The Very Daring Duchess Part 47

"She would not!" scoffed Harriet with a disdainful sniff. "A d.u.c.h.ess drawing pictures, paying to make pictures of me-that's stuff and nonsense, sir, nonsense and stuff!"

"Perhaps it is," he agreed, his smile curving wryly to one side, "and perhaps, sweetheart, it isn't at all. You've spirit and beauty for ten G.o.ddesses, but even the most clever deity must learn to discern true opportunity from empty promises."

"But you've made me no offers, nor promises, neither!"

He shrugged with disarming carelessness. "So I haven't, have I? You are clever, la.s.s. I'd say I've judged you right."

She sniffed again, keeping her chin high. "Then mayhap you be the Pharisee, trying to judge me this way or t'other."

This time he laughed outright, his eyes crinkling with pleasure. Slowly he lowered his arm, refolded the sheet with the drawings, and tucked it into her basket behind the oranges.

"There," he said. "The pictures are yours, to do with what you will, even burn them, if that's what pleases you most."

Swiftly Harriet covered the folded paper with her hand, half-expecting him to change his mind and try to take it back. Surely pictures like these must be worth a pretty sum, even to a rich man like him. But instead of taking the paper, he reached for her hand, bowing forward slightly as he raised her fingers to his lips, his lips, oh, dear G.o.d in Heaven, and now he was kissing the back of her hand the way she'd seen gentlemen do with fine ladies, his mouth brushing lightly over her skin, grazing it, teasing it, warming it, making her flush and stammer like a worthless, befuddled idiot.

And he felt it, too. She could tell from the way he looked at her when he freed her hand, the odd half-smile that could-should-have been smug but wasn't. Instead he seemed almost thoughtful, as if considering her in an entirely new way.

"If you ever change your mind, sweetheart," he said softly, "bring that paper to Harborough House, and you'll be welcomed like the G.o.ddess you are, with nectar and ambrosia. Now good day to you, my Venus, and sweet dreams for your night."

Still she stood there like a dumbstruck ninny, watching while he lifted his hat to her-to her!-before he climbed back upon his horse and gathered its reins to head down the path and forever, forever from her life.

And at once Harriet came back to life.

"Wait, sir, wait!" she called breathlessly, hurrying after him. "Your orange, sir! You forgot your orange!"

He turned in the saddle, and she held the orange up to him.

"Ah, so I did," he said, winking as he leaned down to take the orange from her. "I'd leave behind my head, too, if my hat weren't there to keep it in place upon my neck. I've forgotten my orange, and to pay you as well."

"You are a clever gentleman, aren't you?" she said, tipping her head to one side to wink back as she echoed his own words back to him. Oh, what she was doing was a dangerous game, bold as new-polished bra.s.s. She'd never behaved so forward with any other man she'd met in the park.

But this gentleman wasn't like any of the others, and he certainly wasn't like any man she'd met among the costard-mongers and butchers who lived in her street. He was young and rich and wickedly handsome, but what made him different was something that hovered in the air between them like a conjurer's trick, something she couldn't find the words to explain. Most likely she would never see him again, for London was a grand, sprawling place, and his station was far, far above hers. But for this moment she could fancy, she could dream. That much in life came for free, even for girls from Threadneedle Court.

"You owe me nothing, sir," she said now, squinting a bit as she looked up at him and the sun behind him. The shadow of his hat's brim shielded his eyes from her, his expression unfathomable, and she gave a nervous little laugh at her own daring. "You gave me the pictures, sir, and now I'm giving you the orange. For remembering me by."

"But I won't forget you, la.s.s," he said, his voice low and so unexpectedly earnest that she almost could believe him. "Indeed, I doubt I ever shall."

"Oh, nay, sir, of course you won't," she said. "Leastwise you won't until after you eat the orange."

Harriet turned away quickly then, so he would not see the regret in her face, and turned back to her life as it was, as it must be, and the ripe, golden fruit in the basket before her.

Sweet, oh, so sweet....

Look for The Very Comely Countess by Miranda Jarrett Coming from Sonnet Books