Page 3 of The Mistress (Foxgloves #1)
AMELIA
G ood Lord, what was happening to her? Who was this man, and why was she feeling so deeply connected to him having only just met? What in heavens was going on?
She could feel his eyes blazing a trail of heat along her skin. Her spine tingled in response, and her heart had yet to find its normal rhythm since she’d laid eyes on the Duke of Birmingham. And when he’d touched her, his hand felt unexpectedly rough for a Duke, while his lips were soft but firm in their pressure. God, she was still overheated from the awareness that had shot through her at the contact.
“How is Lydia?” Thomas asked, pulling her from her reverie, the concern in his tone evident.
Amelia cleared her throat and tried to find her way back to common sense and propriety.
“Much better,” she turned in her seat and forced her focus to center on Thomas seated beside her, ignoring the tingles running down the back of her neck. “She’ll be right as rain in the next day or so, I expect.”
“Thank goodness,” Thomas’s heavy sigh would have made Amelia roll her eyes if she wasn’t so on edge. Heavens, he did act like Lydia was dangerously ill, not down with a common cold.
“She did bid you stop your worrying,” Amelia prodded, as they all filled their plates with the food the footmen served. She began to feel on slightly more solid ground speaking easily with Thomas and going through their regular motions.
It wasn’t to last, though. The powerful male wrapped in riches across from her forced all her attention back to him. What little she had managed to redirect that is.
“Who is Lydia?” his deep velvet voice caressed her skin. She tried to fight the shiver that ran in its wake and failed. Once again turning to his fiercely masculine face, with features artists could easily spend their entire lives trying to capture, she latched back onto those bright, probing green eyes that held her in an iron grip.
“My sister, Your Grace,” her voice felt breathy addressing him when only a moment ago it had been sure. She hoped the duke didn’t noticed. Who was she kidding? Of course, he did. Something about this man seemed inherently attuned to her and all that she was. She simplified her hope, instead, to Thomas not noticing whatever this deeply intimate connection was between his two guests.
“Ah,” he replied. “And she is ill?”
“Just a cold, Your Grace.” Why was she so jittery speaking to him? She couldn’t understand the nerves coursing through her, but she had the sense that he, at least, did. “Nothing serious.”
She forced herself to act like everything was normal and eat, taking small bites, but she was unable to taste the deliciously aromatic food.
“Well, I hope she recovers soon as you expect,” he said both kindly and politely. And yet the current between them, his force of will, her yielding, were anything but proper.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” her voice was soft. Putting down her fork and knife, she picked up her glass and took a fortifying drink of wine.
There was a blissful pause for a few moments, during which the only noise was the sound of cutlery against the fine china. Amelia kept her eyes steadfastly fixed on either her plate or the lovely centerpiece of bright flowers that popped against the white tablecloth between her and the duke. She chewed her food with forced calm.
“How old is she?” The Duke of Birmingham broke the silence, continuing the conversation as if there had been no lull.
Amelia looked up. “Lydia? She is twenty.”
“And how old are you?” Again, he spoke with perfect politeness, but the tug she felt towards him changed even the most mundane of conversations into an intimacy she had never experienced before.
“I am twenty-five, Your Grace.” Her hands had stopped moving as she answered his questions. Why was she feeling so warm?
“And it is just you two?” he asked, not stopping in his own eating as he continued to probe.
“Yes, Your Grace,” she answered. “And Thomas.”
“Hmm,” he pursed his lips.
She could feel his displeasure as sure as her own confusion at it. She didn’t know what caused it, or why she even cared, but she felt an immediate need to fix it. Some part of her wanted to please him. This new part he had clearly unearthed and drawn forth just by existing and meeting her. A part that felt as much her as any other.
It didn’t make sense. Nor did she know how to fix whatever had caused his unhappiness. So, she stayed silent and tried to turn back to her food.
She chanced a glance at Thomas, and to her dismay, he was watching them curiously, brow furrowed. Apparently, his previous obliviousness had not held fast.
She would have to deal with his questions later, she knew, but for now, she had to get a damn grip on herself and make it through this meal. Everything else, Thomas, his curiosity, the warmth that had yet to subside, the desire to please this stranger so profoundly above her station, the cord she felt between them…. That could all wait to be dealt with later.
“Your parents?” that rough velvet voice spoke.
“Your Grace?” She looked back at him to find his cutlery abandoned as he held his glass of wine halfway to his mouth.
“What of your parents?” he clarified before taking a drink. She watched his throat work on the swallow, and she had to compose herself before answering.
“They are no longer with us,” she shared. “Our mother died giving birth to Lydia, and our father joined her two years ago.”
The grief of losing her father had calmed, but she still felt it every day. His loss and the loss of Thomas’s mother still weighed on Amelia, as she was sure they did on Lydia and Thomas, as well.
“We were lucky to have been granted so much time with them,” Amelia heard herself sharing without prompting. She swallowed, reaching for her wine and shaking her head lightly at the inappropriateness of her offering.
“Them?” The duke’s voice held a tenderness to it, and she met the emerald traps that were his eyes. The softness she observed there told her he saw the sadness she carried with as much clarity as he seemed to see the rest of her.
Who was this man, she wondered yet again, and how did she know with such certainty how well he saw her? She knew she would keep asking herself these questions for the rest of her days until she finally had the answers. She was never going to forget the Duke of Birmingham.
“Yes, Your Grace,” she answered him still in a soft, intimate voice. Both of their food and wine now sat forgotten, and Thomas’s unusual silence made it all the easier to forget he, too, was there. “Our father and the Dowager Countess of Coventry. She left us some years before our father. When I was fifteen.”
“You were close with the dowager countess?” he inquired.
“Yes, Your Grace,” Amelia replied. “She was, for all intents and purposes, our mother. She raised us.”
“I see,” he said, his face inscrutable, and she couldn’t even begin to fathom what he was thinking.
Abruptly, the enthralling duke stood and stepped towards Thomas, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Well, I must be going,” he spoke, his eyes still fixed on Amelia. “Thank you for showing me your mare, Thomas. She is truly beyond compare.” The way those eyes watched her made Amelia think he wasn’t talking about the horse. “And for the meal. It is the best I’ve had in memory.”
“You’re sure you must leave so soon?” Thomas asked his friend, speaking for the first time in what felt like an age.
Oh, dear. Thomas was scheming.
“I’m afraid so,” the duke replied. “But I’m sure I will see you soon.” He rounded the table to where Amelia was still seated, gently taking her hand, causing that current to once again course through her from the point where his skin met hers. Her heart stuttered and then ricocheted into a gallop.
He pressed those soft lips to her hand as he had earlier, and Amelia’s tongue shot out on reflex to lick her lips at the feel of the gentle pressure. She was struck with the sudden desire to feel those lips on hers, and that thought was so new to her, she lost all sense of how to respond.
“It was a pleasure, Miss Becham.” His touch, the seductive voice, the penetrating green eyes, and his warm, spiced scent overwhelmed her senses. Her hand gripped his tighter, whether to keep hold of herself or him, she wasn’t sure. She was overcome with an impending sense of loss for this man so far above her, yet somehow, she was sure he was something to her. Something vital and important. This she knew as well as she knew herself. And she wasn’t sure she’d ever see him again.
As if he could read her thoughts, which she wildly thought he might, he whispered so softly only she could hear, “We will meet again soon, Amelia.”
It was a promise, and it settled deep in her bones, calming the unusual panic she was beginning to feel at his departure.
Understanding lit his eyes as if he could feel the emotions rolling through her, and she registered his pleasure at how she responded to him. As if he was the composer, and she was his symphony.
She settled further, both in his promise and his pleasure.