Page 4 of The One With the Wayward Duke (The One With the Wanton Woman #5)

“I THINK I’M IN love.” If Tobias was shocked earlier, his whole world was now frozen.

She felt it too? Impossible. It couldn’t be.

It couldn’t be that easy. That quick. What was it anyway?

Surely it wasn’t love. Yet that’s the word she chose.

The very same word that had been skipping its merry way through his dead heart.

(Apparently the ride his heart had been trying to hitch never came, and the crawling ceased, leaving it to expire on the open road. Pitiful.)

No, it was all ridiculous. Asinine. Completely and utterly absurd. Unthinkable…yet they had both thought of it? Love? What were the chances?

He didn’t want to ask the question begging to fly off of his lips, but he absolutely required to know the answer.

“With me?” he squeaked out in a most unmanly fashion. As if he wasn’t mortified enough.

And of course she did exactly what he would have expected anyone to do in that very situation, she laughed at him.

But when his rejoining laughter was slightly delayed, she tilted her head ever so slightly, cocked a brow at him, and stared at him through her laughter as though he had just confessed to finding one of those newfangled dinosaur fossils everyone was talking about lately.

Was he crazy? Had he essentially discovered a fossil of love amidst all the hard stone that was guarding his heart?

Or was he crazy to even think fossils like that existed?

He hadn’t seen one yet. How was he to trust that they were real, and that they were what scientists claimed they were?

He could trust no one. And given the brief but immensely awkward exchange that had just occurred, he could hardly trust himself. That much was patently obvious.

He cleared his throat in hopes of regaining a measure of control in the situation. Before he could make an attempt to poorly cover his blunder with an oh-so-subtle redirected question of I meant, with who? she answered his first question.

“Not with you, silly.” She patted his arm while she said it, as if he were a child that needed consoling. Well, he wasn’t. And he didn’t. All the same, that small pat did feel soothing. But that was an entirely distinct feeling from consoling.

“Oh, wouldn’t that be the thing? Imagine that.

” She put her left palm out, gesturing more or less to the church they were leaving behind.

“And then…this.” With her right palm up in his direction, she eyed him up and down.

“That would just be quite the thing.” Her head shook quickly left and right between her open palms, and a few locks of hair fell free. “No, life doesn’t work like that.”

The musings, as vague as they were, were decidedly self-musings for there was no possible interpretation that he could glean.

And since she, intelligibly, wasn’t waiting for his response, she continued. “No, I don’t believe in love at first sight.”

That was a relief. Of sorts. He thought. But his internal ponderings were interrupted by more of her verbal ruminations.

“I just can’t believe in love at first sight. What would happen? I just see the man and without knowing a thing about him my heart feels all kinds of warmth and peace with an underlying current of curiosity and excitement?”

Yes, well, that about summed up his feelings—

“And then what happens? We incidentally touch in some innocent way and sparks fly up and down my body tethering me to him in some tangible fashion that I can’t ignore?”

And that, well…that too was a decent summation of—

“No. It’s just not possible.” She stared at him keenly. Or was that more of an exploratory eye? “It doesn’t happen.” The statement almost sounded like a question to Tobias’s untrained ears. “Perhaps on the second encounter or touch,” she mumbled, “but certainly not the first.”

Another statement slash question. He was waiting for her to finish, but when she didn’t, and instead she reached out to tap his knee with her finger, he jumped right out of his seat.

“Don’t you agree?”

“Mmm…uh…probably. Yes. Quite right.” If he was in her head, which he clearly wasn’t, she was likely equating him to some nincompoop who didn’t know the difference between a barouche and a phaeton.

“So where are you taking me?” she asked with a half grin. Apparently she was feeling much safer since fleeing the church.

Right. So he definitely qualified for that nincompoop title about now. “Where?” He hoped he hadn’t let his mouth hang open for too long.

“Yes. Where did you tell the driver to take us?”

He hadn’t given any directions, which meant the driver was either taking them for a jaunt down random streets, or in much great probability, taking them back to his home. Tobias shot out of his seat banging his head on the roof of the carriage.

“Are you all right?”

Rubbing the sore spot, he muttered his (apparent) go-to phrase in moments of uncertainty, “Mmm…uh…probably. Yes. Quite right.” Without another thought, he lifted the hatch.

Then in a moment of clarity, realizing he had no new directions to pass along to the driver, he looked down at the woman.

Standing had placed his groin on the same plain as her head, and that image was not doing him any favors in the area of calming him down.

He blurted out, “Where should I take you?”

Her eyes clouded momentarily, as though she were viewing him like a puzzle who was missing a piece. He couldn’t fault her for that. He certainly couldn’t find all his pieces. In fact, he was quite certain he had only one pulsating puzzle piece at the moment. Or was he even a puzzle at all?

“Take me…anywhere.” That grin she gave him as she spoke…it was as though she trusted him.

Take her anywhere? Oh, he wanted to. It was irritatingly clear that his cock was on board with that plan. He was willing to take her anywhere. In the carriage. In his bed. In the library. Anywhere was exactly where he was willing to take her.

But he was a gentleman and she a lady. And this whole debacle was about him redeeming himself, not digging himself into a deeper hole. No holes of any kind were allowed in his thoughts right now. At any depth.

Besides, there was something about this woman that just didn’t scream, Take me anywhere.

And for the first time since looking at her, he saw a flicker of pain in her eyes. It should have been obvious from the start. Panic often encompassed a measure of pain.

In an instant, he took inventory of what he knew about her. She was running from something, but what was she running to? And that question wouldn’t let go of him.

“You have to tell us where to go. This is your life.”

“I don’t know where to go.” Oh. So he had touched on the right question. How odd that his intuition had sensed that about her.

To continue in that vein, he gave her the only advice he knew to be true. “Listen to your heart.”

There was a short pause, a hesitation, then, “We’ll have to go down to The Man Trap.”

He spluttered a cough as she continued.

“Take me to Sanderville. There’s a small tavern there called…erm…The Man Trap.”

At the crude words, Tobias ducked his head out of the hatch before she could see the width of his eyes and the ruddy color of his ears.

It also helped that the slight swivel turned his groin away from her perusal as well.

He relayed the instructions and took a couple of breaths of fresh air before sitting himself back down to visit her Man Trap—he meant, The Man Trap.