Page 32 of Lady Emily’s Matchmaking Mishap (Merry Spinsters, Charming Rogues #5)

Chapter Sixteen

“I’m tired of playing speculation. Let us play blind man’s buff instead,” Miss Cowley announced. All the guests were once again gathered in the blue drawing room for post-supper refreshments and entertainment. Emily had suffered through another meal during which she had been determined not to look at the Duke at all. He was air. He did not exist. One did not look at people who did not exist. So she had an absolutely marvellous time chatting to her table partner, who this time was Chippendale.

While he might not have been the biggest wit under the sun, he was sufficiently entertaining.

Much to her surprise, he’d made her laugh more than once. It was his self-aware mockery, she decided, as if he himself did not take himself too seriously. Somehow it made her warm to him.

How could she ever have mistaken him for Wolferton, even for a fraction of a second? He was altogether too nonchalant. She decided that if the Duke would not do, Chippendale might be the perfect match for Cissy. She would try to throw the two together whenever possible.

“A new game is a splendid notion,” Lord Hamish agreed. He and two other gentlemen were both hovering over Cissy, who managed to flirt charmingly with both of them, while Wolferton lounged as usual by the fireplace, looking forbidding and intimidating as ever. His scowl seemed to deepen every time Emily laughed at something Chippendale said.

“Let’s draw for who’s going to be the blind man,” one of the girls said.

“That’s not for me,” Aunt Jane put in. “I’ll sit this one out. Blind man has a tendency to get quite rowdy and wild.”

“I’d rather not join in,” Cissy said immediately. “My ankle is healing nicely and I wouldn’t want to put it at risk. It is, after all, a fairly active game.”

“Quite right,” Chippendale chimed in. “Perhaps we should choose a quieter game, one that everyone can participate in. How about charades?”

“Famous,” Hamish agreed. “Played in pairs, yes?” He immediately lifted a finger to summon a footman. “Fetch us some straw sticks, will you? One for each guest in this room.” The footman did so immediately and Hamish proceeded to shorten two straws of the same size. Then he shuffled them and held them out to each person in turn.

“I would like to be paired with the Duke,” Miss Cowley insisted.

“Don’t all ladies,” Araminta muttered.

“I’m afraid Lady Fortuna will have to decide that,” Hamish laughed, holding out the straws to Miss Cowley, who pulled one.

“You can give me whatever’s left,” Emily said, not too enthusiastic about the prospect of playing charades.

“Wolferton, stop scowling at all and sundry and pick your straw.” Hamish held the straws up to his nose. He chose one.

Everyone paired up. Miss Ingleton was paired with Hamish. “You’ll have to be content with me, Miss Ingleton,” he joked, and Cissy, to Emily’s great satisfaction, was paired with Chippendale. She would have been quite content if her partner had been one of the aunts, perhaps Jane, for she enjoyed her wry humour. Instead, she looked into a pair of gleaming eyes that belonged to the Duke.

He held out his straw to hers: they were a match.

“Oh no!” Emily groaned.

Miss Ingleton, the self-proclaimed Mistress of Revels, decided to change the rules of this game of charades. “Instead of guessing the word based on a riddle or rhyme, let’s try something different and guess the word by acting it out. The rule is that the actor does not speak at all. One person in each pair has to act out the word, and the other has to guess. The twist is that there is time pressure, as both pairs perform at the same time. The first person to guess the word wins.”

“Excellent.” Chippendale winked at Cissy. “We’re sure to win this one.”

It should be easy enough, Emily thought as Miss Ingleton showed her the note with the word. It was love.

When she gave the signal, Emily immediately clasped her heart, rocked her body back and forth, and sighed.

Wolferton just stared at her, not understanding. “Indigestion?”

Emily groaned, shaking her head. Thinking that was part of the act, he immediately called out, “Pain. Judging by your grimace, it must definitely be pain, of the intense kind.”

“No!” Emily glared at him.

He threw up his hands. “Help me. I’m at a complete loss. Anger? You’re scowling. It must be anger.”

“No! It’s... ” Emily clasped her heart again, repeating her first movement.

“No talking, Lady Poppy,” Miss Ingleton warned her. The other couple, Chippendale and Cissy, were already on their third word, while Emily and the Duke couldn’t seem to get past the first.

“A heart condition resulting from a woman’s choleric temper.” Wolferton threw up his hands.

The audience roared with laughter and chimed in with all sorts of unhelpful suggestions, despite Miss Ingleton’s stern warnings to the contrary.

“Maybe it’s heartburn,” cried Hamish.

“Distemper of the stomach!” Lord Willowthorpe suggested with a chuckle.

“The ague!”

Emily gave up. “Love. It’s love!” She turned to the Duke with a glare. “It wasn’t hard to guess, Your Grace. Love pertains to the heart”—she thumped the left side of her chest—“but of course you wouldn’t recognise where the organ is located, let alone its metaphorical significance.” That came out harsher than intended. She did not know why she’d said it, but there it was.

He narrowed his eyes. “Metaphorical significance? Is that how you interpret love? With an agonised grimace, as if you’re suffering through the seven gates of hell?”

“I didn’t!” Emily protested. “I was acting out the state of falling in love.” She repeated the motion of clutching her heart.

“Good Lord. Falling in love for you must be equivalent to having a canker in the mouth, the way you’re grimacing.”

Emily glared at him. “Says the man who knows nothing of the feeling.”

“How well you seem to know what I do or do not know about love or other emotions.” His voice had suddenly become dangerously quiet, a telltale sign of impending danger, something Emily missed as she continued to rant merrily at him, giving free rein to her frustration of the past few hours.

“Yes, that is certain. One thing I know: you have no heart at all.” She put her hands on her hips. “You wouldn’t know love if it was staring you in the face.”

“Wouldn’t I?” He took a step towards her, his eyes boring into hers. “What if the opposite is true, and the person simply does not see the truth in their heart? Through forgetfulness, stubbornness or a need to protect themselves from something they dare not admit?”

“No, I-you-that’s—” Emily stammered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She stopped herself, blinked and looked around to find everyone staring at her.

The room had become so quiet you could hear a fly crawling up the wall. Why was it suddenly so hot? She fanned herself with one hand and laughed, sounding shrill and artificial to her ears. “We have strayed from the topic.” She cleared her throat. “It seems we’ve lost this round.”

“You certainly have,” Miss Ingleton said slowly. “And rather spectacularly too. I suggest we give another pair a chance. You may sit down.”

“I must protest, Miss Ingleton,” said the Duke. “Can we not consider this a warm-up round? As I have been assigned a partner who is spectacularly untalented at acting, as well as being unreasonably irritable and annoyingly quarrelsome, I would appreciate the chance to try again. This time with the roles reversed.”

“It’s a fair request, considering that the rules of the game are new to all of us,” Chippendale suggested. “Besides, there is something amusing about seeing the two of them tear into each other like an old married couple... ” He interrupted himself with a cough.

Emily placed her hands on her burning cheeks.

“Yes, give them another chance. Let’s see if Wolferton can do better,” Lord Willowthorpe commented with a grin.

Miss Ingleton thought for a moment. “Very well. I’ll give each team new words.” She picked up the pen and scribbled on small pieces of paper, handing one to Cissy and the other to Wolferton. “On my command, go!”

Wolferton read the paper and his eyebrow rose so high it almost disappeared into his hairline. “Miss Ingleton, you’re a minx.”

She giggled behind a hand.

“Other than that, it should be easy enough,” he muttered. Turning to Emily, who was watching their exchange with a frown, he asked, “Ready?”

She lifted her chin. “I’ve been ready since the beginning of time.”

A slow, wolf-like smile spread across his face. “Excellent.”

He stepped up to her closely—rather too close, Emily thought—so close that she had to tilt her head to look up at him questioningly, and still he stepped closer, and just as she opened her lips to say, “What are you doing?” he swooped in on her, bending her backwards over one arm. His hand cradled her neck, while his other held her firmly by the waist.

Then his mouth crashed down on hers.

Emily didn’t hear the women gasping, the men hooting and the aunts applauding enthusiastically. It all receded into the distance.Her thoughts scattered, her mind left her and her mind ceased to function altogether.

Her senses were filled entirely by the man, and her hands slowly crawled up to his neck and dug into his hair, pulling him closer. He obliged.

She sighed against his lips.

So this is what it feels like to be kissed, was the first dazed thought she was aware of when she regained the surface of consciousness. It really was the most wonderful experience to be kissed by Wolferton.

Wolferton! She was kissing Wolferton!

By all the saints?—

At that moment, he released her.

They stared at each other for a charged moment.

“You-you kissed me,” she said stupidly, her hand crawling to her swollen lips.

“Correct,” he said hoarsely, then cleared his throat.

Hamish and Cissy stood beside them, watching with open mouths. Hamish applauded slowly. “Well done, Your Grace. I concede you have won this round. It took me a little too long to properly perform ‘courtship’, which was our word—though to be fair, we were rather distracted.” He beamed at them.

Miss Cowley sulked. “That was rather over the top. Isn’t it cheating to touch the other person?”

“I disagree, the rules never said we couldn’t touch our partners,” the Duke replied, tugging at his cravat.

“You’re setting a high bar,” Chippendale said cheerfully. “The rest of us will find it hard to surpass you. But, by Jove, I like the direction this game is taking. Can we be next?” He looked at Cissy and waggled both eyebrows, causing her to burst into a fit of giggles.

From that moment on, all inhibitions were gone, and the game took on a teasing, slightly naughty air, with lots of enthusiastic kissing being incorporated into even the most unlikely of scenarios. When Chippendale was given the word ‘turnip’, he creatively managed to incorporate kissing his partner into his performance. “You love turnip so much you have to kiss it,” was his far-fetched explanation, after planting a kiss on his partner’s rosy lips.

For the rest of the game, Emily was unable to concentrate. She wasn’t functioning properly. She had cotton where her brain should be, and champagne in her veins instead of blood. Otherwise, she couldn’t explain the state of drunkenness that had gripped her.

The Duke had retired to a corner, where he was leaning against the wall, watching his Aunt Mabel act out a drunkard with a slight smile on his lips. When he turned his head, their eyes met, and he held them for a moment too long.

And then he winked.

Emily almost fell out of her chair.

That was Coachman George, as he lived and breathed, not His Grace.

She rubbed her nose in confusion. George who was cheeky, arrogant, yet observant and unexpectedly kind.

Not at all the horrifying devil she’d made him out to be.

The truth was, Emily admitted to herself, she really didn’t know him at all. She’d never given him a chance. She’d been dead set against him from the start, more than willing to see the worst in him. She’d avoided him like the plague because she was afraid?—

... No, terrified, of discovering that maybe he wasn’t the man she’d made him out to be.

He was an enigma, this duke.

And then, with a terrible jolt of clarity, it hit her—she had been fooling herself all along.

It wasn’t that she didn’t hate him.

It hadn’t even been about liking him.

She had gone far, far beyond that.

It was hopeless, deep and completely out of her control.

She was well on her way to falling head over heels in love with him.