Page 39 of A Delicate Deception
The duke seemed stunned into speechlessness by this. Speechlessness, but also enormous curiosity, and Amelia very much feared that the next words out of his mouth were going to be even worse.
Georgiana saved the moment by intervening. “You’ll never guess what I heard about the Battle of Bosworth Field.”
Amelia couldn’t pay attention to whatever tales Georgiana had chosen to weave about kings long dead. None of it could matter, because Sydney had come to sit beside her on the sofa. She was very conscious of every inch that separated them.
“Lex is impossible,” he said, too quietly for anyone but Amelia to hear.
“I have two younger sisters,” Amelia said. “I’m familiar with people who express their affection through attempts to embarrass one to death.”
“Perhaps the experience with your younger sisters has rendered your friend equal to dealing with Lex.” They both regarded the duke and Georgiana. Whatever she said had the duke’s shoulders shaking with laughter.
“I’m not certain about that,” Amelia said slowly. “She brought him the last of our strawberries. That’s as good as promising him her firstborn.” Only after the words had left her mouth did she realize that she might have stumbled across the truth. Was Hereford... courting Georgiana? More intriguingly, was Georgiana letting him? When she darted a glance at Sydney, she saw that he was flushed to the tips of his ears. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t ask what has you blushing like that.”
He let out a bashful laugh and scrubbed his hand across his beard, and she was almost overcome by the surge of fondness she felt for him. Every time she saw him, the threads of desire and affection that lay between them grew stronger and she felt herself being drawn in by them. Love, or whatever this was, crept past her defenses, and she found that she didn’t want to stop it.
Sydney was alarmed to discover that Amelia wasn’t wearing one of her simple cotton frocks, nor did she have on the plain gray silk. Instead she wore a gown of green, the color of summer grass, the same bright green as the hills they had climbed together. It was trimmed with a profusion of nonsense that Sydney could not begin to understand, let alone describe. He was no connoisseur of women’s fashion, and firmly believed it to all be worldly nonsense, but he found that he was strongly appreciative of this particular piece of worldly nonsense.
She looked beautiful, but that was no surprise. For weeks he had known he liked the looks of her. What mattered was that she was wearing it, that she had chosen to wear it. He knew a person could choose to dress in a certain way for reasons that had nothing to do with how they appeared; he chose his clothing based on comfort and a desire to abide at least somewhat by the principles of plain dressing. Usually Amelia seemed to want to make a camouflage out of her clothes, but tonight she had dressed herself in a way that she must know would draw the eye. His eye, in particular, he hoped.
Then Lex had to go and make everything awkward by insinuating that Amelia fancied him. Of course, there had been more than mere fancying between them, but Lex didn’t know the extent of it. Whatever existed, past or present, had been mutual, and at that moment it seemed important to let Lex know that. If he had the use of his eyes, he’d probably already know from the fact that Sydney couldn’t stop looking at Amelia, regardless of what she wore. Sydney was done with secrets, with half-truths, with lies of omission. He was foolish fond of Amelia and he didn’t care who knew it.
Mr. and Mrs. Trevelyan had at the last minute sent word that they were unable to attend, so it was only the four of them at the table. Sydney wouldn’t have been able to make conversation with the vicar or his wife anyway. All he could do was watch Amelia and blush furiously every time she caught his eye.
In her hair, she wore three curled ostrich plumes and a banded ribbon of the same shade of green as her gown. Whenever she leaned in to speak to Georgiana, she tipped slightly over the table in a way that caused her ostrich plumes to dip slightly, and made Sydney glance hopefully at the bosom of her gown, despite his best intentions.
When she caught him looking at her, she didn’t glance away in embarrassment. It was as if she accepted his regard as her due, and that thought gladdened him in a way he couldn’t make sense of. She looked like a goddess, like a queen, and he wondered when he started considering either of those to be compliments. She was the kind of person people built monuments to, carved statues of, worshipped from afar and hesitated to approach, and he had held her in his arms.
After dinner, she dealt him into a game ofvingt-et-un. Lex and Georgiana discussed historical lunacy, the dog dozed at his feet, and Sydney was glad there was nobody else playing cards with them because the only thing in the room he could pay attention to was Amelia Allenby.
Amelia deftly shuffled the deck and held it out for him to cut.
“I ought to warn you,” Sydney said, “that I’m truly awful at all card games I’ve ever tried, and probably all those I haven’t, so we can skip the game and I’ll just empty my coin purse into yours.”
“But I like playing cards. And I like winning.” She glanced up at him with a predatory smile that went straight to his groin. “We can play for farthings, or perhaps a couple of your shirt studs and a few of my hairpins. Those would do admirably.”
The idea of taking out one of his shirt studs a mere few feet away from her was enough to make Sydney flush with some strange combination of embarrassment and want. So he shoved up his coat sleeve and removed a cuff link. When he placed it in the center of the table, he glanced up at her and saw that her gaze was fixed on the exposed triangle of skin on his wrist. As he watched her, she licked her lips. Sydney sucked in a breath.
“And here I thought you were an honest man,” she said with mock sadness. “I said you could wager a shirt stud.” She cast a glance at his chest. “Not a cuff link. I get to pick your next wager.”
“Is that so?”
For an answer, she leaned forward to take the cuff links and slowly, deliberately dropped them into the bodice of her gown. “What would you have me wager?”
“Perhaps the ante you’ve stolen from me,” he managed, keeping his eyes resolutely on her face.
“No,” she said, shaking her head and delicately patting her bodice. “That’s now the bank.”
“You’re making these rules up.”
“These are Italian rules. You wouldn’t know them.” She said this so calmly, only a flicker of an eyebrow to let him know she was jesting.
“I’ve utterly underestimated you,” he said.
“I know,” she responded promptly. “Men do that.” She took the deck of cards and shuffled them. “It’s just like Elizabeth of York. I don’t call it underestimating to think too highly of a woman’s character to think her above murder and cheating.”
They played another hand, using farthings gathered from both their coin purses as the stakes. She won easily.
“If I didn’t already regret having lived my life in such a way that I’m no longer allowed to touch you, the way you look right now would have done the job,” he murmured. “Not only the gown,” he clarified. “But the way you look when you’re winning.”
