The Duke's Unexpected Temptation - Chapter 6

They had been walking for an eternity. Ash’s glasshouse was getting further away, as if an evil spell had been cast over it with the specific aim of torturing her. The summer breeze had given way to a harsh heat, the sun burning her skin. She was an awful person, absolutely ghastly. No wonder she couldn’t find a husband. She was too busy scaring away men who were perfectly pleasant, if not a little bland. She was sure the Duke would make someone a lovely husband. He was very tall, had pleasingly wide shoulders and long fingers. He was ferociously intelligent but not patronizing with it. He was very pale skinned, but that only made his blue eyes stand out, and it also had the charming effect of making it clear when he was experiencing emotion, because without it, it would be very hard to tell from the blank expression he normally wore.

She was in the wrong. She had to apologise and yet she couldn’t think clearly because… Back on the pathway, his fingers had touched her neck, the gentlest brush of skin on skin, a moment of nothingness, so fleeting it had gone before it had even begun and yet every nerve ending in her body had come alive. Then he’d leaned forward and she’d thought he might kiss her and there had been nothing she’d wanted more than the feel of his lips on hers, so of course she had ruined it. As well as being horrible to him, she was a ninnyhammer. Finally, blessedly, they arrived at the glasshouse and they stepped into the damp heat.

‘Where is this object?’ he asked.

If Sienna didn’t apologise now, she never would, and the unspoken words would become blades slicing through their time together. ‘I am sorry that I said something vile about you. I did not mean it about you. I am sorrier than you will ever know that my words hurt you. You will have noticed that I exaggerate sometimes.’ He gave the slightest of nods. ‘It gets worse when I am nervous or agitated.’

He turned slowly to face her, his boots scraping on the hard ground. His eyes were wounded, and for the first time, Sienna felt as if she was seeing the real Nolan Sefton. Not the quiet, stuffy Duke, but Nolan, the man who did have feelings underneath his starchy exterior. ‘You find balls stressful?’ he asked.

‘Absolutely so.’ She paused and then it all came out in a rush of words that she could not seem to stop. ‘All that nonsense about being seen by the right person and always making sure what comes out of my mouth is not a gross exaggeration because I do not want to face ridicule. Then there is trying, and sometimes failing, to make sure I dance every dance, but God forbid I take to the dance floor with the same man more than twice in one evening. I might as well declare marriage to him and be done with it. And the dresses, do not get me started on those. They are designed by people with cruel minds, who think that the perfect body shape is a tiny waist, and as you can see, that is not me. I am dealing with all this and I can hardly breathe and everyone is telling me that you would make me the ideal husband because I would finally be tamed, whatever that means and I just…I just…’ She tugged at her neckline; it was abominably hot in the glasshouse. Add to that, she’d just given the worst apology ever given by anyone. She wanted to melt into a puddle. Sienna would have given anything, everything, for the world to end right in that moment just so that this embarrassment would stop.