Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

T he Pinery Ball was always a grand affair and one that Allan looked forward to every year. Usually, it was a time to dance with as many ladies as possible since it was the first event of the season. It would set the tone for the remainder of the season.

But this year, things were different.

He was here with Lady Edwina as his guest.

She stood beside him now, still as a statue, staring at the figures on the dance floor. She couldn’t have made it any more apparent that she didn’t want to be here and would have preferred to be anywhere else.

“You look lovely,” he told her, hoping to thaw her a little bit.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice tight.

“Are you still angry with me, then?”

“You were incredibly rude to me the last time we saw one another.”

“You were fairly rude yourself,” he pointed out mildly. “You couldn’t be more obvious about the fact that you want nothing to do with me.”

“That wouldn’t be a problem if you weren’t forcing your company on me,” Lady Edwina said. “There’s nothing particularly rude about my not desiring your company, Your Grace. But I suppose you’ve never come across a lady who didn’t.”

“That’s right,” Allan agreed. “Even when they think they don’t, I’m able to change their minds. And that’s what will happen with you.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

“I am betting on it. By the end of the night, you’ll be glad that we had this time together.”

Lady Edwina let out a loud sigh that said all too clearly that she didn’t agree.

“Dance with me,” Allan suggested.

“Do I have a choice?”

“Of course, you have a choice. I’m not going to drag you onto the dance floor against your will,” he told her.

She looked at him, and for a moment, he thought something in her eyes had softened.

“All right,” she said at length. “I’ll dance with you.”

“Very gracious of you.”

She allowed him to take her arm and lead her onto the dance floor. They fell easily into a slow-paced dance, surrounded by other couples. Allan was aware of people’s eyes on him. Of course, they were watching—the rakish Duke of Harbeck and the unattainable spinster dancing together was a true rarity, a sight to behold. He was sure people were gossiping about them.

“You’re a very good dancer, Lady Edwina,” he observed.

“Thank you.”

“You don’t sound like you mean that.”

“I mean it.”

“And yet you sound so ungrateful.”

“Do I need to be grateful?” she asked. “Why do you require my gratitude?”

“Well, I don’t require it, but I would have thought you would be appreciative of the compliment.”

“It was a kind thing to say,” she said.

“Most ladies are charmed by kind things being said about them.”

“I don’t know why you would assume that the tactics that work with most ladies are going to work with me,” Lady Edwina argued.

“You’re quite right. I should know by now that that sort of thing won’t work on you. You’re so icy!”

“I’m perfectly friendly,” Lady Edwina countered. “It’s just that I like to have the freedom to choose who I’m going to be friendly toward. If you had approached me and tried to strike up a friendship with me?—”

“Then what? Don’t ask me to believe this resistance is because of the way I won you at your sister’s auction,” Allan said. “Everyone knows that you turn away every gentleman who so much as looks your way.”

“That’s right,” Edwina snapped. “Everyone does know it. And I would have expected you to realize that it applies to you just as much as it does to anyone else, Your Grace. I don’t know why you feel as though flirting with me is going to get you anywhere.”

“Am I flirting with you?”

“Please don’t think I can’t spot a flirtation when I see one,” she said. “I deal with gentlemen who wish to earn my attention every day. I’m familiar with all their tricks. Every ounce of what they do is routine to me at this stage. There is no flirtation that you can attempt that would be new to me, and nothing you say or do is going to impress me. You may as well give up on it.”

Allan laughed.

“What on earth is so funny?” Lady Edwina demanded.

“It’s interesting to see how easy it is for me to provoke your ire,” he explained. “Not something I would have expected. I thought it was more like you were describing to me the other day—that nothing a gentleman could do would affect you. But it’s clear that I am having an effect on you.”

“It’s having an effect on me, all right. It’s making me angry!”

“That’s a start.”

“You think it’s just as good to make a lady angry as it is to win her affections?”

“I think that I’m making you feel something, and that’s much better than if you were in my presence and felt nothing at all. If anger is where you and I have to begin, then so be it.”

“You’re awful.”

He laughed. “I’ve heard that before.”

“It’s no wonder you’ve never married.”

“I’ve never married because I’ve never met a lady I’ve wanted to marry,” he said. “I’ve never encountered anyone I felt would be a good duchess for me.”

“That’s what you’re looking for? A good duchess?”

“Well, of course,” Allan said. “I am the Duke of Harbeck, and it’s my duty to eventually find a worthy lady to marry and make a duchess of. It’s one of the most important obligations that comes with my title.”

“Oh,” Lady Edwina said.

“You sound as if that surprises you.”

“It doesn’t surprise me to hear that the responsibility of a duke is to find a duchess,” she said. “It surprises me to hear that that’s something you care about, though.”

“I see. And why is that?”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of you taking an interest in affairs of the heart.”

“Well, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” he explained. “I don’t believe marriage should be viewed as an affair of the heart. I am aware that people see it that way—I know Seth and your sister see it that way. But to me, marriage is about fulfilling one’s duty.”

“Then why haven’t you ever done it? Don’t you take your duty very seriously?”

“I do,” he said. “And it’s something I know will happen eventually. The day will come. But I’m not in any particular hurry about it, and I don’t know why I ought to be. If I try to rush into marriage, I’m just as likely to find myself failing to notice important details about the lady I choose. It’s possible I’ll find myself with someone who isn’t fit to be a duchess at all, and if that were to happen, it would be too late to do anything about it.”

“I see.”

“And besides,” Allan added, giving her a roguish grin, “there is a lot of fun for a man to have before he is married. I wouldn’t want to rush out of that either. I take my duty seriously, but I also want to live my life to the fullest.”

She blushed at his grin and looked away from him. “Well, you certainly seem to be doing that.”

“And what about you? You don’t seem to consider marriage to be either a duty or an affair of the heart. You seem to see it as a burden.”

“Not a burden for me,” Lady Edwina argued. “It can’t burden me if I refuse to let it.”

“But you do think that it would be a burden if you allowed it to be?”

“Oh, most certainly.”

“But why?”

“I know what gentlemen are like.”

“You believe we’re all the same?”

“In some ways,” she said. “You all have expectations of ladies—expectations that I may not want to fulfill. Just look at you. You’re not interested in finding a lady who interests you, someone you can have good conversations with and truly respect. You’re only interested in duty. You don’t care who you marry as long as she’s the right person to step into the role of duchess that you have in your mind. For you, it has nothing to do with what she might want for her own life.”

“You don’t think a lady would want to be a duchess?”

“I don’t want to,” Lady Edwina said. “I have no interest in such a thing. And I’m not going to forget myself and my own desires simply for the sake of pleasing a man.”

“What do you want for your life, then? What would make you change your ways and decide to marry after all?”

“I’m not going to marry.”

“I understand that. But if you were to marry, what would make you decide to do it?”

“If I were to marry,” Lady Edwina decided, “it would be because I’d met a gentleman who treated me well.”

“I don’t treat you well?”

“You buy dates with me at an auction, so no. Besides, you don’t want to marry me, so why are we talking about you?”

“Fair enough.”

“I’d only marry a gentleman who I felt respected me,” Lady Edwina declared. There was a passion in her voice that Allan had never heard before as she spoke openly on the subject for the first time, and he found himself captivated by it. “He would have to see me as his equal. He would have to treat me with respect and dignity at all times and never try to overrule my will with his own. If I ever met a gentleman like that, I might consider a marriage to him. But I have never met such a man.”

Allan nodded as the two of them continued their dance.

He resisted the impulse to say something teasing or to continue trying to charm her. The truth was, he appreciated the fact that she was speaking so openly and honestly with him. It was the first time she had done so. And even though there was still something defensive about the things she was saying—insisting that she would never marry, pointing out that no man she had ever met had lived up to her standard—it was an improvement because she was talking to him instead of trying to push him away.

He didn’t want to call attention to the fact that she was opening up to him because he was sure that as soon as she realized she’d done it, she would shut down again. This was only happening because she had let her guard down a bit. She had forgotten to keep him at arm’s length.

He would take advantage of that fact and use it to get closer to her. Charming her might be easier than he had imagined it would.

But also, he found himself taking the things she had said seriously.

She wasn’t a spinster merely out of stubbornness and defiance. She did have qualities in mind that would compel her to marry. She simply felt as if she had never met a man with those qualities.

Maybe she hadn’t. It did seem as though her standards were unusually high. If Allan had been her father or brother, trying to find a good match for her—one that she would accept—he had to admit that he didn’t know where he would begin.

And he was glad he wasn’t trying to impress her so much that she would actually want to marry him.

For the first time, he doubted his ability to do that.

That doubt was an unfamiliar, uneasy feeling. He had never been unsure of himself with a lady before, but he had never had any involvement with a lady with such high standards. She was willing to remain a spinster forever. She would never settle for anything less than the idea of a gentleman she had in her mind, and that idea was more than even Allan was confident he could live up to. It was larger than life.