Nottingvale hung back with her.
“Why aren’t you up front and in the center?” Cynthia demanded.
There was that quick, crooked smile again. “Have you heard my singing voice?”
Fair point.
His grin widened. “I rest my case.”
“It’s not theworstsinging voice,” she hedged.
He hummed the first few bars ofA Soldier Goes A-Wenching.
She clapped her mittens to the sides of her head. “My ears... Should they be bleeding like this?”
His dark eyes were curious. “You have a strange way of flirting.”
“I’m notflirtingwith you,” she said, aghast. “I’m an—”Ape leader. “—a chaperone. I want you to marry my cousin, the tremendously respectable Lady Gertrude.”
“Whilst you go wenching amongst the soldiers?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
He chuckled.
What was happening? None of this was right.
They were yards behind the rest of the group, who appeared to be singing merrily about Wenceslas, rather than wenching.
The duke’s eyes were on her, not his guests. “I didn’t send you that first invitation until my sister forced my hand.”
“Yes,” Cynthia said. “How thoughtful of you to point out my lack of welcome.”
“The oversight was foolish of me.” His lips twisted in self-deprecation. “You should write a ditty about that.”
“I’ve written plenty of inappropriate ditties about you,” she assured him, and immediately wished she hadn’t.
He was too close.
A few tendrils of wavy brown hair curled out from under his top hat. The faint stubble along his chiseled jaw wasright there, the sharp folds of his cravat pointing straight at it, as if daring her to brush her thumb against his rough skin and feel his warmth for herself.
She kept her thumbs tucked safely inside her mittens.
A gust of cold air whipped through the evergreens. She turned her face toward it, allowing the wind to flutter her bonnet as a distraction.
“Here,” he said. “Let me help.”
“No,” she whispered, orwouldhave whispered, if she had any power to make words at all.
The sound that escaped her throat sounded more like the whimper of a kitten.
He loosened the ribbon about her chin and set about retying it, his face an adorable mask of concentration as his knuckles grazed her cheek and neck.
He wasn’treallytouching her. He was wearing gloves. Touching did not count unless it was skin-to-skin, like, say,kissing, which she was not fantasizing breathlessly aboutat all.
“There,” he said. “How is your dog doing?”
Dog? Cynthia didn’t have a…
