Her Favorite Duke (The 1797 Club #2)(11)

The game on the lawn was over now and he sought her out in the crowd. She had not swarmed forward with the rest to congratulate the winner. She stood off to the side, her head bent and her hands clenched at her sides. She looked so very troubled, so very unhappy. But no one else seemed to notice. No friend or family member or fiancé rushed to comfort her. She stood alone and still until she lifted her head and let her gaze shift, slowly but purposefully, to him.

They were far apart. He on the stone courtyard just outside the yard perimeter, she on the other side of the playing field, and yet the connection that had always drawn him to her was strong as ever. It was like she had him on a string and all she had to do was look at him to make him move toward her.

Today he took a step in her direction and she ducked her head, breaking the gaze before he could take another. She shook her head slowly and walked away. She walked away from the players, away from the garden, away from the house and away from him.

And there was no doubt as to what he would do next. He would follow. Even though he knew it was interfering to do so, even though he knew it was stupid and foolish. Worse, it was wrong. It wasn’t his place. And it could lead to something he would not be able to take back.

But he was going to follow her despite all that. Because soon he would be gone and there would be no further opportunity to do so.

As for the consequences of such an action, for the moment he chose not to think of them. Or if he did, he chose not to care.





Meg had been walking for an hour. She had no destination in her mind, she had no plan, she just walked, enjoying the sun on her face when it peeked from behind the gray clouds and the breeze that stirred her hair and skin when it spun up around her.

She was free. In these moments, she was free. And yet she felt the prison walls that would soon be her life closing down around her.

She stopped in the middle of the woods where she had wandered and leaned one hand against a tree as she struggled to regain the composure that was threatening to fray like a shawl that had been pulled and tugged too long and too hard.

Simon and Graham had stood together, talking as she played croquet. She’d seen them looking at her, seen Simon’s gentleness and Graham’s faint disinterest. All the emotion she constantly fought to keep down had risen in her in that moment, and suddenly nothing had mattered except escaping them both.

Escaping everything.

“But you can’t escape,” she said out loud, her tone harsh as she clenched her fingers against the rough bark of the tree. “This is what your life is and there is…no…changing…it.”

The last three words were broken as she whispered them because her breath suddenly became short and her chest tightened with the thought. She bent her head and fought the tears that threatened to fall. She had wept enough these past few days. This was enough. She had to accept the future and stop being a ninny about it.

There was nothing in heaven or on earth that would change what was about to happen.

“Meg.”

She stiffened at the sound of her name behind her, spoken in a voice she knew as well as any in the world. The only voice that had ever mattered.

Simon, she mouthed without daring to say his name out loud. If she did, then this fantasy that he was here with her would be shattered.

Slowly she turned, and her heart skipped in a way it should not. Simon was there. He wasn’t any fantasy or illusion created by her errant mind. He was there, standing ten feet away, watching her.

“Are you following me?” she gasped out, her tone sharper than she had intended in her shock.

His full lips turned down into a deep frown. “Yes,” he snapped back, also sharp. He had never spoken to her like that before, and it made her jump. “For an hour.”

“Why?” she asked.

He arched a brow. “Because I—”

He cut himself off abruptly and turned his face from hers. She folded her arms and waited for him to continue. Waited for him to speak. To say anything.

“I saw you leave the gathering,” he finally whispered, his shoulders rolling forward as if he were defeated. “And I thought you shouldn’t be alone.”

She took a step toward him. “Wh-why?” she stammered.

He lifted his gaze back to her. Their eyes met, and suddenly he straightened and his gaze grew heated. How many times had she seen that warmth in his eyes, that connection, when he looked at her? Every other time he’d pushed it away and she had told herself over and over again that it was only something she imagined even though she knew in her heart it wasn’t true.

Today when they were alone, far from the others, far from whatever propriety dictated, that heat stayed and her body reacted just as it shouldn’t. She tingled from her head to her toes, but especially in forbidden places. Places she touched while she thought of this man.

She shivered and forced those thoughts away.

“Why did you follow me?” she repeated.

“Because of a few nights ago,” he said. “When you were crying on the terrace. I-I know you aren’t happy, Meg. I know you—”

She barked out what she knew was an unladylike burst of laughter. “What do you know?” she asked, taking another long step toward him. The distance between them wasn’t quite closed but it was narrowed significantly now.

His eyes widened as she did so, and it was clear he was aware of the challenge she was putting forward to him. She didn’t care anymore, at least not in that moment. She was playing with fire, and getting burned was the least of her worries. She wanted him to do something.