Page 37 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses
Dipping his head as he laughed, he braced his hands on his knees to keep from touching her.Measured steps, Dex, my boy, measured steps.“Duly noted.”
She elbowed to a sit, smoothing her bodice and her skirt while he glanced away to give her privacy. “Did you do this on purpose? Provide spirits and deadly conversation.” She nodded to the window and the snowdrift climbing past the bottom panes. “I’m stuck here, aren’t I?”
The delicate hollow of her throat was within reach should he follow through on the desire to press his lips to it. Which, as he was unsure of himselfandher, he wouldn’t. “My father’s sleeping and the doctor doesn’t expect him to wake,” he shocked the hell out of himself by admitting. “I suppose…I suppose I didn’t want to spend the day alone.”
“The unfair play continues,” she whispered and worked a loose tendril of hair behind her ear, “as I can say nothing to that.”
“You have a chaperone,” he reminded her with a nod to Gertrude, who’d been equally felled by the stratification discussion and slept as soundly as a babe. “A houseful of servants. Wilkes has popped his head in every half-hour since you arrived. I don’t know what he thinks I’m doing to you in here. Each time, he seems surprised to find out,nothing.”
A devilish spark lit her eyes, reminding him of the indigo of the Indian Ocean. There were leagues of mysteries in her gaze. Couldn’t he be the one allowed to explore them? “What trouble can two old friends get into surrounded by a slumbering chaperone, an aging butler, and twenty crates of rocks?” She clicked her tongue against her teeth and glanced about the room. “A note for the future wooing of your duchess: fossils aren’t romantic. Fascinating but not romantic.”
A burst of well-concealed frustration vibrated through him. What trouble indeed. He could think oflots. “I agree with your earlier suggestion. Let’s start tomorrow. Here. The suitables.I’llhost the dinner party. There’s no time like the present, and even with scant notice and snow a sodding foot deep, no one will refuse an almost-duke. Or the chance to be an almost-duchess. I’ll send my best carriage for them and pray the roads are passable. Formal livery, every opportunity to impress. Even such a simple gesture, your assisting me with this endeavor, will be a boon for the Duchess Society, am I correct?”
She looked back, surprised, conceivably a bit stunned.
It wasn’t jealousy, but it was a start.
“Twelfth Night, Georgie, remember? I made a promise to my father, and I mean to keep it.” He tapped the timepiece lodged in his waistcoat pocket. “Tick, tick, tick.”
She dragged her thumbnail over her bottom lip, and memories of their long-ago kiss roared through his mind. Helping to relieve his pent-up frustration, she wasnot.
“No time like the present,” she echoed. “They’re lovely, the two young ladies I hope to introduce you to. Accomplished. Demure. Entirely appropriate.”
“Listed inDebrett’s.”
She cocked her head, trying to decipher his tone. “Well, yes, of course. Asweare. You say it like it’s a stain.” Irritation crossed her lovely face. “You sound less than enthusiastic when this was your idea. I’m helping becauseyouneed it.”
With a sigh, he rose to his feet. “Darling Georgie, I sound resigned.”
“Rocks and resignation aren’t going to secure a duchess, Dex.”
“How about my charming personality? Will that do it?”
She tapped her boot heel against the settee in serious consideration, as if this wasn’t likely to secure any duchesses either.
He frowned, stung. “I can be charming, you know. And if I can’t, the title will secure any knot I chose to tie. It holds the allure I lack.”
“When surrounded by mounds of dirt and pickaxes, I’m sure you can be charming.”
“Are you saying I’ve lost my Town bronze? That’s a bloody compliment.”
She stood, her gaze locked on his. Petite, which he’d forgotten over time, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulder. He wanted to tuck her against his body and never let her go. Protect them both from the coming storm. “Your rough edges make you interesting, Dex, in a sea of people who aren’t. They always have. The goal is to find the woman who will appreciate them.”
Okay. His shoulders relaxed, a quick gust of air leaving his lips. Georgie liked his rough edges, which at this point were there to stay. “Then you’ll help me find her?”
Her finger charted the line of her jaw, her cheek, as she swept a lock of hair behind her ear. He followed the motion, enthralled, certain he’d not desired a woman more in his entire bloody life. “I’ll help you find her.”
Dex crossed to the window to hide his body’s ferocious reaction. The stretch of Derbyshire he viewed from the window was an ivory blanket unfurling to the horizon, broken only by a pointed mountain peak piercing the low-hanging mist. Nothing was more beautiful than winter here, nothing except the woman standing across the room from him, caught as he was between friendship and regret. He’d made a hash of things for years, and it seemed unlikely anyone would grant him a Christmas miracle.
For his father, for Georgie.
He’d been given no advice and certainly had no wisdom concerning love. His father had been a harsh taskmaster, reserved and unreachable, his mother deceased by his fifth birthday, his childhood, except for Anthony and Georgie, solitary. Science had been the center of his universe, and he’d clung to it gratefully.
Love, he knew nothing about.
In any case, why wish for a miracle when he wasn’t sure he believed in them?
Behind him, Dex heard Georgie unpacking another crate as she hummed quietly beneath her breath, an action he wasn’t even sure she realized she was doing. She was a competent assistant, shaving hours off the tedious administrative work that was a large part of his research. They worked well together, which meantsomething, didn’t it?