Once a Wallflower, at Last His Love

by Christi Caldwell

  Addie peered over her shoulder. “I believe the part where she meets the duke at the ball comes first.”

  Yes, that of course made the most sense considering that was where she’d met the duke. She moved the page up in order. With a sigh, Hermione laid them down on the marble-top table in front of her one at a time. A loud rhythmic tapping interrupted her concentration. She frowned at her brother. From over at his seat by the window he tapped the edge of his foot against the floor-length crystal pane. “Do not do that,” she scolded. “You’ll break it.”

  He stopped and swung his legs over the side of the window seat. “I told you Papa wouldn’t notice you’d dragged us out in the rain,” Hugh shot from across the room, his words directed at Addie.

  Addie frowned.

  “He cares, Hugh,” Hermione said softly. For both his and Addie’s benefit. The truth was Father didn’t care about much anymore.

  He grunted and returned his attention outside.

  “What if they meet in the park instead of the ball?” Addie suggested.

  Hermione gave her head a distracted shake. She’d considered that point. Except, that wasn’t how the meeting had first taken place. There had been no great rainstorm with streaks of lightning. There had been a quiet office at a dull ball. Addie was indeed correct. The dramatic exchange between a duke and his heroine in a park, unchaperoned was by far the grander, more sensational beginning of any story. A wistful smile played at her lips as she thought of Sebastian, the Duke of Mallen. No, she could not change the meeting.

  “Who is that?” Hugh asked from over by the window.

  She picked up another page and considered what direction to take her duke and his heroine. “Who is who?” Hermione murmured distractedly.

  Addie jumped off her seat and skipped across the room. She leaned over her brother’s shoulder. “Who is he?”

  “That’s what I just asked,” her brother groused.

  Addie sighed in a wistful manner that would require considerable watching in a handful of years, lest an undeserving scoundrel sway her. “He has the most glorious golden-blond hair. Even more glorious than Lord Cavendish’s.”

  The page slipped from Hermione’s fingers and sailed to the floor. Her heart thudded wildly. Of course it was silly to imagine that just because her sister spoke of a blond-haired gentleman he’d be a certain golden-haired gentleman. Still, she hopped to her feet and sprinted across the room. She peered over her siblings’ shoulders. Her heart picked up its frantic beat. Sebastian! The duke’s long-legged strides carried him up the handful of chipped, stone steps.

  They stared as one out the window. He chose that precise, inopportune moment to turn his gaze upward. The Rogers siblings leapt back as one. Hermione raced over to the table littered with her notes. “Hurry.” The terse order snapped her brother and sister into motion.

  “Here,” she muttered and stuffed a handful of sheets into her brother’s arms.

  She sprinted back to the window, just as the door closed behind Sebastian.

  “What am I going to do with these?” Hugh groused from over her shoulder.

  She raced to the table and gathered together the remaining sheets. Addie accepted the pages Hermione thrust her way without complaint. “Why is there a gentleman here?”

  Hermione stacked her pens together. Surely, there was some mistake. Sebastian had no business here.

  “Why is there a gentleman here?” Addie persisted, relentless with her questioning.

  “I don’t know, dear.” She took her by the shoulders and guided her toward the front of the room. “Bring my papers to my chambers.”

  “Humph.” With a frown, Addie trotted behind her brother.

  Hermione returned to the window and peered outside. If Addie and Hugh hadn’t been present she might have convinced herself she’d imagined the Duke of Mallen’s unexpected appearance. A lofty duke, with a golden halo of loose curls didn’t visit the homes of lesser lords of quite dire financial circumstances.

  A knock sounded at the door. “My lady?”

  She slammed a hand to her chest and turned to greet the servant who’d taken on the role of butler for their family.

  “His Grace, the Duke of Mallen,” the younger man in his well-worn livery announced the duke and then took his leave.

  Hermione stood. She swallowed hard as the duke trained his gaze over her person, probing and searching. She detested her awareness of him as a man, as he studied her in a quite perfunctory manner. When the ormolu clock ticked away the moments and still he didn’t speak, she tipped her chin up. “Your Grace,” she greeted. She dropped a belated curtsy.

  Sebastian quirked a golden eyebrow and with an unnerving quiet, strode deeper into the room. He moved with such languid grace, her heart fluttered. She smoothed trembling palms over the front of her skirts. “W-would you care for tea?” she offered, remembering belatedly there was but a handful of servants and hardly the means for pastries for visiting dukes.

  “No.” He waved a hand.

  She drew in a grateful breath and motioned to the sofa. “Would you care to sit?”

  Sebastian ignored her offer. Instead, he wandered closer, ever closer. He paused at the small single-drawer mahogany side table.

  Unwittingly, Hermione backed up, and continued retreating. She placed the sofa between them as a small barrier to protect herself. Not that she feared him, per se. She didn’t. Rather, she feared her body’s awareness of his commanding, muscle hewn frame.

  He tapped a hand along the side of his thigh, drawing her gaze downward. She gulped. Dukes didn’t have well-muscled thighs. Well, with the exception of the dukes in her stories. Those dukes did. The dark, brooding ones. Perhaps there really was something to be said for the golden-haired dukes, as well.

  “I came to ensure you’d not come to any harm from your afternoon in the rain.”

  She jumped. “No. No harm. That is, I came to no harm,” she stammered, willing her mouth to slow. Alas, her blasted nervous tendency controlled her thoughts. “It was just a bit of rain, Your Grace. I don’t imagine anyone’s been harmed by a bit of rain.” Which wasn’t altogether true. Surely some had been harmed. Perhaps they’d caught chill and—

  “Sebastian,” he amended.

  “Beg pardon?” Her voice emerged as a croak.

  He continued his forward path toward her. “I thought we’d agreed, given our unconventional meetings thus far, you’d call me by my Christian name.”

  “That was…What I’d…” Except, two words he’d spoken gave her pause. Perhaps it was that she possessed a writer’s soul and all words signified something.

  Thus far.

  He’d said “thus far,” which indicated there would be more meetings. It would be gauche to ask him the significance of that statement. Impolite and improper. But she really did need to know. “Thus far?”

  His lips turned up in a knowing, seductive smile.

  “Not that I need to know.” Then the words tumbled out in humiliating fashion. “That is to say I wanted to…” His grin deepened. Hermione snapped her lips closed. But really it begged explaining. “You said ‘thus far,’ which suggests there would be further visits, but you surely wouldn’t have any business with anyone in this particular household.”

  The ghost of a smile played about his lips. “I assure you, I’m a duke, Miss Rogers. I have business where I will it.”

  She furrowed her brow. Oh, how very arrogant of him. Then, she suspected arrogance came part and parcel with the proverbial title.

  He lowered his head, his breath fanned her lips. “And do I still have leave to call you Hermione?”

  Her lashes fluttered. She’d allow him to call her Hermie, Hermione, or a variation in between if he so wished it. Hermione gave him soft smile. “And how am I to respond to an all powerful duke who just maintained he has business where he wills it?” A bothersome strand of hair fell across her eye. She blew it back. It fell promptly back across her brow.

  Her breath caught as he tuck
ed the lock behind her ear. “When presented with such a conundrum, Hermione, the only course would be to avoid offending the…how did you word it? The all-powerful duke?” He brushed his knuckles along her cheek and she leaned into his caress. His touch so very fleeting, she didn’t know if his actions were deliberate or quite an unintentional, reflexive action. She rather preferred the romanticism of the latter option.

  “Yes,” she said, detesting the breathless quality of her words. “All-powerful duke is precisely how I phrased it, Your…Sebastian,” she amended at the pointed look he gave her. How very silly to be worrying of liberties such as the usage of one’s name with the lack of a chaperone and his fingers upon her person. Or nearly upon her person.

  His gaze lingered on her lips for a moment and in that silly, illogical moment she imagined he might kiss her. And she, a young woman who’d spent nearly years penning stories of great love in the hopes of much needed coin for her family, longed to know the kiss of man.

  Nay, not any man. This man. She strove for composure, seeking a reason for his presence here. “Is that why you’ve come? To insist I call you Sebastian?” She wanted him to want to be here for so many more reasons.

  Thick, golden lashes hooded his eyes, concealing the momentary flash of emotion that glinted in their green depths. “I’ve come because you’ve quite fascinated me.”

  His words yanked her from her reverie. A snorting laugh bubbled past her lips. “I’ve fascinated you.” She stepped away from him, placing much needed distance between them.

  He matched her movements. “You find that amusing?” Heavy annoyance underscored his question.

  “I find that hard to believe,” she said bluntly.

  He propped his hip on the back of the sofa and folded his arms. “What do you believe instead?”

  “That you are a bored nobleman,” she said practically. She was nothing if not pragmatic.

  He shifted but remained elegantly lounging; he the singularly most elegant aspect of the sparse townhouse that had seen most of its possessions sold off to cover debts from Papa’s neglect of his properties. “I assure you, I am not bored,” he said, his tone droll.

  Hermione clenched and unclenched the fabric of her skirts in her hands, detesting the inherent weakness that stirred nervousness in this man’s presence. “That still does not answer what business you have here.”

  He pushed himself upright then closed the handful of steps between them. His lazy movements robbed her of the ability to move. He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tipped her gaze up to his.

  At nearly eight inches past five feet, Hermione was taller than most gentleman of her acquaintance. Which was a rather smallish number. She also happened to tower over the gentlemen she’d had the ill-fortune of meeting in London. Not this man. Nearly six or seven inches or so taller than her own frame, he made her feel like one of those small, cherished misses.

  “You are the business that has brought me ’round, Hermione.”

  C

  hapter 10

  The young lady asked what brought him ’round to her residence. The immediate answer had been her. The actual answer was madness.

  She blinked like a night owl. “I brought you here?”

  Well, the whole madness piece and all had brought Sebastian ’round to see the mysterious young lady with tart rebuttals and too many questions on her too-full lips that fairly begged to be kissed. He gave a brusque nod. “Indeed.” The moment it was discovered that he’d paid a visit to a marriageable miss, rumors were certain to be bandied about. His mother and sister would be worse than the queen’s terriers with the scent of a bone for details about Hermione Rogers. That in itself should have quelled his afternoon call.

  Hermione stared up at him with her head cocked at an endearing little angle. Her lower lip quivered and he stared, transfixed at the trembling, plump flesh of her lower lip. She really was quite kissable. How had he ever found her plain? Her lips were made for sin and seduction and all things scandalous.

  Then she laughed. Not the delicate, clear bell-like quality of simpering debutantes but the rich, boisterous kind that earned disapproving stares. And this was so vastly more appealing. The husky expression of amusement flooded him with a sudden desire.

  “Oh, my.” She dashed tears of mirth from her eyes. “You are v-very arrogant.” Hermione dissolved into another fit of laughter.

  Her reproachful words had the same effect of a bucket of water being doused upon him. He bristled with indignation, as she laughed on at his expense. “I’m not—”

  “I-I know you surely can’t h-help it.” She patted his hand. “Being born a duke and a-all.” Had she just patted his hand? As though he was a misbehaving lad of three and not a duke of nearly thirty-two?

  How very odd to possess this desire to be treated as just a man and yet be so very humbled by Hermione’s dismissive attitude. “I was not born a duke,” he bit out, giving his lapels a tug. He’d been born a marquess. Altogether different.

  “People are not business, Your Grace. They are people. You do not attempt to command and control a person. You do not make people your business. You learn their interests and their hopes and their desires.” Her chest heaved up and down from emotion of her passionate diatribe.

  “Sebastian,” he said, on a silken whisper that had seen many lovely mistresses a place in his bed. “Very well, then, what are your desires?”

  She stilled. Good, he preferred the minx shocked into silence. There was something quite endearing in the slight parting of her lips and her wide, blinking blue eyes.

  “You speak of interests and hopes and desires,” he pressed. “And yet you’ll not share those when asked.” And why was there this pressing need for him to know what Hermione Rogers longed for?

  “I don’t know you,” she blurted. “You’re a stranger to me, Sebastian.” Ah, she was more cautious than most young ladies but she’d called him Sebastian and he was encouraged.

  “Hardly. There was Lord Denley’s office and Hyde Park.”

  Color suffused her cream white cheeks, somehow charming when he’d never before been charmed by blushing debutantes. “Hush.” She slapped a finger to her lips. Then, this stranger to Society did not strike him as a blushing debutante. Quite the opposite. “It would be…it would be…” With every repeated word, the pink in her cheeks deepened, disproving his earlier assumption. Oddly he was only the more endeared by her innocence.

  He arched an eyebrow. “It would be?” he prodded, having entirely too much fun at her expense.

  “Oh, hush,” she chided, a slight grin ruining the effect of her previous outrage. “Ruinous. It would be ruinous if we are discovered using ones Christian names and speaking on such intimate matters.”

  Rather, a cheeky, bold miss. And he found he quite preferred her this way. There was a sincerity to Hermione; an emotion devoid in every other young lady to come before her. “You still haven’t answered my question.” He paused, unaccustomed to having his wishes or questions gainsaid. “What do you desire?” he asked, suddenly unnerved by the desire to know everything and anything about her.

  She clasped her hands behind her and rocked forward on her heels and then back. “I desire stability, Your Grace,” she said with a candidness that made him frown.

  And for the first time, he took in the worn fabric of the crimson curtains. The faded reddish-pink fabric of the mahogany upholstered sofa. Something pulled at his belly when faced with the realization of Hermione’s circumstances. He returned his gaze to her. The hard set to her mouth indicating she’d detected his scrutiny…and didn’t appreciate his involuntary sense of pity. She straightened her back.

  Sebastian closed the slight space between them, admiring her more for the proud set to her shoulders. “There is something to be said for stability,” he said, solemnly. However, a woman of Hermione’s conviction and strength, deserved more than an emotionless existence.

  She studied her hands a moment. “Yes. Yes there is,” sh
e said softly. “That is what I desire, Sebastian.”

  The husky quality of her tone wrapped about his name, and a hungering to know all of her burned strong. He brushed his knuckles over her jaw, forcing her to meet his gaze. She stiffened. “A stable match, an emotionless one, would also be a lonely one.”

  Her lips formed a small moue of surprise. “You believe in love,” the whispered words so very faint.

  Her revelation, no one would dare believe, splayed him open, left him exposed to her contemplative eyes. “I do not,” he said belatedly, the protestation halfhearted to his own ears. And to give himself something to do, he yanked out his watch fob and consulted the timepiece given him by his father. Three words etched into the gold gave him pause.

  Responsibility. Commitment. Honor.

  To the ducal line. It had always been about the ducal line for the previous Duke of Mallen.

  He snapped the case closed and tucked it into his pocket. His late father’s warnings and urgings had no place here. Not in this matter. He’d controlled Emmaline’s fate. He’d not control Sebastian’s from the grave.

  Hermione walked a small circle about him. “Hmm.”

  He stiffened. No lady of his acquaintance had ever looked at him in such a thoughtful manner; with that remote, analytical, not at all desirous study. And bloody hell, it shouldn’t bother him—yet, he’d stood before her blathering romantic sentiments and words of love and she should not be so composed.

  She continued to scrutinize him the way a scholar might examine a new exhibit at the Royal Museum. “Hmm,” she murmured again and tapped her lower lip contemplatively.

  And because she seemed so wholly unaffected by his nearness and because of the earlier amusement she’d found at his expense, Sebastian lowered his head and kissed her.

  She stiffened and for an infinitesimal moment he thought she might pull away. Hermione, however, the young lady who’d darted about unchaperoned through the rainy grounds of Hyde Park, had ceased to surprise him. She tipped her head back to better receive his kiss.