Grace!”
Alicia rolled her eyes as she pushed herself out of the bed. “There was nothing to get all bothered about,” she pronounced as calmly as she could manage.
“Really?” Juliet drawled. “Nothing you’re justdyingto talk about?”
“Of course not.”
Juliet pouted. “Are you sure, Your Grace?”
Standing in front of the window, Alicia gazed out to the gardens as Renfield unlocked the shed, retrieving a wheelbarrow full of tools. “What is it that you’re expecting?”
“Look at you, acting coy!” Juliet flung herself off the bed, skipping to the wardrobe.
“Not coy, Juliet,” Alicia firmly said, though her hand drifted up to her lips, fingertips dragging along the phantom feeling of the duke’s soft kiss.
“So you won’t tell me anything?”
Alicia turned, gazing at the eager maid as she looked through the wardrobe. “Pick out something flattering, Juliet.”
“Flattering,” the girl repeated, raising a slender brow.
“And then I’ll tell you all about my evening with the duke.”
Juliet released an excited squeal as she quickened her pace. “How about a spring green, Your Grace?” She pulled a light dress out of the wardrobe, one with bunched sleeves and thin layers on the bottom. “You’ll look like a dream.”
“Very well,” Alicia said with a smile.
As the maid skipped over with the dress, laying it out flat on the bed before turning her attention to Alicia’s hair, she giggled with glee. “What happened, Your Grace?”
Alicia sat before her mirror, watching as the girl dragged a brush through her locks. “We talked,” she began, “like we had never spoken before.”
“How charming!”
“It seemed as though he finally felt at ease enough to open himself to me, to reveal the man I had married, rather than the duke the ton learned to revere.”
“And?” Juliet urged, twisting the hair into a thick braid.
Alicia smiled, reaching up to touch her cheek again as it grew a cherry-red in the mirror. Her eyes met the maid’s for just a moment, and the girl grinned wildly. “There is something to our marriage,” she said. “Something substantial, something born out of…”
“Love?”
“Well, now,” she laughed lightly, “I–I cannot speak for the duke.”
“He kissed you, didn’t he?”
Alicia gaped at her. “So blunt of you, Juliet!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Your Grace,” Juliet quickly said, “but I was just so curious! A lady doesn’t wake up like you did if she hadn’t had love confessed to her or received a kiss.”
