Page 62 of How to Seduce a Duke this Autumn
“The garden?”
“Well,” she said drily. “You do know how I enjoy vegetation.”
He laughed. “I believe your preferences are more refined than that.”
“I’m not so sure,” she tossed back. “Here I am walking with you.”
He laughed again, and Charlene couldn’t help but be mesmerized. She must have heard this laugh a thousand timesbefore, and quite a few times recently, and yet had it ever sounded like this? So… what would be the word to describe it?
Carefree?
Delighted?
Dazzling?
Perhaps all three?
He shifted their course, steering her with ease toward the tall French doors at the end of the ballroom.
“Everyone will notice,” she murmured.
He motioned to Lord Thomson stumbling through the card room, shouting a string of words she couldn’t make out. “No one will notice us. Besides, I’ve learned to be rather stealthy.”
“Is that so?” However, now that she thought about it, he wasn’t wrong.
The moment they stepped past the threshold and into the night, Charlene released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Or rather, she had noticed it; she kept it deep within her lungs until the cool air kissed her skin. It was something she’d noticed lately. Her inner denial had become less and less. Oh, there was still plenty of churning about that she didn’t care to poke, but with some things, with Adam things, they were shrinking by the moment.
“Shall we?” He motioned to the stone steps leading from the small balcony to the garden.
She inhaled a deep breath before nodding. If there ever was a moment to turn around, this would be it. “Let’s.”
They descended the stairs slowly, yet a bit faster than normal. Then he said, softly, “Thank you.”
She glanced up at him. “For what?”
“For coming to save me. I was one comment away from dancing myself into an early grave.”
“I thought you weren’t dancing tonight?”
“That was the exception. And you. You are the exception, too.”
“You were hardly in distress,” she replied, but her lips quirked. “Though I admit, her grip on your arm looked… possessive.”
He glanced down at his sleeve, now thankfully free of Miss Martin’s talons. “I feared she might leave bruises.”
Charlene smothered a laugh. “You poor thing.”
“Pity me,” he agreed solemnly.
“I wouldn’t pity you even if the world came to an end.”
“So harsh.”
She smiled and looked ahead, toward a stone bench half-hidden in the darkness. “Shall we sit?”
He didn’t answer, but the next thing she knew, his hand was at her lower back, guiding her gently toward it.
“Do you think someone will see us?”
