When the Duchess Said Yes Read Online Free PDF Page A

been Lizzie’s first opera, and she’d been enchanted. But March had insisted they leave their box before the first act was done, to avoid the crush and more easily make their way to visit with friends on the opposite side of the playhouse. Other acquaintances had stopped them first, and while they’d talked, Lizzie had slipped into an empty box nearby to hear the last aria of the act.
    But in the middle of that aria, she’d had the oddest sensation, as if someone or something were calling to her. She’d looked up and discovered the handsomest gentleman she’d ever seen watching her as if they’d been the only two in the playhouse. He’d leaned forward, toward her, and into the reflected light from the stage. His features were strong and regular, his brow and hair dark, his eyes—oh, such eyes, even at a distance!—burning with a fiery intensity, and an unabashed interest, too. No man had ever looked at her that way, not once, and she was thankful for the shadows that masked her inevitable blush.
    And though she’d known she shouldn’t, she’d smiled. She hadn’t been able to help herself. She’d smiled, and he’d smiled in return, a slow, easy smile, full of wicked charm that had made her cheeks grow warm. She’d felt like a heroine in a romance with a mysterious secret admirer, and her heart had raced with excitement. Who knew what would have happened had not Charlotte called to her, drawing her away. When she later searched for the gentleman again from her seat, he was gone, his box empty. She’d been disappointed, but relieved, too, and in her mind, that had been that.
    Until now, when he stood not a playhouse away but directly before her, still watching, still smiling at her with that same wicked charm.
    “I must go,” she blurted out. “My—my friends will miss me.”
    “So will mine,” he countered. “I don’t care. You shouldn’t, either.”
    She shook her head, trying to shake away his argument. She didn’t want to tell him March’s name or Charlotte’s, either, any more than her own, for fear of scandal.
    “But my friends care very much for me, and I for them,” she said carefully. “Why should I oblige you instead?”
    His smile was warm, and unlike the smiles of most men, it not only reached his eyes but filled them.
    “Because you are singularly beautiful,” he said. “Because you are as sweet as the first peach, and luscious as the first rose.”
    “Goodness.” Her eyes widened. She’d never heard such deliriously fine rubbish slip from a man’s lips, not with such utter conviction, and certainly never offered up to her.
    “Yes,” he said thoughtfully, as if this were new to him, too, though of course it couldn’t be. “Yes, you are. I haven’t been able to put you from my thoughts since I saw you at the opera.”
    She felt her resolve melting and her resistance with it, dissolving right here among these crowds of people. She knew she shouldn’t believe so much as a word. And yet, because of the phantom Duke of Hawkesworth, who had found it a bothersome trial even to be in the same country with her, she longed to believe these honeysweet words from this unbearably handsome gentleman. The duke had had his mistresses; what harm could come of her having these few moments?
    “A dance,” he said, offering his hand to her. “I’ve always wished to dance with a fairy. Come, the floor can’t be far. I can hear the musicians from here.”
    “I can’t accept,” she said, looking down at his proffered hand with far more regret than she should have. “If I were seen dancing with you, I would be ruined.”
    “Then no one shall see us.” He didn’t wait for her to take his hand, but claimed hers instead. Swiftly he ducked between the trees and hedges, leading her into a small clearing inside the greenery. Although the crowds on the walk could clearly be heard a few feet away, the space was surprisingly private, and designed to be so, too. Lizzie stopped short, frowning