“I heard the instructions.” Tommy pushed to her feet. “And I don’t need a chaperone. Iamthe chaperone. Don’t you two get up to anything but spooning and forking until I return.”
Chloe gave her a quelling look.
Tommy widened her eyes innocently and hobbled out the door.
Chloe turned back to Faircliffe. To buy Tommy time, Chloe needed to funnel all of the duke’s attention into explaining how one ate supper at a supper table. Easy. Innocent. No spooning or forking. Just a nice, long, boring speech about proper etiquette and table manners.
“What comes next?” she prompted with excess zeal, as if she were deeply invested in how best to unfold one’s serviette.
His attention was not on the place settings.
Faircliffe was staring at her as though what he’d most like to dine on was not dinner but Chloe. She could feel not just the heat of his gaze but the heat of his body.
Their chairs were placed too near. The folds of her skirt flirted with his ankle. They were close enough that their shoulders would touch if they were facing the table. Instead, they faced each other and breathed the electric air, feeling it crackle within their veins. He was much too close. Much, much too close.
“Fork,” she stammered. “Spoons.”
She wasn’t making any sense. He didn’t seem to notice. His gaze was on her parted lips, her flushed cheeks, her…hair?
“Most young ladies frame their entire faces with curls. You’ve just got the one. It should be unfashionable, but it suits you.”
She’d left acurl?
Chloe swatted at her hair in horror. She’d spent the morning daydreaming in her dressing room as she always did, and she wascertainshe’d remembered to uncurl every single painstaking ringlet she’d arranged in her hair.…
“Here,” Faircliffe said softly.
She froze, pinned in place like a trapped butterfly. She could not have moved if he paid her.
He reached up toward her ear. She could sense his hand long before she felt it. It was big, large enough to nestle her cheek into as he dragged his thumb across her lower lip or sank his fingers into her hair. She kept her neck as rigid as possible.
She felt the slight lift in pressure as her ringlet fell across his fingers. His gaze was not on the rebellious brown curl but on her mouth. She sank her teeth into her lower lip to keep it from parting in anticipation.
He tucked the curl behind her ear. That should have been all. But then his knuckles grazed her cheek once, twice. She became light-headed. It took all of her strength not to sway into his touch, just as she’d imagined.
“Your skin is so soft. I could—” Faircliffe seemed to collect himself and dropped his hands in his lap before clearing his throat. “I don’t subscribe toAckermann’s Repository, but you might find it in a lending library for a better idea of the current style.”
Chloe clenched her teeth to keep from retching. Of course she was not an irresistible siren. She was hisproject.
He was the overbearing, holier-than-thou nob who was helping.
She fiddled with her serviette and ignored the itch of embarrassment. This entireShow me how spoons workruse depended on him continuing to believe her a lost little fawn, helpless without his guidance. She would flounder through every social encounter, eternally unsuccessful in her alleged matchmaking endeavor, untilPuck & Familywas home safe and sound. That was the plan. It wasworking.
So why did it make her want to overturn the table?
“The ton is governed by rules, just like the rest of England,” Faircliffe was saying. “One needn’t like these rules. One needn’t even believe them good rules. But onemustfollow them.”
Chloe contemplated him in silence.
She’d long believed the pomp and circumstance of which rank preceded which into a dining room, and who sat where, as blatant examples of the “betters” keeping the “lessers” in their place.
She hadn’t considered that those same strictures might feel like a prison, even to the betters.
“Why must you follow the rules?” she asked, her voice quiet but curious. “Cannot even a duke do as he pleases?”
He gazed at her as if there were very many things he wished to have but could not.
“Very little that I do is to please myself. I must think first and foremost of my position. The estate, the staff, the tenants, the upkeep. And I must ensure everything passes on in the best condition I can make it.”
