Charlotte Featherstone - Pride & Passion

She couldn’t understand it, this new reaction in her body whenever Sussex’s cool gray eyes locked with hers. Every nerve ending seemed overly sensitized and raw; her spine tingled with warning and a sense of foreboding she had never once experienced in the presence of another man. Sussex had a way of looking at her that made her think he was peeling back her carefully placed layers and peeking into the core of her. It was disconcerting, his way, and no less now, when his gaze briefly flickered along her face. For Lucy knew that despite that deft sweep of his eyes, the duke missed nothing.

For all his propriety, his grace never let on that they had drawn their respective lines in the sand. Lucy found herself wondering if the duke ever thought of that afternoon, and what he had discovered of her past. No doubt it riled his sense of propriety and surely he now found her lacking and utterly unsuitable in the role of his duchess.

There was relief in that thought. Now if only her father would accept the fact that his grace would no longer be calling upon them.

“For heaven’s sake, Sussex. Take your sweets and go along with you,” Elizabeth muttered, which made Sussex grin. And that grin … what it did to his normally somber face. Lucy found herself blinking in surprise, and … no, not wonder. She would never admire his grace in that fashion. Yes, he was tall, dark and very handsome. But there wasn’t anything about the duke that tempted her. He was rigid and controlled, stuffy and proper. Aloof and cool, which only made her realize how very much like her father he was. And that sort of man was the furthest kind she desired. She craved warmth, and emotional intimacy. Never would she marry the sort of a man her father was. Her mother may have chosen her cold, polite matrimonial bed, but Lucy would not endure the same in her marriage.

From across the tea table, the duke studied her, and Lucy suffered beneath that heavy, watchful stare. How he looked at her … there was something vaguely familiar about that stare, but of course she was being fanciful. His were not the eyes she had seen in her vision when she visited the Scottish Witch. She was sure of it.

“Are you quite finished pillaging our tea tray, Adrian?” Lizzy demanded. “We have a pressing matter of business yet to discuss.”

“Dear me, Lizzy, your mood has turned sour since I left. What has transpired to make you so irritable?”

“How can you be so obtuse, brother? Your arrival has put a damper on our conversation.”

His dark brows rose in question, causing a scar that bisected the left one to be more noticeable. “What then were you discussing when I arrived that I might not listen to now?”

“Nothing that need concern you,” Elizabeth muttered.

“Ah, gossip, then,” he said then focused his attention on Lucy. “Do you enjoy it?”

“Enjoy what, your grace?”

He didn’t blink, but kept his cool, steady gaze upon her. His mouth was set in a grim, disapproving line. “Gossip, Lady Lucy. Do you enjoy indulging in such pastimes as spreading tales about others?”

The censure with which he had asked his question did not dissuade her from answering. “You would be hard-pressed to find a tea table devoid of gossip.”

“But it is not others I am inquiring about. I am asking about you. Do you , Lady Lucy, enjoy gossip?”

She met his gaze head-on, refusing to be intimidated by his blatant reproof. Obviously he held himself above the lesser mortals who found tittle-tattle a tempting sin. Such a virtue he was! Lucy could not admit that she was of a like mind. She had found gossip much too helpful to disregard it altogether.

“Well?” he asked again.

“I, like so many people, find it vastly amusing, your grace.”

Cocking his head, he studied her through narrowed eyes as though she were a new species of beetle stuck to a felt board by a stickpin. “I don’t think you do. You merely partake of it because it is an expected requirement at such gatherings, as well of your station. Your heart, I think, is never fully in it.”

She flushed, but forced herself to stay steady and still. “I wonder why you asked then, in the first place?”

“I am merely trying to make out your personality, Lady Lucy. There are so many sides to it, one wonders who you truly are. Or indeed, if you know who you are.”

“Your grace, you are too bold.”

“Insufferable, isn’t he?” Elizabeth said as she glared to where Sussex sat next to her on the settee. “Very bad manners, Sussex.”

“Apologies. It is just that I cannot imagine that you take joy in laughing at another’s expense. To be amused by someone else’s misfortune or folly? You are too softhearted for that.”

She sniffed, despising him for making her feel things she did not care to admit to, for seeing that beneath her aloof facade to the soft core she had tried to harden through the years. She didn’t want him to know she was soft and kind and so easily hurt. She would rather he think her a lofty, snobbish woman who had fallen low for the sins of the flesh. Far better to be considered a cold woman than a weak one. One could not be timid and easily damaged when one moved about the ton. It was as deadly as a three-legged gazelle amidst a pride of lions. With such an obvious weakness, they would run her to ground and devour her whole. Far better to possess the hide and horn of the rhino.

The facade of the uncaring society lady was her favorite and most often employed shield, and to have his grace take it from her, really was rather harrowing. Having him peek deep inside her was downright frightening. She had not shared herself with another since she was twelve—not even Thomas had been given a look into her soul.

“I am right, aren’t I?” he asked, his voice dropping to a husky purr. He spoke as though they were alone, as if his sister and Isabella were not present. He was far too familiar, and she didn’t like it. How he seemed able to command the room, the conversation, and even more frightening, her emotions.

Gathering her courage, and stiffening her spine, Lucy prepared to meet his challenge. “I suppose you think you’re always correct in your assumptions and estimations, your grace. But in this matter, I must strike a blow to your vanity, for you are indeed wrong.”

His smile temporarily disarmed her. “No, I don’t believe I am. You talk of gossip because it is expected. Not because you enjoy it, and the pain it causes others.”

She was right. The duke did see far too much—she could not run from the truth now. “Well, it is vastly more entertaining, and I suppose ego sparing to talk of another than our own follies, wouldn’t you agree, your grace? It at least allows one a moment of reprieve from the prying eyes of others,” she snapped, while shooting him a meaningful glare.

“You use gossip as a shield, then?”

Lucy was conscious of the way Isabella’s head seemed to volley back and forth between their increasingly heated banter. If she were thinking clearly, Lucy would back down, but there was something about Sussex that riled her. She would never bow to him, never let him needle her. Therefore, she would continue this strange, far too familiar conversation. “Who does not use gossip as a weapon, or defense, your grace?”

“And what secrets have you to hide that you would not wish others to pry into?”

“Adrian, you beast!” Elizabeth scolded. “I vow you are merely toying with my guests, much like a cat with a mouse. Pay him no heed, Lucy. He enjoys these little debates, you see, and has quite forgotten that he is in polite company, and not the men of his club.”

Sussex blatantly ignored Elizabeth, and kept his gaze trained on her. “Or do you use it to keep others at bay, Lady Lucy? From straying too close to what you do not wish them to discover, which would be you, and who you truly are?”