Free When a Duke Says I Do by Jane Goodger Page A

be with someone who didn’t judge or pity.
    He closed his eyes, willing away the loneliness that for some reason he was only just now starting to recognize.
    “I should go,” he said.
    She could have had any number of reactions. She could have been defeated or angry. Instead, she leapt up from the piano bench, her white teeth visible even in the gloom of the ballroom, and smiled brightly at him.
    “No, please stay,” she said. “I promise not to put you in a compromising position.”
    He stayed at the door, staring at her, as if unsure whether or not to enter. He knew he should not. He knew he should turn around and go back to the little cottage he shared with Monsieur, but she drew him to her, made his heart long for things he’d never even let himself dream of.
    “I have apologized and you have accepted, so all is well,” she said. “It was completely uncharacteristic of me. Honestly.”
    He smiled slightly. “You don’t often kiss workers who come into your home then?”
    She blushed, two spots of red in her otherwise pale face, and let out something that sounded very much like a snort of mirth. “Not usually. It was terribly forward of me. My mother certainly would have scolded me and my father, well, he would have been shocked by my behavior.”
    “I did kiss you back,” he said, wishing she hadn’t apologized—again—for something he’d wanted so much. It only confirmed his belief that he should not touch her again. She was a baron’s daughter and he was nothing. No one. He must continue to tell himself that lest he let himself think impossible thoughts.
    “Yes, but how could you resist?” Elsie said, laughing. She was fighting hard to turn this conversation into something light and trivial, and he decided to let her.
    “True. But I fear I cannot let you take the blame, not entirely,” Alexander said. “I should have forbade you to come here. I could have ignored you or sent you away. But I didn’t.”
    Elsie stood and walked to the little sofa set nearer to the mural. She sat, then turned so that she could look at Alexander, who still hovered near the door, still uncertain whether he should stay. “You’ve been getting a lot of work done, I see.”
    “No distractions.”
    “Would you come sit by me?”
    He hesitated only a moment before joining her on the sofa, pressing his large body as far away from her as possible. No need to test himself too much.
    Elsie stared at him while her mind went over and over what she wanted to say. The truth of it was, she liked him, quite a lot, but she also knew that they could never be anything more than friends. After all, she was practically engaged; true, the announcement hadn’t been made yet, but that was only a formality and she knew it well. He didn’t know she was engaged, and to blurt it out now would seem somehow presumptuous. How mortifying if he was simply enjoying a little dalliance and she was thinking he wanted something more meaningful. She’d done that once before. A young man had asked her for two dances, and she had felt she must tell him she was engaged. He’d been rather confounded by her announcement. “I only asked for a dance, not for your hand.” She still burned in mortification from that set down.
    “You told me I was being cruel, and I understand that now,” she said. “But I acted foolishly. And hurtfully. I understand that I am a baron’s daughter and you are... you are ...”
    “Nothing,” he said, without inflection.
    “Not nothing, you know that,” Elsie said, her tone chastising. “You are, in fact, one of the most wonderful, intelligent, talented men I have ever met in my life. But I am also a realist, and I think you are, too.” She took a bracing breath, praying that he would understand what she said next. “So for that reason, I believe we should agree to be friends only.”
    He looked at her sharply, then let out a rather humorless laugh.
    “I do recognize that there is a certain attraction between