When Marrying a Duke...

Transfixed, Max stared at her. Marietta Westwood was unspoiled, without artifice or pretence, young and naïve and realistic. Her irresistible smile doused his momentary irritation and brought an answering smile to his lips. ‘Long may you continue to do so.’

Marietta turned and looked at him. In his late twenties, Lord Trevellyan’s potent attraction to women was a topic of much scintillating feminine gossip among the ladies, young and old, in the colony, and as Marietta gazed into those cynical grey eyes, she suddenly felt herself drawn to him as if by some overwhelming magnetic force. Understanding was in his eyes, along with a touch of humour. It was these things, as well as his dark good looks and blatant virility, that impelled women towards him, even though their attentions went unrewarded, for he ignored them all. He was so worldly, so experienced, that he clearly understood them. He understood her, and although it was obvious he didn’t approve of her, he accepted her for what she was, with all her faults.

‘Are you going to return to your wife?’ she asked. ‘She might want you to dance with her.’ A strange expression crossed his face, as if he were struggling to master some emotion—anger, she thought.

‘Not yet.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because, Miss Inquisitive Westwood, she’s dancing with someone else.’

‘I know—Teddy—my father’s business partner.’

His smile disappeared and his face darkened. ‘I am aware of that.’

Marietta tilted her head to one side and considered him quizzically. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Should I mind?’

‘Since it’s the custom to dance with different partners when one attends a ball, then I don’t think you should.’

‘Then I don’t.’

Unaware of his sudden change in attitude, Marietta proceeded to delight Lord Trevellyan with a wickedly humorous description of some of the events she’d attended on the island and some funny stories acquainted with the people she knew. She told him of how, on one of her trips to Kowloon on one of her father’s boats, Teddy, who was leaning comfortably against the side of the boat and made soporific by the warmth of the sun and the lulling of the waves, had fallen into a doze and slipped overboard.

‘You managed to pull him back aboard, I see,’ Lord Trevellyan remarked somewhat drily.

‘But of course. He was most indignant about it and was sure someone must have pushed him in.’

Inexperienced and unsophisticated as she was, Max was fascinated by her clever tongue, by her sharp mind and the fount of knowledge she stored about others as she went on to relate other tales, her olive-green eyes shining into his.

Marietta smiled at him impudently, surprising him with her next question. ‘Why don’t you want to dance with your wife?’

He drew back. ‘Because I’m not in the mood.’

They both turned to look at the dancers twirling around the polished dance floor. As if on cue and within three yards of the darkening veranda, his wife and Teddy waltzed by. Lady Trevellyan’s eyes were raised to his, as though answering some question he had asked, and he was gazing at her intently. She wore a white gardenia in her hair and from where they stood Max and Marietta could almost smell its perfume. Her every movement was feline, containing the same elastic mixture of confidence and sophistication that masked an underlying interest in her partner. They saw the rise and fall of her bosom and the languor in her eyes, her parted lips and a look on her face Marietta thought quite strange, for it was a look a woman usually bestowed on her husband.

Lady Trevellyan peered over Teddy’s shoulder before they disappeared from view. There was a sudden glint in her eyes now as she fixed them on her husband, a glint in which there was no sympathy at all, but only pleasure sharpened with a trace of something very much like spite. There was no perceptible movement of muscle or vein, no change in colour, but it was impossible to mistake that Lord Trevellyan had moved straight from condescension into cold rage.

‘Teddy is always a popular figure at dances,’ Marietta told Lord Trevellyan quietly, wondering why she felt a sudden need to defend her father’s business partner. ‘He dances so well that all the ladies are eager to have his name on their dance card.’

‘So it would seem,’ Max murmured drily, turning his back on his wife.

Marietta saw the cynical curl to his lips and observed the way his shoulders tensed, but she didn’t comment on it. Perhaps matters weren’t as they should be between Lord Trevellyan and his wife, but he was far too English and private a person to talk openly about it, and it was not for her to ask.

‘If you’re not in the mood to dance with your wife, then dance with someone else.’

One dark brow lifted over an amused silver-grey eye. ‘Are you asking, Miss Westwood?’

Her answering laughter tinkled like bells, filling the air around them with its gaiety. ‘Heavens, no! My friends wouldn’t let me live it down—dancing with a man much older than myself.’

He leaned back and gave her a look of mock offence. ‘I’m not so long in the tooth. How old do you think I am?’

After giving his question a moment’s thought, she said, ‘About thirty?’

‘Wrong. Nowhere near.’

‘Then how old are you?’

‘That’s for me to know and you to find out, Miss Westwood.’

Tilting her head to one side, she gazed up into his mesmerising grey eyes. Standing so close to him, she was unable to think clearly. She wasn’t certain anything mattered at that moment except the sound of his deep, compelling voice. The piercing sweetness of the music drifting through the open doors wrapped itself round her. How she wished the man beside her would smile and take her in his arms and dance with her, despite what she had just said, that he would place his lips against her cheek and … She checked herself. She wished so many impossible things.

‘I hope you weren’t offended when I said I wouldn’t dance with you. Of course,’ she said, lowering her eyes, her cheeks suddenly warm with embarrassment and anticipation, ‘if you were to ask me, I wouldn’t dream of refusing your offer. I would be happy to dance with you.’

Slowly she raised her eyes to his and Max noted the unconcealed admiration lighting her lovely young face. She didn’t know how explicit her expression was—like an open book, exposing what was in her heart. Max saw it and was immediately wary. He had schooled his face over the years to show nothing that he did not want it to show. He was therefore perfectly able to disguise his exasperation with himself for having misjudged things. He should have realised she was of an age to have a schoolgirl crush.

The lines of his face were angular and hard, and behind the cold glitter of his grey eyes lay a fathomless stillness. Marietta watched his firmly moulded lips for his answer.

‘That won’t happen,’ he said flatly, gentling his voice, while knowing he was being deliberately cruel, but it was necessary.

Marietta was mortified and shocked by his refusal, but she was more shocked by her nerve for having the audacity to ask him. ‘No, of course not,’ she said in a shaky, breathless voice. ‘I should have known better than to suggest such a thing.’

Max didn’t like having to wound her sensibilities, but it couldn’t be helped. His voice was condescendingly amused as he tried not to look too deeply into her hurt eyes, eloquent in their hurt, which remained fixed on his face. ‘Think nothing of it. And I wasn’t offended.’

‘Oh—well, that’s all right then. You don’t have a very high opinion of women, do you, Lord Trevellyan?’ she said, unable to stop herself from asking.

‘Should I?’

‘Yes, when you have such a beautiful wife.’

‘You’ve noticed,’ he remarked drily.

‘I would have to be wearing blinkers not to.’

‘Do you have a beau, Miss Westwood?’

‘No, not as such.’

‘Some day you’ll have to marry in order to have children.’

She glanced at him sharply. ‘Oh, no, Lord Trevellyan. If I marry, it won’t be to have children.’

‘Don’t you like children?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘But you don’t want children of your own?’