I touched my cheek, almost as if I could feel Aunt Agnes’s hand imprinted there. “I’ve learned it is best to be cautious when one speaks.”
“Caution makes one tedious. Neither of us is suited for it.”
I smiled a little at that. “Think what you will, but my tongue is rather well-behaved when you are not present.”
“Because your aunt has bullied you for so long. Why do you allow it?” He shook his head. “You should speak your mind more often.”
“And use my words as a whip like you do?” My eyes widened at my own brazenness.
Yet his mouth curved up. “Ah, there’s the fire I speak of.”
“Well, it’s little wonder when you stoke it so.” I glared at him, though it soon became impossible to keep my cheeks from pushing up into a grin.
He laughed, a full expression of unchecked amusement.
“But it isn’t true. I have no fire at all when I’m around Robert.” The words tumbled out of me before the thought had even registered, but I felt the truth of them. The fire in the hearth popped, as if to accentuate the difference I felt between the two men. One was so calming, so steady. The other awakened a stormy turbulence in me that I was at a loss for explaining.
The duke’s gaze became sharp. “Robert—Mr. Nicholson—is your cousin?”
I nodded.
“The one who’s in love with you?” His eyebrow quirked up a fraction.
My mouth dropped open. “How did you . . . ?”
He slid his hand toward his knee. “For anyone who is looking, it would be hard to miss.”
I shook my head, still trying to fathom it. “Perhaps I am blind, then, for it took me by complete surprise.” The decision to reveal so much had not been a conscious one. The duke seemed able to pull truth from me with little effort. I wasn’t sure whether to be pleased to have someone in whom I could easily confide, or cautious, wary of revealing more than I ought.
He sat forward expectantly. “Tell me.”
I hedged. “Surely you do not wish to be bored by the details, Your Grace.” I bit my lip as an idea came to me. “Unless, of course, you’d care to offer some advice.”
He turned himself further toward me so we were almost facing one another. Perhaps we were not as close as I imagined, but my heart thumped wildly all the same. “I’d be glad to hear the story and offer some advice—if you promise to stop calling me ‘Your Grace.’”
“And call you Halstead?” I scoffed. “You would tease me endlessly about not being a lady.”
“Since I already do, you have nothing to lose.”
I tilted my head, considering. “Next you’ll be asking if you can call me Juliet.”
He gave me a devilish grin. “It would put us on more equal footing if I put aside my gentlemanly behavior.”
“Your mother clearly did not discipline you enough in your growing-up years.” I shot him a disapproving look.
“Oh, but she did, Juliet. And so did my governess. It did no good.”
“You’re incorrigible,” I said, loving the sound of my name on his tongue.
“You are not the first to say so. Now, let us return to this story of yours.”
I looked up, trying to decide where to begin. Suddenly I felt hesitant to share so much of myself. “Yes, well. All right. It all started about a month ago—”
He waved a hand and cut me off. “Forgive me for interrupting, but it clearly started before that.”
“Oh, you mean Robert fell in love with me before that?” I paused and thought for a moment. “I suppose that’s true.”
“If you hope for me to give you sound advice, you must start at the beginning. When did you first come to live with your aunt?”
I rubbed at my brow. “Right after my father died. I was eleven. Harry was a baby.” I still remembered holding him tightly against me, hating when Aunt Agnes ordered he be taken up to the nursery. It was such a dark time, one I usually blocked from memory.
“And how old were your cousins?”
His attentiveness threw me off balance, making my brain all a muddle. I was not accustomed to anyone but Robert listening to me with such interest. “Let’s see . . . Robert would have been fifteen, and Hugh was seventeen.”
He nodded. “And did you get on with them?”
I shook my head. “Not at first. I spent most of my time in the nursery with Harry. He would cry whenever I left. Slowly, he became less anxious, but I still felt lost, devastated as I was by my father’s death. I don’t think I spoke a word to anyone for the first several months we were there.”
What I remembered most about Lymington Park was how cold and formal it had seemed, with little tolerance for my grief. So different from the warm and inviting home I had grown up in. More than once I’d wished my mother had let us stay back in our smaller but cozier home, where love and laughter had permeated the walls and memories of my father hadn’t seemed so far away.
Looking up, I waited for Halstead’s teasing. Instead his eyes held a shadowed grief, as if he mourned for the eleven-year-old girl I once was. Emotion caught in my throat, and I tried to clear it.
“That’s a great deal of change for a young girl to take in,” he finally said.
“Yes,” I agreed. “I am grateful Harry was too young to feel it or remember it now.” If it hadn’t been for his sweet babyish babbling, the tug of his hand in mine, I wouldn’t have been able to stand those months of anguish. I pursed my lips together, trying to push through the grief that threatened my composure.
“Where is
