Page 21 of A Baby for the Duke

The gown came off in one motion. He watched the line of it go, shoulder and waist and the shadow of a loosened plait falling forward as she bent her head, and every rational thought in his head went out like a candle in a draft.

A hackney sped past him. He did not hear it.

Leave, man.

Instead, he opened the door and stepped inside.

The bell rang, and three faces turned.

“Your Grace!” Lady Huntington greeted in the tone of a woman witnessing the Second Coming.

“Lady Huntington.” He bowed. “Lady Marina.”

“Your Grace.” Lady Marina looked at him, then at the screen, then back at him.

Colin realized that he had been in the room for eight seconds and had already been read by a woman of one-and-twenty in a riding habit.

“I am buying linen for my daughter,” he explained.

It came out of him like a man laying down a card he knew to be too low.

“Oh, the dear little⁠—”

“Mama,” called a voice from behind the screen, “who is it?”

Leonora stepped around the screen with her hair hanging down her back, in a nightgown of white gauze so fine that he could see her curves, and stopped.

Nobody said anything at all.

Colin was aware of the shop. He was aware of the woman with the tape measure, and of Lady Huntington’s hands going up, and of the fact that his own hand had closed hard enough on the string of a parcel to cut it.

He was aware, most of all, of the pulse in his ears, and of a stretch of bare collarbone and one bare foot on a Turkish carpet, and of the color crawling up Leonora’s throat as she realized what she was standing in.

She made a strangled noise and went back behind the screen so fast that the whole frame rocked.

“Well,” Lady Huntington said faintly. “Well.”

Colin turned to the modiste. “Madame, everything the lady has been shown today, everything she has tried on and everything she has said no to, have it made and send the bill to Thorton.”

“Your Grace, the lady has not⁠—”

“Everything,” he repeated, dropping a few coins on the counter to stop the woman from talking, before picking up his parcels.

He turned toward the screen. Behind it, Leonora had gone utterly still.

“It was a pleasure running into you, Lady Leonora.” He heard his own voice come out lower than he had intended and did nothing about it.

There was a pause.

“And you,” replied the screen. Then one eye and a fall of light brown hair appeared around the edge of it, no more than three inches.

Colin caught the look before she could take it back, held it, and watched her go scarlet all over again.

“I’ll see you at the wedding,” he said, then walked out into Bruton Street.

CHAPTER 8

Leonora gave up at one in the morning and lit the candle again.