Page 9 of One Fine Duke

He led her out for the waltz.

She was so dainty that he had to stoop slightly to reach her waist. One of her hands drifted onto his shoulder like a petal falling from a flower onto a brick wall. He clasped her other hand gently, cognizant of how huge his hands were in relation to hers.

The music started and his feet followed the order to dance.

She smelled good, like the honey of clover buds when you crush one between your fingers.

They all smelled good.

Artificial blooms raised in the confines of London, raised to be ornamental.

She floated in his arms like a wraith, her gaze fixed at some remote point in the distance.

Were her eyes blue or gray? Some color in between, he decided. More gray than blue. Like a tide line in an ocean. Or the sky before it rained.

She had an oval face with a pointed chin and lush, full lips.

Kissable lips.

Sir Malcolm Penny’s niece. Ah, that was it. He’d received a letter from the eminent antiquarian right before he left for London. He had it in his traveling trunk, unopened.

“I believe your uncle wrote to me recently, MissPenny.”

Her gaze snapped to his face. The panic returned to her eyes. “All lies.”

“Pardon?”

“Lies. He lied to you. I hate the countryside. I’m hopeless with account books and estate management. I’m not useful in the slightest. My health is delicate. I catch a cold at the slightest provocation.”

“Uh... you hate the countryside?”

“I hate open fields. Sheep are such insipid creatures. I detest sunshine. I’m only happy in lamplight. And I can’t abide nature walks. I only consent to walk when there is a trinket or a new pair of gloves for purchase at the end of my exertions.”

She told him all of these details in a rush, as though she’d been rehearsing the speech and hadn’t quite perfected her delivery.

Drew stared at her, taken aback. While he couldn’t agree with the sentiments she was expressing, this was at the very least a far cry from the other conversations he’d had this evening.

The last lady he’d danced with had professed a hyperbolic adoration for all things Cornwall, from grazing sheep to legendary ghosts, to a profound ambition to stand on the cliffs at Land’s End and “absorb the transcendent power of Nature.”

“You hate taking nature walks,” he echoed.

“Especially along the moors. Or on cliffs overlooking the ocean,” she confirmed, with a decisive little nod of her determined wedge of a chin.

A brunette with bright brown eyes waltzed past and gave him a brilliant smile.

That’s what debutantes were supposed to do when they encountered a single duke in possession of a vast fortune.

Smile. Flatter. Flirt.

MissPenny must be confused.

“I haven’t read your uncle’s letter yet,” he admitted. “But I certainly will now, if only to spot the untruths.”

“Oh.” A pink flush spread across her cheeks. “I thought you had read it already.”

“Why do you hate the countryside?”

“Let me count the ways. The loneliness. The lack of excitement. Every second of every day you know precisely what will happen. The exact same thing that happened yesterday. Nothing.”

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