Royal's Bride. Kat Martin

peeling in places, the rugs faded and worn. “It must have been beautiful. I’m sure it will be again.” The smile she gave him was warm and hopeful and his body flushed with heat.

      Dammit to hell, an attraction to his soon-to-be fiancée’s cousin was not at all what he wanted.

      “Let me know if there is anything else you need,” he said a bit more harshly than he intended. Leaving her to complete what other tasks she had planned, he made his way down the hall to change out of his riding clothes.

      The afternoon was slipping away. Soon he would be joining his aunt for supper. Tonight for the first time since her accident, Lily would be joining them.

      Royal swore softly as he stepped into his suite and firmly closed the door.

       Five

      She didn’t want to go. Lily considered pleading a headache, as she had done for the past two nights, but she simply couldn’t ignore her host and hostess any longer. Still, the notion of sitting through a meal with the duke made her stomach quiver. Every time she was around him, she felt nervous and flushed and not quite certain what to say.

      It was ridiculous. He was only a man, after all, not the golden-haired angel she had imagined when she had been lying there in the snow.

      He was handsome, yes. But beauty was only skin deep. At the balls and soirees she’d attended with Jo, she had met dozens of handsome men. It had never bothered her before.

      Lily didn’t understand it. As a child, she had been shy, but in the years she had lived with her uncle, she had learned to overcome it. Living in Jocelyn’s shadow for so long seemed to have brought its return.

      Still, she usually did quite well in the presence of the opposite sex. Perhaps it was knowing this particular male belonged to her cousin.

      As the little maid, Penny, helped her fasten the buttons at the back of her aqua silk gown, she wondered when Jo would arrive and hoped it would be soon. The sooner the duke met his stunning future bride, the sooner this ridiculous attraction Lily grudgingly admitted to feeling would be over.

      One could hardly be attracted to a man who looked through her as if she were not there, and she knew from experience, once Jocelyn arrived, that is exactly what the handsome Duke of Bransford would do.

      “Gor, ye look lovely, miss.”

      Lily smiled at the dark-haired girl. “Thank you, Penny.” She turned in front of the cheval glass, pleased at the changes she had fashioned in Jo’s cast-off dinner gown. She had removed the extra ruffles around the hem and across the bodice, leaving only a single flounce of aqua satin across the bosom, which she adorned with a spray of tiny seed pearls.

      The gown looked brand new, which it practically was, since Jo rarely wore a dress more than once and was happy to hand them off to Lily to change in any way she pleased.

      She moved to the dresser, lifted the lid on the small rosewood box she had brought with her and removed a lovely peach-colored agate cameo hanging from a black velvet ribbon. It wasn’t an expensive piece of jewelry, but it was one of her favorites, a gift from the Caulfields on her eighteenth birthday.

      She held it out to Penny, then turned her back. “Could you tie it for me, please?”

      “Of course, miss.”

      Penny set the cameo at the base of her throat and tied the ribbon round her neck. With her pale hair pulled away from her face and pinned in a cluster of curls at her shoulder, she felt ready to face the duke and his aunt across the supper table.

      Taking a breath for courage, Lily swept out of the room and headed down the wide mahogany staircase. She found the duke and his aunt conversing in an antechamber that led into the elaborate formal dining room. She had hoped for a more casual evening, but with the dowager in residence, she should have known it wasn’t going to happen.

      “Ah, Miss Moran,” the duke said, striding toward her. “We were afraid you’d had another brush with the kitchen maids.”

      He was smiling, teasing her, but with his aunt in the room, she was embarrassed. “Nothing of the sort, I assure you.” Her cheeks burned. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

      “Not a’tall,” the dowager said with a smile. “Royal was telling me about the flour incident in the kitchen. The last time I was here, I slipped and took a tumble into the bushes in the garden. They had just been watered. I came up looking like a half-drowned wren.”

      Lily laughed, feeling a sweep of gratitude for the old woman’s effort to put her at ease, which seemed to work quite well. “I haven’t been below stairs lately, but should I visit in the future, I shall attempt to be more careful.”

      “Accidents happen,” the duke said, smiling.

      “More often to some of us than others,” the dowager added with a twinkle in her eyes, nearly the same tawny shade as her nephew’s.

      “Cook has supper ready,” the duke said. “May I persuade you ladies to continue this discussion in the dining room? I find I am nearly light-headed with the need for food.”

      As was she, Lily realized, and couldn’t help wondering if the man was truly that hungry or if he had guessed she had been so busy she had eaten only the cakes and cocoa she’d had for breakfast. She had a feeling it was the latter.

      Drat it, she wished he would be less congenial. Surely there was something to dislike about him. But as he moved beside his aging aunt, taking great care not to walk too swiftly and provide the supportive arm she needed, as he seated her and then Lily, one on each side of him, she couldn’t think what it might be.

      The first course was served, a delicious oyster soup, the creamy broth lightly seasoned with herbs and floating with lemon slices, probably grown in the estate’s conservatory.

      “Have you heard from your brother Rule?” Lady Tavistock asked, taking a hearty spoonful of soup.

      “He is finishing up at Oxford,” the duke replied. “He has been offered a job with an American company once he is out of school—a liaison position of some sort, I gather. If he accepts, he will be traveling there and back quite often.”

      He glanced over at Lily. “It was our father’s wish that our family develop an alliance with the Americans. Rule promised to make that happen. And I think he may be excited at the prospect of seeing a different country.”

      “I would love to see America, myself.”

      The duke smiled. “So you crave adventure, do you?”

      Lily smiled back. “Only in my head, I am afraid. Mostly, I enjoy reading books about other people’s travels.”

      “As do I,” the duke agreed.

      “Royal spent a good many years in the Caribbean managing the family plantation,” his aunt added. “Did a fine job of it, too.”

      “I enjoyed the challenge,” he said. “I hope I am up to it here at Bransford. There is far more at home that needs to be done than there was at Sugar Reef.”

      “With the right woman at your side,” his aunt said, “I am certain you will manage quite well.”

      Royal looked down at his bowl of soup and Lily wondered what he was thinking.

      “So you enjoy reading,” the dowager said to her.

      “Very much. I read just about anything I can get my hands on.”

      “There is a library full of books here at Bransford,” the duke said. “You are welcome to borrow whatever you might find interesting.”

      She felt his golden gaze on her face and something warm settled low in her stomach. “Thank you.”

      “What have you heard of your brother Reese?” the older woman asked, breaking the strangely intimate moment. Lily wondered if that was the dowager’s intent. Her nephew