Page 57 of Unbound Duchess

“Maybe I could have gotten farther if you had not intervened,” she accused.

Laurence raised a single brow, but did not reply.

“He was getting angry. He was getting ready to slip. I am sure of it,” she pressed on.

“Oh, I am sure he was,” Laurence agreed coldly.

It caught Ellen off guard that he was agreeing with her, but she continued.

“I think I almost had him. I slipped up once, yes, but I almost had it turned around.”

“I know you did,” Laurence said, agreeing with her again in that same cold tone.

Both confused and irritated now, Ellen pressed her lips together in a firm line. She then gasped as both of Laurence’s hands wrapped around her waist and picked her up, spinning her in a controlled circle before putting her gracefully back down on her feet. She looked at him as if he were mad for a second, but then noted that the rest of the dancers were performing the same exact step. Even when arguing, Laurence seemed always to be aware of his surroundings.

She couldn’t help but admire him for that. Ellen took a moment to draw in a cooling breath, willing her irritation to fade a little more.

“If you knew that I had it handled,” she said when she felt calmer, “then why did you intervene?”

Laurence’s jaw ticked as another spark of golden rage erupted in his green eyes.

“Because he was about to put his hands on you,” he said with lethal disgust. “And that, I could not allow. I promised you my protection, and I was not about to break that promise just for a tidbit of information that might have been proven useful.”

Part of Ellen wanted to hang onto a bit of her irritation just a little longer. To use it, perhaps, to try to speak to Benedict one last time after the dance. Yet as she tried to keep the emotion tight within her grip, she felt it bleed through her fingers and dissolve into nothing.

“As I said, you were not ready,” Laurence said under his breath after a moment of silence. “That you moved through your fear is admirable, but you should not have allowed Solomon to persuade you into taking on a task you were not ready for.”

“It needed to be done,” she said with an exhausted sigh.

“What you need is to learn how to say no,” Laurence retorted.

Ellen let out a tired laugh.

“I know how to say no,” she replied.

“Not well enough, obviously,” he replied, pulling her closer as the rhythm of the song drew into a slower beat. “Do not worry, though,” he whispered, his lips grazing her ear in a way that made a shiver of need pass down her spine. “I shall teach you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“It looked as if you two were having an interesting night,” Madalene said coyly.

It was the next morning, and as had been their routine for the last week, she and Ellen were walking arm in arm toward the dining hall to break their fast.

“Interesting,” Ellen echoed, her thoughts racing back to the night before.

“That is…one way to put it, I suppose.”

Madalene sighed as she shook her head.

“I cannot get a grasp on what you and my brother are,” she confessed. “You both say that this marriage is a deal of sorts. Yet last night I saw you two. On the stairs when he had his arms around you. On the dance floor as he led you. There is a spark between you two. Yet you both seem insistent on denying it.”

Ellen’s mind churned with several thoughts, all leading in differing directions.

“It was a play of sorts,” she said after a moment.

Madalene chortled.

“A play,” she repeated. “Well, be careful, my darling. It seems you're both blurring the lines between your characters and your true selves.”