Chapter Fifteen

The door squeaked on its hinges as Rosemary hesitantly opened the wooden panel a few scant inches and peeked inside. She had waited for her cousin in the solarium for nearly twenty minutes, but it appeared they'd gotten the timing wrong, or else she was terribly early, for she'd been the only person there with the exception of the servants.

Ordinarily, she would have been content to remain in the company of the staff. She'd even brought a book with her, just in case. But all of the silver platters on the long banquet table were covered, and she was starving, and with no sign of the breakfast beginning anytime soon, she had marched off in search of food.

The manor was so vast that she hadn't the foggiest idea of which hallway led where, and not wanting to stray far from the solarium, she'd gone straight across the foyer to what she assumed to be a parlor. There was a low buzz of voices emanating from somewhere else but, as a general rule, Rosemary preferred not to socialize on an empty stomach. Truth be told, she preferred not to socialize at all, but the idea of trying to maintain a conversation while dreaming about blueberry cobbler was particularly abhorrent.

"Hello?" she said hesitantly. When there was no reply, she opened the door a bit wider and her empty belly rumbled with delight when she saw the array of pastries, coffee, and tea beckoning to her from across the room.

She'd nearly reached the table of sweets and was eyeing a plate of golden crumpets drizzled with raspberry jam when an unexpected masculine voice nearly had her leaping out of her borrowed dress.

"Oh my Sir Reginald!" she gasped, swirling around just in time to see a head pop up from the other side of a sofa. And not just any head. Oh, no. This head, with its tousled black hair sticking in every direction and pale, bloodshot eyes, belonged to none other than the Duke of Hanover.

Rosemary had never actually met the duke. Their social circles were such a distance apart they might as well have been on different planets. But she knew who he was. Everyone did. Because…well, because he was a duke. A handsome duke. A handsome duke who was not married, which had made him the target of every eligible miss in all of England and its surrounding countries. With Rosemary being the notable exception.

Not that she hadn't admired His Grace from afar. Just because she was a wallflower didn't mean she was blind. But while her nose was often in a book and her mind in the clouds, she had enough common sense to know that she had a better chance of tossing a knotted line of bedsheets into the night sky and catching a falling star than she did of catching the attention of the infamous Duke of Hanover.

"Could you be a love," he croaked, his voice rough as gravel, "and bring me a cup of coffee?"

Rosemary looked to her left, then to her right. "Are you…are you talking to me?"

Squinting, he sat up a little straighter and cast his arm across the back of the sofa. "Is there someone else here?"

Her eyes as wide as the crumpets she'd been on the brink of devouring, she slowly shook her head.

"Aye, then I'm talking to you. Coffee. Please." He blinked soulfully at her. "I'm begging you."

Rosemary's arm shook ever-so-slightly as she poured rich brown coffee, still steaming, out of a silver pot and into a cup. Carrying the cup around the front of the sofa she delivered it to the duke, and as she passed it from her hand to his, their fingers brushed. When a jolt passed through her at the small, accidental contact, she gasped and nearly spilled the hot liquid down the front of his shirt.

"You're a sweetheart," he groaned as he guzzled the coffee.

Rosemary experienced another jolt.

The Duke of Hanover had just called her a sweetheart.

Her, Rosemary Amelia Ursula Stanhope.

Clearly, he did not know to whom he was speaking.

Or maybe he did, and he was just being extraordinarily kind.

Like a baker who threw spare breadcrumbs for the pigeons.

Or a philanthropist who donated his old clothing to orphans.

"I…thank you, Your Grace."

"Have we met?" As he finished his coffee, his eyes–gray with thin streaks of red through the white–traveled across her with unnerving intensity. You look familiar. Wait–let me guess," he said when her lips parted. "You're Lord Henley's eldest daughter. Lady Victoria."

As shyness overtook her, Rosemary could only bite her lip and shake her head.

"No?" The duke's brow creased. He sat up even taller. "Lady Emma Crowley."

Lady Emma Crowley was blonde with green eyes.

She shook her head again.

"Hmm. I was sure I had it that time. Ah! Now I remember." With a roguish grin, he snapped his fingers. "Miss Penny Snow. How could I forget? Especially after that night we drank the champagne beside the fountain and you asked for me to search for your missing hairpin." He lifted a brow. "Such an odd place to find it, beneath your skirts. But there it was."

Heat exploded across Rosemary's face. "I-I-I am not Penny Snow," she stammered.

The duke's brow lowered. "Well then, who the devil are you?"

"N-no one of consequence, Your Grace."

"You have to be someone. Surely I would have noticed you before, unless…will this Season be your first? That's it," he said confidently. "You've not yet made your debut."

"I've attended every ball that you have been at for the past three years, Your Grace." Rosemary was not offended that he could not remember her name or even recall her face. Given how well she and the back corner were acquainted, she'd be more shocked if he did know who she was. A horse didn't notice a patch of weeds in the middle of its field. And the Duke of Hanover had no reason to notice a wallflower whose head was buried in a book more often than not.

"My name is Miss Rosemary Stanhope. I am under the guardianship of my grandmother, Lady Ellinwood."

The duke's gaze showed no signs of recognition.

"My cousins are Miss Evelyn and Miss Joanna Thorncroft," she tried as a last resort.

"That's why you appear so familiar to me. You look like them."

"I do?" she asked, inordinately pleased by the comparison. Evie and Joanna were two of the most beautiful women she'd ever seen. If the duke thought she and her cousins shared similar characteristics, then that could only mean he considered her to be beautiful as well. Evie's refashioning had worked! Before all that awful bandoline had been yanked out of her hair, no one had ever told her that she was beautiful. Mostly because they'd never taken the time to notice her, but also because she wasn't. Beautiful, that is. But who was she to argue with the Duke of Hanover? Even though he hadn't said as much in so many words, the implication was almost certainly there!

"Eh…" Lurching to his feet, he scraped a hand across the bristle covering his jaw and peered at her more closely. "Maybe not."

"Oh." Disappointment caused her shoulders to hunch, a bad habit that her grandmother had been trying unsuccessfully to break her of since adolescence. "That's–that's quite all right."

"'Tis your eyes. They're not blue enough."

"I'm…sorry?" she offered.

Without warning, the duke reached out and cupped her chin. His countenance a study in concentration, he turned her head from side to side, then brought their faces intimately together. Another half-inch, and their noses would be touching.

"Remarkable," he breathed.

Her chest rose and fell in quick succession. "What–what is?"

"Your eyes. The color of them. I've never seen the like before. Like the hazy light of dawn after a night filled with storms when everything is wet and ruined except for the sky. It's neither blue, nor gray, nor violet. But a combination of all three that tells the sailors the danger has passed and they can set their compasses for home." His thumb traced the edge of her jaw in a feathery-soft touch that caused her breath to quicken, and then stop altogether. "That's what color your eyes are, Rebecca. The color of home."

He gazed at her a moment more. And for an instant, Rosemary actually thought she might be kissed by the Duke of Hanover. Then he shook his head, as if waking from a trance. He grinned, gave a wink, and then he was gone, whistling a merry tune under his breath as he sauntered out of the parlor, leaving an open door and a shocked wallflower in his wake.

"Rosemary," she whispered, running her fingertips across her cheek where his hand had burned into her flesh. "My name is Rosemary."

Weston was going to murder Evie.

After falling face first into the mud and crawling his way to shore, he had collapsed, exhausted, onto the bank…whereupon, he'd been chased away from the pond by a pair of hissing swans. Vowing to place swan stew on the dinner menu, he had retreated to the manor. But no sooner had he placed one muddy foot inside than Brynne had ordered him to go clean up in the stables.

"You stink," she'd told him, her nose wrinkling as she waved a hand in front of her face. "What happened? Never mind. I don't even want to know. I'll have your valet send out a change of clothes. Just make yourself presentable. And be sharp about it, as the breakfast is about to start and you are performing the opening toast."

And that was how the esteemed Earl of Hawkridge found himself to be bathing in a horse trough while dreaming up all sorts of ways to make Evie suffer for having the audacity to walk away from him. When he saw her again…when he saw her again, he had half a mind to draw her over his knee, flip up her skirts, and spank her bottom red.

Although that was likely to be more of an enticement than a punishment.

Bloody hell.

Even when he was furious with her, he still desired her.

Closing his eyes, Weston dunked his entire head into the cold water and ran his fingers through his hair. When he was finally cleaned, he emerged from the trough and met the amused gaze of his valet, Albert Jenkins, who'd been in his employ for the better part of a decade.

"Don't say a word," he warned.

"Wouldn't dream of it, my lord," Jenkins replied even as his brown eyes twinkled with merriment.

Cursing under his breath, Weston toweled himself dry and dressed quickly in the attire his valet had provided. Jenkins, always mindful of small details, had even brought out a jar of pomade and Weston used it to slick his hair straight back in a stern, formidable style that perfectly matched his current mood.

"Has everyone assembled in the solarium?" he asked.

Jenkins nodded. "Everyone but you, my lord. Lady Smethwick and her daughter, in particular, are looking forward to seeing you."

Weston didn't know why that information should cause his mouth to sour, as if he'd bitten into a lemon. He liked Martha. She was an excellent conversationalist, mostly because she never argued or tried to provoke him. Unlike a certain American that he knew. Time spent with her was akin to a pleasant ride through Hyde Park during the height of the promenade hour. Alternately, being in the company of Evie was like a wild, reckless ride through the Scottish moors with perilous cliffs looming at every turn.

"When did Lady Martha and her mother arrive?" he questioned absently. Proper decorum dictated that he should have been there to welcome them personally to Hawkridge Manor. And Martha's mother, a thin woman with prominent eyebrows that he suspected (but had not yet confirmed) were drawn on, was nothing if not properly decorous.

"Half an hour ago, my lord," Jenkins replied.

No so long, then. Surely his future mother-in-law wouldn't harbor a grudge over thirty minutes. Not that he particularly cared either way; he wasn't marrying Lady Smethwick, after all. But neither did he care to be the recipient of passive aggressive glares across the table while he was trying to enjoy his bacon and poached eggs.

It went without saying that he would have greeted them…if he hadn't been trapped waist-deep in mud. For that, he blamed Evie. As well as that troublesome lamb of hers.

He never should have gotten involved to begin with. But when he'd heard Evie cry out, his first instinct had been to run to her as fast as humanly possible. And when he saw those luminous blue eyes wet with tears…how could he not have held her? In that moment of heartbreak and hopelessness, he would have gladly traveled to heaven itself if that's what it took to get Posy back. He'd have traded his wealth. His title. His properties. Everything–anything–to heal Evie's hurt.

Then it turned out that Posy wasn't dead, just missing. But instead of calling up a footman to go searching for the lamb, as any reasonable earl would have done, as he should have done, he'd gone to find her himself. In the midst of a house party. With his esteemed peers waiting for him below stairs and his soon-to-be fiancée arriving any second, he had raced off with Evie. As if she were the only person that mattered. And the worst part…even worse than the filthy muck and the attack swans (however, they came in a close second)…was how terrifyingly right it had felt to do so. To abandon all of his commitments and responsibilities to focus solely on Evie. To make her, for however brief a time, the center of his universe. To put her needs above all else. And, most importantly, to make her smile again.

That was all he'd wanted to do when he had set off to find Posy.

To take away Evie's tears…and replace them with a smile.

The kind that lit up her entire face and made the corners of her eyes crinkle and her nose scrunch.

Like when she'd gotten foxed and doubled over with laughter at absolutely nothing. Or the wondrous grin that had captured her mouth when he'd caught her peering over the stall at the newborn foal.

If he could bring that smile back to her face, all would be well.

And it had been.

For approximately four seconds.

Until she got some idea in her head that they "were going to have a chat".

Six little words that had been striking fear in the hearts of men since the beginning of time.

She'd ended that tortuous discussion by asking him what he wanted.

As if he knew anymore.

As if he had any goddamned idea.

Weston knew that he wanted poached eggs for breakfast instead of boiled.

He knew that he wanted to buy another railroad line to expand his empire.

He knew that he never wanted to bathe in a horse trough ever again.

But as to what he ultimately wanted in love and in life?

He'd thought it was a biddable wife to let him carry out his duties sans interruption.

Now…now he wasn't so certain.

And that uncertainty throbbed like a splinter burrowed under his nail bed.

"Jenkins," he said abruptly as they entered the house. The foyer was empty, the quiet clink of glassware and the muted hum of voices revealing that everyone had gathered in the solarium where they were waiting for him to deliver his opening toast. The official start of a house party that had already proven to be more trouble than it was worth…and it was only the first day. "I've a task for you. One that I'd like carried out with the utmost discretion."

"Anything, my lord."

"I need a complete list of all the eligible bachelors in attendance. Their names and titles along with how much they are worth. If they've any debts outstanding, or improprieties attached to their names. I should also like to know any pertinent hobbies." He paused. "Also, if they are fond of animals. Specifically of the woolly variety."

"Woolly variety, my lord?" asked Jenkins, appearing mystified.

"Sheep," he said impatiently. "I need to know if they like sheep."

"If you don't mind my saying, that is oddly specific."

Weston's jaw tensed. "Can you get the list or not?"

"I should have it for you by the end of the day."

"Good. Good," he repeated, and he started to run his hand through his hair before he remembered that he'd set it with wax. Muttering another curse, he excused his valet and took care to compose himself before he set out for the solarium to give his welcome address.