AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Plausible? Oh, yes. You’d be hard-pressed to bother with utensils the farther south you go. The indolence of the heat has much to answer for.”
“Ah, heat.” Alwyn sighed, and the lady blushed again. How easily discomposed she became when she was not about her apothecary business. “You will not find much of it here. Weather-wise.”
“You may have noticed I am not partial to the damp, given the number of garments I tend to wear.” She held out her arms in demonstration.
Should he take this opportunity to compare her to a bouquet of wool and her face to a little flower? He imagined how his lion would react, the disdain it would inspire—no, he would not. His hand gripped and gripped the handle of the lady’s basket thing as he fought down the remorse, the loss, the lack he carried within, his heart broken into a thousand pieces—
“…if I could run and warm myself, I would, but it is not done in England. Running, that is. Or more to the point, women running for exercise. I ran for my health in Greece, you see. Not only did we eat with our fingers, but we also raced like heathens along the beaches. It was quite wonderful. There was the marathon, in Ancient Greece—I wonder if thecursiohas its roots in that. I must remember to ask my brother, who will pull every relevant book off the shelf to prove or disprove this thesis…” Her tone, despite the meandering of her words, brought air back into his lungs.
Alwyn switched the basket thing to his other hand. “It is unfortunate, then”—his voice was a barely intelligible rasp—“that you will not be able to take part in it.”
The lady ably switched topics like a swallow in a susurration. “I don’t wish to brag, but I am quite fleet.”
“I suspect you succeed at all you undertake.” An impulse flared to make a leg and kiss her hand; ah, yes, that was it: the courtly movement his muscles remembered and his mind only now recalled. He stopped and she stopped and—and nothing. She stood and waited. She did not pry. He opened his mouth to speak—
A droning kind of cough interrupted them.
Blessed Palu, not another one!
***
A fidgety gent appeared, as was theversipellianwont, from thin air. He stood with his hands behind his back; his eyes glanced everywhere but nevertheless seemed to remain on her. Tabitha found it slightly alarming.
“How do, miss.” He bowed and beamed at her even as he kept one eye on the duke. “I am Beckett, of the coach house Becketts, and may I say we are all pleased to have you among us. And me, I mean I, most of all.” With a flourish, he withdrew his hands from behind his back and held out a small clay pot covered with a checkered cloth.
“Mr. Beckett, how do you do? I am Miss Barrington, and this is the Duke of Llewellyn.” Did one introduce a duke to a publican, or for that matter, a lion to a bee? “This is very thoughtful of you.” She tucked the jar into one of the trug’s pockets; in doing so, her arm brushed against His Grace’s. Ah: he tensed but did not withdraw. Such progress.
The bee gave his obeisance and, in fairness to him, managed the presence of a predator far, far above him in the chain with impressive aplomb. “Miss, I would like to know if you require an escort on Ostara Eve, and if so, I would be honored to have you on my arm.”
“I regret to say that O’Mara has deemed myself and my brother unready for such a celebration this early in our residence here.”
The duke moved closer to her; the bee was not intimidated in the least.
“Then I shall patiently wait for a more appropriate occasion.” He bowed to them both and hastened to leave, heading straight for the coach house, which was the site of much activity.
“I am wounded, Miss Barrington, that you did not tell Mr. Beckett you were already engaged.”
He was teasing her, surely. “Will it not be our secret?”
“Oh, yes.” If she wasn’t imagining things, his gravelly voice took on a distinct purr. “Let it be that. A secret. Between us.”
In her intent not to discomfit him, Tabitha had not truly looked the duke fully in the face. She had kept him in her sights, but she had not seen him full on, as it were. He was that bit taller than she, and while not as broad in the chest as, say, the Duke of Lowell, even in its poorly clothed state the impression his body made was that of many rangy muscles containing lithe force. They held a tension, but a fine one, an observant one, not one constructed entirely out of apprehension. She looked up into his eyes: hazel surrounded by that wealth of lashes, blond-tipped and unfairly lush. He hesitated to hold her gaze, but eventually, his rested on her face, his brows an expressive slash of dark brown, a contrast to his primarily blond…well, mane. And mane it was, as tangled and dry as it appeared. She suspected that if the snarls were worked through, it would rival even Lowell’s for length and lushness.
Would he allow her to touch his hair? She raised one hand slowly, and one of his brows arched slowly, and boldness rushed through her veins and—
“Good day.”
They sprang apart at O’Mara’s greeting. Tabitha pulled her hand back, and Llewellyn’s good humor drained away in an instant.
“O’Mara.” Tabitha found she had to clear her throat. “Are you well?”
“A question I am sure you are used to asking.”
“A question I suppose you need never ask, for you can sense it.”
“I sense many things.” The strawberry blond’s complexion flushed, not a reaction one expected from the stoic chamberlain. She appeared to make up for it by doing that thing she did, gazing into the distance; this time, her object was the duke, and she appeared utterly puzzled and then somewhat bereft, no matter how she insisted her feelings were left out of her work. The Omega opened her mouth to speak, stopped, and looked uncharacteristically disoriented.
“In all seriousness,” Tabitha was compelled to ask, “are you quite well?”
