Page 10 of The Duke’s Hidden Runaway Bride

It was funny, and there was no hook in it that she could find. No one had been funny with her merely for the pleasure of making her smile for longer than she could remember.

She took his arm.

She told herself it was only sense, the slope being treacherous and her feet numb with cold inside her boots, the excuse a lady might make for accepting a gentleman’s support. She knew it for a lie and let it stand anyway.

They went up the hill together, and she did not fall.

She managed not to speak for most of the way back to the house. Then, in the great hall, with the greenery piled and steaming faintly in the heat of the fire, her undoing was completed by a hoop of bent withies and Adrian’s cheerful inability to make a kissing bough.

“Miss Jones, I am at your disposal,” he said. “Teach me to be of use. I am told it builds character, and mine is by all accounts in need of extensive repairs.”

There was no help for it.

They sat at the long table with the hoop between them, and Ophelia showed him how to bind the crossed circles into a globe and twine bay, rosemary, and holly through the frame, the bruised leaves giving up their scent under his clumsy fingers. Rosy crab apples and candle ends were fixed among the greenery. At the heart of it all went a sprig of mistletoe with its waxy white berries.

“One berry is plucked for every kiss,” she told him, “and when the berries are gone, the kissing is done. That is the rule of it, Your Grace. My mother taught me.”

His hands stilled.

The question showed briefly in his face, and Ophelia braced herself for it, yet he only returned his attention to the ribbon.

“Your mother sounds a very interesting woman.”

She did not say anything in response, because she could not think of a single thing to say that would not lead to dangerous territory.

He asked nothing more, and his silence felt more dangerous than the question would have done.

She busied herself, bent her head over the greenery. “That knot will not hold, Your Grace.”

“It has held me for several minutes.” He had his finger caught in the loop; tugging only tightened it.

Ophelia shook her head and pulled the trailing end, freeing him instantly. “You are not part of the kissing bough.”

“That explains a great deal.”

“Principally why no one has hung you from the ceiling.”

The answer escaped before she could stop it.

He looked at her, delighted.

For an instant she remembered too late that Olivia Jones did not say such things. Then his smile caught at her, and another witty remark escaped her lips, and another.

When his next knot collapsed, she called him the most helpless duke in Christendom.

“I cannot be the most helpless,” he protested. “There are Russian grand dukes. One of them must be worse.”

“You are the most helpless duke presently in Wales.”

“I accept the distinction.”

He indicated a crooked crab apple for her judgment.

“Hopeless,” she said.

“Cruel woman. I had begun to think there was kindness in you.”

“You have mistaken competence for kindness.”