Page 25 of A Spinster's Guide to Landing a Lyon

Make this life your own. No one else will do that for you.

Your truly,

Mrs. Dove-Lyon

“Ahhh…isn’t that fresh breeze just what one needs after a megrim?” Arabella grinned at her sister in the most annoying fashion that only a younger sister can pull off. It was halfway between teasing and arrogant. The perfect mixture to get underneath Amelia’s skin.

Or perhaps she was more vexed that it was less fresh air and more wood, cedar, and spice that her nose was picking up on.

It wouldn’t do to take more than a couple of steps before answering, but when she did manage a response, she spoke through a tight smile. “Yes. It’s pure delight to be out here. I hope those clouds will hold for us.”

Arabella gave her a shrug and passed her with a soft brush of the shoulder. “You could just be happy, you know?”

She barely managed to refrain from scoffing.

How utterly ridiculous, not to mention exasperating, that Arabella could prance down the garden as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

Perhaps Amelia was doing too much to shield her sister from the realities of what could happen by week’s end. If their father came back with his choice of a husband, the flouncing and prancing in Arabella’s steps would surely be stilled. And no one wanted that.

It was a wonder their father had chosen as he did, but he must not know of the animosity between the two.

In all likelihood, that man—Nicholas Alexander, Duke of Westshire—was the only person on the planet with whom Arabella had any hostilities whatsoever.

Everyone liked her sister. She was spritely. Like a fairy. At any moment you might think she’d flap her wings and take off. It was her whimsy and compassion that made her lovable. Like the time she delivered fresh flowers and soap to one of the tenants that had become a new mother last spring.

And here she was, facing ruination, yet she was optimistic that everything would work out. She was either very hopeful or very naive. Perhaps both. And maybe that’s even the way it was supposed to be.

But to Amelia, it was pure foolishness to let herself think she could be happy. There was too much at stake right now. It was not time to play around and dabble in the world of feelings and dreams.

Let her dreams—of Benedict—be just that. Dreams.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the man of her dreams bend at the waist and lean forward into a wild rose bush.

She couldn’t pull her gaze away as he closed his eyes and inhaled. He had a look of delight on his face.

The arrogant, rude, standoffish duke was stopping to smell the flowers. What was next? Would she find him cuddling a puppy? Swaddling a baby?

This was too much. He was supposed to be for her sister. She couldn’t allow herself to think—

“Ow!” he—the rose-smelling, puppy-cuddling, baby-swaddling, dream-invading duke—yelped.

She rushed to his side, taking his hand in hers to examine the cut. “What were you thinking?”

“Just stopping to smell the roses.” He pulled his finger to his lips to soothe the scratch. Her eyes were locked on his mouth. In fact, her hand was still wrapped around his. Warmth flooded her system.

Forcing a swallow, she decided that admonishment was the best way forward. “Well, you didn’t have to touch it. They have thorns, you know.”

His eyes didn’t leave hers. “Sometimes you just want to touch something pretty. Even if it has thorns.”

She tsked at him as she withdrew her hand and reached down to tear off a small piece of her hem. “Here.” She pressed the cloth onto the wound and held it there, not willing to let him take care of his own injury. If one could even call a scratch that small an injury.

“You’re such a mother.” A few crinkles at the corner of his eyes teased her, while his lip rounded upward.

“What?”

“Ripping the hem of your own dress to nurse someone else’s wound.”

“I’m not a mother. I’m just the eldest sister.”