“Like a criminal?” She scoffed. In the background, her father continued to protest. “Oh, yes, with an attitude like that, who can blame her for fleeing? Have you considered, perhaps, that this coldness of yours is what led her to run in the first place? The snow must have seemed practically balmy by comparison!”
Aaron couldn’t help it. He smiled. It was crooked and likely not very nice at all, but he was out of practice after all. He couldn’t help that smile, odd though it might have been.
Because right now, he didn’t feel cold at all. He felt blazing hot. And it had been so very, very long since he’d felt this way.
Her gaze burned him.
“Phoebe!”
The Viscount was on his feet now.
Reluctantly, Aaron turned his gaze from the tempest at his breakfast table, who was masquerading as a young lady. The Viscount’s expression had gone splotchy now. It was rather unpleasant to look at.
“I must beg your pardon, Your Grace,” Turner said desperately. “I—I have no words. Phoebe—for Christ’s sake, Phoebe! Can you not hold your tonguefor once? Your Grace, please. I beg for your patience. Hannah will return. And then, the wedding can proceed as planned.”
Aaron turned back to Miss Turner. Her eyes were sharp with fury—and maybe just a hint of satisfaction at the way that Aaron dismissed her father. He didn’t blame her. The man was an overbearing brute, and Aaron knew all too well the burden of being continually battered down by an unfeeling patriarch.
“I certainly hope you’re right,” Aaron said.
His words might have been for Turner, but his eyes never left Miss Turner’s, not for any part of it.
CHAPTER 6
Phoebe did not generally look to her father for good advice. Even so, she knew that even broken clocks were right twice a day, and her father likelyhadbeen sensible when he told her to hold her tongue.
It would not help Hannah for Phoebe to get into an argument with the man who was going to be her husband. Probably. Possibly. It would be better if she did not pick a fight with the Duke of Redcliff.
Her resolve lasted past dinner. That was a personal best!
But after supper—which Phoebe requested be sent to her room, citing a nonexistent headache that obscured a real fear that she’d get into a war over the soup course—she ran out of determination. Or rather, her determination to say something outweighed her determination to say nothing.
She found him in the library again.
This time, there was no amber liquid in his hand, but he still gazed impassively into the fire as he sat, a contemplative air about him. She almost hated to disturb him—she had the strange impression that he was the sort of man who didn’t get much in the way of peace—but she’d come this far.
Besides, once he had seen her, there wasn’t much else to do.
He sighed—a bit theatrically, Phoebe might have said.
“What can I help you with, Miss Turner?” he asked.
Phoebe promptly said theexactwrong thing.
“Do you realize that this is all your fault?”
She cringed as he turned slowly—theatricalagain, she thought—to regard her.
“Oh, please,” he drawled. He might not be drinking, but he was, apparently, at his leisure. “Tell me how.”
His tone was desert dry, clearly designed to dissuade her, but Phoebe was no shrinking flower—and he was notheradmiral.
“All you had to do was be just abitgentler.” She held two fingers close together to show just how little thisbitwas. “Just a tiny bit. And she wouldn’t have fled like a startled deer.”
“Hm,” he said.
Phoebe would have been prepared to blame his ducal status for just how desperately irritating he was, but she’d met the Duke of Wilds, who was married to her friend Ariadne.
David Nightingale was about as fun-loving as they came; before he’d met and fallen desperately in love with his wife, his love of the more ribald forms of fun had given him quite the reputation amongst theton. He had settled down since marrying—or at the very least, he’d started enjoying ribald fun with his wife instead of with various lovers—but he hadn’t become the over-starched, uptight, absolutebotherthat was the Duke of Redcliff.
