Page 57 of The Duke’s Masked Wallflower

“Yes, well... It brings out... your jaw tonight, Your Grace.” She winced, pain sweeping over her face. “I meant to say... the contours of your jaw... which is strong and fine, like you.”

Gabriel choked slightly on his wine.

“I only mean to say... I have noticed it. Many women must notice it, and your finer qualities.”

“Well...” He looked up at the chandelier to stop himself from laughing. What the devil was wrong with her? “I cannot say my jaw has drawn particular comment until tonight.”

“Then...” She shook her head, visibly struggling. “People were not looking closely enough.”

Gabriel waited until the servant served them before he leaned forward and smiled. “You are very free with your compliments this evening, Miss Winthrop. Should I be alarmed? Has something happened?”

“No! You are simply... a very... complimentable gentleman... I think.”

“For someone who reads as much as you do, I would have expected a tighter command of the English language. That cannot be a word.”

He glanced across the table without quite meaning to and found James watching them both with a blank stare.

Gabriel returned his attention to his plate, unsettled. Rosalie continued to compliment him, gently and artfully, at intervals throughout the remainder of the meal. How nice his conversation was, and how lovely his hospitality was; the deliciousness of the dish had just been set before them, and the perfect luminescence of the room. Every saccharine word sat wrong. The sweetness of her was almost unbearable.

Is she trying to spoil herself in my eyes? He thought once the dessert course arrived. Is she purposefully trying to imitate the young ladies she knows I despise, after that foolish moment in the meadow, and the way I drunkenly apprehended her before that? She must have sensed my desire for her. She must have sensed it, and loathed it, and therefore assigned herself the task of making herself undesirable to me.

After the meal, the ladies withdrew to the drawing room to begin preparing their poems for the evening’s entertainment. He mulled over the last of his Madeira wine alone, trying not to feel hurt by Rosalie’s forced change of temperament. James caught his eye across the quickly emptying table and rose.

“Was there something wrong with your dinner companion tonight?” James asked when he arrived beside Gabriel, a hand on the back of his chair. “You look... put out.”

“You would not believe me if I told you,” Gabriel said, confused, as he downed the last of his sweet wine. “But you noticed she was different?”

“I scarcely recognized her when she walked in,” James concurred. “What did you do to her?”

“Me?” Gabriel drew back. “I did nothing to her.”

“Curious.” James tapped the back of his chair. “I quite like the way she looked before.”

“Yes,” Gabriel agreed, turning his glass to the light. It cast patterns on the mahogany table. “So did I.”

“You seem...” James stopped himself, but a look from Gabriel encouraged him to continue. “I did not expect that anything about Miss Winthrop could rattle you quite so much. Perhaps that was my mistake. You are rattled. Do you want me to have a word with her?”

“Even if I did wish that, I do not know what I would want you to say.”

James smiled. “That you are mad for her, and that you find her lovely in ways you can scarcely express, even to me?”

“No,” Gabriel said, not because it was not true, but because the words made him feel hot and restless all over. “She does not need to hear anything like that from either of us. She should be left alone.”

“If you want my advice, whatever she has done to displease you should be pointed out to her.” James straightened and looked toward the door. “It is a difficult task to tell a woman when she has erred, more difficult even than to tell her when she has stepped correctly. But it is necessary if you want this courtship to continue. And you do want it to continue, do you not?

That was the problem, Gabriel thought. Pretend or real, short-lived or not, I have no idea what I want anymore from our courtship... or from her.

Despite this, he found her sometime later on an upstairs balcony. The poetry session was halfway through, and it had been suggested that the guests should take a break for air. Rosalie had slipped out of the room first with a word to Lady Howard, who had become fast friends with Charlotte and Tiffany, and was talking in a little knot with them by the fire.

The balcony was only large enough for two people and opened from one of the windows in the upstairs gallery. It overlooked the park at the back of the house, so far elevated that he could see where the forest began and ended, the meadow tucked somewhere within.

Rosalie leaned against the iron railing. She had taken off one glove and was turning it over, looking out at the darkness. For a moment, before she heard him, she looked like herself again.

He cleared his throat to announce his arrival, the rest of the guests far away on the floor below.

She startled and straightened, snapping back into place. “Your Grace... I did not think anyone would follow me out.”

“Your mistake, not mine.” He lingered in the open window, then stepped out. “I would like to know what has happened to you since this morning, Ros.”