Page 52 of How to Seduce a Duke this Autumn
“Possessed me?” Charlene sat up straighter, the heat on her cheeks now prickling into irritation. I wish he possessed me as I wish to possess him, but that’s unfortunately not the case. “I don’t know. It simply… happened. He was there, and then suddenly…”
Ashley leaned closer, her eyes alight with interest. “Did you like it?”
“That’s hardly the question she ought to answer,” Maddie interrupted, looking between the two of them as if scandal mightburst through the door at any moment. “What matters is what will be done about it.”
Ashley waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, Maddie, don’t be such a bore. She liked it—I can see it written all over her face. Didn’t you, Charlene?”
Charlene opened her mouth, but the words couldn’t seem to come. Did she like it? Yes. No. Perhaps. Could she admit how much she’d liked it, even to herself? “It doesn’t matter. It was a mistake. All of it.”
Ashley leaned back, blowing out a breath. “He’s kissed you once. I’d wager my emeralds he plans to do it again.”
Maddie’s eyes widened in horror. “You cannot encourage this! She’ll be compromised! Like you almost were! Like Sera almost was!”
“Keyword, almost,” Ashley muttered.
Maddie pushed her chair back and stood, walking with her usual precise steps to the writing desk in the corner of the room. Charlene’s brows furrowed as Maddie, the picture of propriety, opened a drawer and retrieved a slim, well-worn book bound in faded green leather.
Maddie’s cheeks flushed the faintest pink as she turned back to the group, the book clutched tightly to her chest. “If we’re to discuss such impropriety,” she said primly, though her voice faltered just slightly, “Did you consult the handbook?”
Charlene’s breath caught. Not that book. The one whispered about among her friends, passed along with furtive glances when they were alone. A compendium of advice, as it was euphemistically called, though everyone knew it to be far more daring.
“The book doesn’t know everything.” Ashley waved grandly in the air as if she didn’t need any advice.
“And yet there is a section on kissing, isn’t there?” Maddie said almost proudly as though she’d found the only collection ofmaps to matrimony, even though the book was something else entirely.
“Well, I never needed the book to know how to kiss Thomas,” Ashley said.
But I don’t know what to do about Adam. “What does it say indeed?” Charlene pressed on.
Maddie was already rifling through the pages. “Let me find a passage that suits the facts. Fans… balls… masquerades… neighbors… ah!” She turned the open page over to Charlene. “Kisses!”
A kiss is no trifling matter for a lady. It signifies courtship, a binding promise of intent, and, in most cases, a scandal of the highest order. Such an act, even in private, is fraught with peril and must be approached with the utmost caution or not at all until after an engagement is secured. To steal away for such an intimate gesture is a bold and reckless endeavor, one that may ignite the fires of gossip or, worse still, lead to legal repercussions should the union fail tomaterialize.
~ Handbook on Seduction and Matters of theHeart
“So don’t do it!” Maddie poked at the book as if it laid down a law she’d obey at all cost.
Charlene pinched her lips into a flat line. “It says caution—”
“Courtship. Engagement. Scandal. That’s what I read.” Maddie nodded gravely.
And Charlene didn’t know what to say. It was too late now. And honestly, courtship, engagement, and all that wasn’t so scary if Adam was in the picture.
“I agree with that pause,” Ashley chirped. “I encourage love, dear Maddie. Forget the book, Char. Follow your heart.”
There was nothing to follow! What did her heart know? Cross brothers were scandal, warnings, and ruin. But Adam was a temptation. She wanted to do what Ashley suggested; she just didn’t know if it was her heart she was heeding. Or something else.
“And a lady waits to be followed in this book.” Maddie opened it to what seemed a random page and handed it to Charlene. “Take a look if there’s a cure for your ailment or else I’ll go to the apothecary for you.”
Adam followed her. And then he kissed her.
Charlene sat frozen under their watchful gazes. “I don’t want a cure!”
“Oh, so you do like him!” Ashley clapped and smiled with the knowing way of a blushing bride-to-be madly in love.
She wasn’t!
But… Something had changed. Charlene knew that much even though she had no words for the way she felt, nor could she look them up in something as grounded and trivial as a book. Cherubs in butterfly wings should let down lovely scrolls of declarations with the fanfare of trumpets to even slightly begin to describe the fireworks Adam had placed in her chest—since the kiss during the fireworks.
