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Emma made a face. “You’re impossible,” she decided, pulling out a plate of roasted chicken. She sighed. “I wish she hadn’t packed chicken.”
“Why not?” Alex asked moving to a sitting position as he reached for a drumstick. “Don’t you like it?” He took a vicious bite and smiled rakishly at her.
Emma’s face revealed an expression of concern. “It’s just so difficult to eat in a ladylike manner.”
“So don’t act like a lady. I won’t tell anyone.”
Emma looked hesitant. “I don’t know. Aunt Caroline has labored so hard to reform me. I would hate to ruin all her good work with one picnic.”
“For God’s sake, Emma. Use your fingers and enjoy yourself.”
“Really? You won’t go back to the assembled multitudes and report that I was not behaving like a proper English lady?”
“Emma, have I ever given you any indication that I wanted you to be a proper English lady?”
“Oh, all right,” she capitulated, plucking the other drumstick from the pile and daintily tearing a small piece off. It was all Alex could do not to laugh as she popped the minuscule morsel in her mouth. “It’s your turn now, you know,” she said with a lift of her eyebrows.
Alex did her one better, arching only his right brow in an expression of supreme confidence.
“I hate people who can do that,” she muttered under her breath.
“Hmmm?”
“Nothing.” Emma took another tiny bite of chicken. “It’s just that it’s your turn to tell me the worst thing you did as a child.”
“Would you believe I was a model child?”
“No,” Emma replied bluntly.
“Then would you believe that I was so awful that I would be hard-pressed to settle on one single incident?”
“It’s a bit more likely.”
“Why don’t we strike a deal?” Alex offered, leaning forward and resting his forearms on his knees. “How would you like the story that has the most potential to embarrass me as a grown man?”
“Now that is intriguing,” Emma said enthusiastically, completely forgetting her resolve to behave properly as she bit into the chicken and tore off a fair-sized piece.
“I was about two or three,” Alex began.
“Just wait one moment,” Emma interrupted. “Are you trying to tell me that your most embarrassing moment occurred when you were two? That is quite the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. People shouldn’t even be allowed to feel embarrassment over what they did as babies.”
“Are you going to allow me to finish my story?” Alex inquired with a cheeky tilt of his head.
“Certainly,” she replied, magnanimously waving her chicken leg in the air.
“I was about two or three.”
“You said that,” Emma reminded him, her mouth full.
Alex shot her an annoyed look and continued. “My mother’s sister had given me a stuffed dog for Christmas. I wouldn’t let it out of my sight.”
“What did you name him?”
His expression was sheepish. “Goggie.” He looked over at Emma, who was valiantly trying to stifle a laugh. She quickly pasted a wide smile onto her face. “Anyway,” Alex continued, “I played with Goggie so much that his stuffing eventually fell out, and I was heartbroken. Or at least my mother tells me I was heartbroken,” he quickly added. “I don’t remember any of this.”
Emma conjured a vision of a small, black-haired, green-eyed boy crying over the demise of his favorite toy and decided that the image was altogether too adorable to think about without the risk of falling in love on the spot. “So what happened?” she asked, giving her head a slight shake to banish the dangerous thought.
“My mother took pity on me and restuffed the dog using her old stockings. And we would have all lived happily ever after except”—Alex said with a lopsided smile—“I continued to abuse the poor animal and it fell apart again, and this time my mother couldn’t mend it.”
“And?” Emma prodded.
“And this is the part where the story gets embarrassing.”
“Oh, good.”
“Apparently, I couldn’t bear to part with Goggie even when his death was quite irrevocable, and so since I couldn’t drag the dog around with me anymore, I decided that the stuffing would do just as well.” Alex paused for a moment, casually running his hand through his windswept hair. “You will recall,” he said lazily, “that my mother every kindly restuffed the dog with stockings. So for the next few months I wandered the halls of Westonbirt dragging ladies’ stockings with me everywhere I went.”
Emma laughed merrily. “I don’t think that’s embarrassing. I think it’s adorable.”
Alex leveled his eyes on her with a look of mock severity. “You do realize I have a reputation to maintain?”
“Oh, believe me, I am well acquainted with your reputation,” Emma replied, her eyes bright with amusement.
Alex leaned forward and tried to appear grave. “I am trusting you with my darkest secret. How do you think it would look if it became known that the Duke of Ashbourne spent his formative years in ladies’ stockings?”
“Now, now. You weren’t in ladies’ stockings; you were enamored of ladies’ stockings. And now that I think about it,” Emma paused for a moment, a saucy grin creeping across her face, “it makes perfect sense. You’re certainly rather interested in ladies’ stockings now.”