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He cocked his head at her sideways. “You asked me that a moment ago. I already answered.”
She raised her fingertips to massage her forehead. “I remember.”
“I have a long-standing history with music,” Sophia said with a sad shake of her head. “It makes me forget things. And it has gotten me into more than one predicament.”
“Like finding your way into my chambers in the dead of night?” he prompted.
“Exactly.” She raised a fingernail to her mouth and began to nibble it. “Yet the music here doesn’t affect me like yours does.” She stepped toward him and laid a hand upon his chest. “I don’t understand it, but you do strange things to me.”
He didn’t understand it, either. “The feeling is mutual, I assure you.” He covered her hand with his and didn’t let it go even when she tugged it. She softened against him.
“You know what I am,” she said as she laid her cheek against his chest, right over his heart.
“I can assure you that I know nothing.” He raised a hand and gently teased the tendrils of hair that had escaped her coiffure.
“You’re a dangerous man,” she said quietly, raising her head to look him in the eye, finally. He stiffened. He couldn’t help it. In this moment, with this lady, he didn’t want to be the dangerous Duke of Robinsworth. He wanted to be Ashley Trimble, there to court Sophia Thorne. But that was not to be, evidently.
“I’m no more dangerous than I was those nights you stole into my room. No more dangerous than I was when we shared time in the garden.” He didn’t want to beg for her favor and, in fact, refused to do so.
“But you are, because now you know my secret.”
Ashley snorted. He knew nothing. Absolutely nothing. “Something happened in the village,” he began.
“Yes, it did,” she said, cutting his words short. “Something that never should have happened. You were not to know.”
He chuckled, a self-deprecating sound if he’d ever heard one. “I can assure you that what I know is just enough to leave me flummoxed.”
“I won’t be here much longer. In your world,” she began. Her pretty hazel eyes welled with unshed tears, and a piece of Ashley’s heart might as well have broken in two.
“My world is your world,” he tried. “It doesn’t matter that I’m a duke. Society means nothing to me.”
She shook her head. “You saw me use my magic with your very own eyes. And yet you still think I’m from your world.” She spun away from him. “I’m not. And I cannot be.”
“Magic.”
She spun quickly to face him. “Magic!” she said loudly, raising her hands in the air as though calling him forward to brawl with her. “I am magical.”
He chuckled. “Yes, you are.”
A grin tugged at her lips. God, she was pretty when she smiled. “You are incorrigible.” She waved at him in dismissal and turned back to face the window. “I don’t know what you want from me,” she said on a long exhale.
“I want to spend time with you.”
“I don’t have time to give you. I must return home soon.”
“Where is home?”
Both he and she said at the same time, “I’m certain you’ve never heard of it.”
She laughed and shook her head. “We have had this conversation before.”
“I vaguely remember that it didn’t scare me from your side the first few times we had it.” He probably looked like a green lad, begging for a lass’s favor. He swiped a hand down his face and grunted at the lingering pain in his nose.
“How is your nose?” she asked quickly, approaching him from across the room. She stopped and looked up at him, appraising his nose a mite too closely.
“Healing.”
She nodded. “Good.”
