When Marrying a Duke.... Helen Dickson

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СКАЧАТЬ wondering why she felt a sudden need to defend her father’s business partner. ‘He dances so well that all the ladies are eager to have his name on their dance card.’

      ‘So it would seem,’ Max murmured drily, turning his back on his wife.

      Marietta saw the cynical curl to his lips and observed the way his shoulders tensed, but she didn’t comment on it. Perhaps matters weren’t as they should be between Lord Trevellyan and his wife, but he was far too English and private a person to talk openly about it, and it was not for her to ask.

      ‘If you’re not in the mood to dance with your wife, then dance with someone else.’

      One dark brow lifted over an amused silver-grey eye. ‘Are you asking, Miss Westwood?’

      Her answering laughter tinkled like bells, filling the air around them with its gaiety. ‘Heavens, no! My friends wouldn’t let me live it down—dancing with a man much older than myself.’

      He leaned back and gave her a look of mock offence. ‘I’m not so long in the tooth. How old do you think I am?’

      After giving his question a moment’s thought, she said, ‘About thirty?’

      ‘Wrong. Nowhere near.’

      ‘Then how old are you?’

      ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out, Miss Westwood.’

      Tilting her head to one side, she gazed up into his mesmerising grey eyes. Standing so close to him, she was unable to think clearly. She wasn’t certain anything mattered at that moment except the sound of his deep, compelling voice. The piercing sweetness of the music drifting through the open doors wrapped itself round her. How she wished the man beside her would smile and take her in his arms and dance with her, despite what she had just said, that he would place his lips against her cheek and … She checked herself. She wished so many impossible things.

      ‘I hope you weren’t offended when I said I wouldn’t dance with you. Of course,’ she said, lowering her eyes, her cheeks suddenly warm with embarrassment and anticipation, ‘if you were to ask me, I wouldn’t dream of refusing your offer. I would be happy to dance with you.’

      Slowly she raised her eyes to his and Max noted the unconcealed admiration lighting her lovely young face. She didn’t know how explicit her expression was—like an open book, exposing what was in her heart. Max saw it and was immediately wary. He had schooled his face over the years to show nothing that he did not want it to show. He was therefore perfectly able to disguise his exasperation with himself for having misjudged things. He should have realised she was of an age to have a schoolgirl crush.

      The lines of his face were angular and hard, and behind the cold glitter of his grey eyes lay a fathomless stillness. Marietta watched his firmly moulded lips for his answer.

      ‘That won’t happen,’ he said flatly, gentling his voice, while knowing he was being deliberately cruel, but it was necessary.

      Marietta was mortified and shocked by his refusal, but she was more shocked by her nerve for having the audacity to ask him. ‘No, of course not,’ she said in a shaky, breathless voice. ‘I should have known better than to suggest such a thing.’

      Max didn’t like having to wound her sensibilities, but it couldn’t be helped. His voice was condescendingly amused as he tried not to look too deeply into her hurt eyes, eloquent in their hurt, which remained fixed on his face. ‘Think nothing of it. And I wasn’t offended.’

      ‘Oh—well, that’s all right then. You don’t have a very high opinion of women, do you, Lord Trevellyan?’ she said, unable to stop herself from asking.

      ‘Should I?’

      ‘Yes, when you have such a beautiful wife.’

      ‘You’ve noticed,’ he remarked drily.

      ‘I would have to be wearing blinkers not to.’

      ‘Do you have a beau, Miss Westwood?’

      ‘No, not as such.’

      ‘Some day you’ll have to marry in order to have children.’

      She glanced at him sharply. ‘Oh, no, Lord Trevellyan. If I marry, it won’t be to have children.’

      ‘Don’t you like children?’

      ‘Yes, of course.’

      ‘But you don’t want children of your own?’

      ‘No, and if I have to pledge my hand in order to produce an heir, then I might very well remain a spinster.’

      ‘That’s a very decisive statement for a seventeen-year-old girl to make.’

      ‘I’m sure you must think so, but seventeen or sixty, I won’t change my mind.’

      Marietta meant what she said. She would never forget what her mother had gone through to try to produce another living child, or the pain and the terrible grief that came afterwards. Yang Ling had told her that daughters often took after their mothers and the thought of childbearing preyed dreadfully on her nerves. She went cold every time she thought of it—what might be the sequel to making love, when past dangers and future fear might become utterly submerged.

      ‘You’re still very young, Miss Westwood, with time to change your mind. Tell me, am I really all those unflattering things you called me at Happy Valley? Arrogant, high-handed and despicable, I believe you said.’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘I haven’t changed my mind about that. I’m only sorry that you heard me say them.’ She was laughing and he smiled at her, his teeth flashing against his tanned skin. He looked all formal in his evening attire—a figure of authority, assured, cynical and formidable. But having spent the last few minutes with him, he suddenly seemed a hundred times more rakish and with hidden depths. Without thinking, she said, ‘You also look like a pirate—not the kind they have in the China Seas, but one of Caribbean kind—a buccaneer that carries beautiful ladies off to his lair on some island known only to him.’

      That made him laugh and, in the shimmering light from a thousand lanterns, he saw her flawless young face and the brilliance of her long-lashed eyes and generous mouth. Abruptly he stood back. He stared down at her for a long, long moment, then, quietly serious, he said, ‘Don’t change, Miss Westwood. Don’t ever grow up. Stay just exactly as you are.’

      ‘That’s impossible.’ She cocked her head to one side and gave him a quizzical look. ‘I thought you didn’t like me.’

      ‘What made you think that?’

      ‘Because of what happened at Happy Valley—and then in China Town—you were awful to me.’

      He grinned and with his finger and thumb tweaked her chin playfully. ‘You deserved it.’ Momentarily distracted when the music stopped playing, he glanced into the ballroom. ‘Please excuse me. I think it’s time I returned to my wife.’

      Marietta didn’t move as she watched him go, not realising that in years to come they would both have reason to think back on this short time they had spent together on the veranda at Government House, as flower girls, fire-breathing dragons and СКАЧАТЬ