Nolan strode forward, glad to be doing something. In the stillness of the drawing room, he’d been hit by Sienna’s floral perfume. The scent took him to the quiet intimacy of a bedroom, the soft rustle of clothes as two people who knew each other well got dressed, readying themselves for the day. It was a simple fantasy, but it was a forceful reminder of how lonely he was.
‘I apologise that I did not find a way out of this morning’s activity,’ he said. ‘I know you did not want to spend the morning with me, but I felt it would be unpardonably rude to reject my hosts’ idea of fun.’ That and he hadn’t quite been able to put a stop to spending the morning with Sienna. He was an idiot.
Sienna made no response to his statement. The brisk summer’s breeze buffeted her bonnet. Impatient fingers tugged at the ribbons but she couldn’t stop the hat from bouncing against her forehead.
‘Why not take it off?’ he suggested as they headed further away from the house.
She shot him a look. ‘I would have thought that you would vastly disapprove of such an inappropriate display.’
‘I am not such a stickler for propriety that I insist you experience discomfort.’
She made a sceptical noise, the sound his undoing. ‘I do not know what I have done to you to cause such a vehement dislike of me but…’
‘It is you that dislike me. You think I am spoilt and thoughtless.’
He had implied that. ‘That was badly done of me, but in my defence, you…’ He trailed off. He had been about to make things spectacularly worse. No wonder he was approaching his twenty-sixth birthday with no woman in his life.
She tugged at the ribbons on her bonnet, in her annoyance somehow twisting them into a knot. ‘What did I do?’
‘It is of no matter. Here, let me help you.’
She turned, tilting her face up to his. The sunlight picked out brown flecks in her blue eyes. It seemed essential that he know how many. He focused on the knot at her throat before he gave in to the strange impulse that would have left him gazing at her like a puppy. ‘You have made a mess of this,’ he said, the backs of his fingers brushing her neck.
‘What have I done to offend you?’ she asked softly.
Maybe it was the heat of her body or the hitch in her breath as he’d touched her skin, but he forgot his normal impeccable manners. He was an Englishman and Englishmen did not normally refer to hurt feelings. He was a Duke; he wasn’t supposed to even have feelings, but he blurted out, ‘I know you did not mean for me to overhear, but you said I was boring.’
He’d been called that before, of course. His own mother had been a dashing member of the ton and had never understood her mathematically minded son. It had taken him a long time but he’d learned to ignore his mother’s cutting remarks. He knew he was clever, he had friends who liked him for who he was, not who people thought he should be, and understood that his quiet personality was not something of which to feel ashamed. Hearing the words, said by the most beguiling woman in any ballroom across London, had hit him harder than he would have thought. Not that he would ever admit to such a deep feeling, but he’d had to retire to his study and do endless amounts of mathematical equations before he was able to forget about his initial attraction to her. Even after that, it was still a struggle to keep his gaze away from her. It would be worse next time he saw her across a ballroom because now he knew just how soft the skin of her neck was.
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