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“For once, we agree on something.”
“Did you find me distasteful?” Francesca said and immediately wanted to clamp a hand over her stupid mouth. He’d shoved her away with such alacrity, however, that she couldn’t help but wonder if he found her lacking. But what was she thinking? Of course, he’d find her clumsy charms lacking in the face of the countless beauties he’d likely had relations with, Francesca thought with an inward snort. That reality should have been a relief, yet she could only feel a mortifying sense of insecurity and an infuriating twinge of jealously, one that immediately faded away as he directed a heated stare in her direction.
“Distasteful?” he repeated, a rather rakish grin spreading over his face. “You are far from that, I assure you.”
Her heart stuttered. “Then perhaps don’t shove me away like a hot lump of coal.”
He shrugged. “Contrary to what you may believe, I can be a gentleman from time to time. I’m sure being caught with me in a darkened Vauxhall path is the last thing you want.”
There was a perplexing twinge of bitterness to the statement, and Francesca felt compelled to correct him on the matter. “I don’t want to be caught alone with anyone.”
“You soothe my aching heart with such words,” he replied, his tone suggesting that he did not believe her in the slightest.
She bristled. “I mean it. They’ll talk no matter who I am seen with. I’ve already stained myself in their eyes.” She could have liaisons with twenty men or none at all, and still society would brand her as they wished.
“Ah, but you’d be able to marry a proper gentleman if caught with him.”
“I can marry whomever I wish,” she snapped back. Not that being found in a compromising position necessitated her marrying any longer, anyway. Which was why this impulsive kiss had been so foolish to begin with. She’d not become betrothed after being spotted, and neither did she want the scandal of doing so to add to an already unbearable load of derision.
“Even me?” he asked mockingly.
“Yes, even you,” she shot back. Not that she would ever tie herself to such an infuriating man. They’d likely murder each other within the first year.
Her response seemed to take him off guard as he stared at her in silence, his mouth pulling into a frown. “I’d be a terrible husband.”
“Of that I have no doubt, which is why I would never marry you, even if someone had seen us.”
“Yet, you just said—”
“I said that I’d be able to, not that I’d want to. Your status has nothing to do with your unsuitability.” Hell, at this rate, her parents would likely do a jig on the dinner table if she managed to get herself betrothed to such an obscenely wealthy man after everything, good breeding or no.
He stared at her for another moment before bursting into laughter. “My, you certainly have a way of killing a man’s ardor. What a perplexing creature you are.”
A man’s ardor.A flush crept through her. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been the subject of such feelings in her entire life. Of course, just her luck, it was Arthur bloody Barrow who was expressing such sentiments. Certainly nothing for her to be thrilled about. Nothing at all.
“You’re quite pretty when you blush,” Barrow said warmly, a tenderness in his tone that did nothing to lessen the unwanted butterflies fluttering in her belly.
Francesca was saved from having to form a reply when loud footfalls sounded from a few feet away, Kitty and her ducal husband popping out from one of the branching paths a moment later.
“There you two are,” the duchess exclaimed happily, leaving Ashford’s side to trot up to Francesca. “We were tasked by Amberwood and Sophie to find you.”
“Until you became sidetracked, of course,” the duke chimed in languidly.
“And whose fault is that?” Kitty replied, her hands on her hips.
“Yours,” he deadpanned, though a small smile teased at the corner of his mouth. “Not that I was complaining.”
The duchess coughed in a rather unladylike manner and turned back to Francesca. “I hope you weren’t waiting too long.”
Francesca shook her head. “No, we were just about to turn around when you appeared. It was a lovely stroll, even if Mr. Barrow likes to needle me.”
Kitty cocked her head and examined Francesca, narrowing her eyes in that contemplative way of hers. “Just a stroll?”
Francesca briefly eyed Barrow as he began a muted conversation with Ashford. She watched his sensuous lips move as he spoke, the memory of them upon her own still entirely fresh in her mind. “Yes, just a stroll.”
The duchess gave her a secretive smile. “Well, whatever you say. Let us get back before your cousin has an apoplexy.”
A wave of embarrassment swept through her upon realizing that the snapping twig may not have been an animal after all. Fighting her blush, Francesca nodded serenely. “Yes, I am quite famished.”
