Winning a Lady's Heart (Danby #1)(11)

“That is the last of the gingerbread.” Her tone was accusatory.

A quick look at the sideboard confirmed her findings.

Wordlessly, he shoved the plate over towards Olivia, who eyed it with a blend of longing and reluctance.

“Take it,” he urged.

Olivia snatched it and nibbled an edge. “I took it, but only because you don’t deserve it.”

“I do not disagree on that score.”

Even with the table as a barrier, he still heard her stomping a foot under the table in frustration. “You aren’t supposed to be agreeable to everything I say. And you certainly shouldn’t be giving the last gingerbread treat to me.”

For the first time since he’d scratched the bloody wager down in the books at White’s, Nathan smiled. Olivia didn’t wait for him to speak.

“I don’t believe a man such as you is even capable of love.”

Nathan flinched. Now that hurt. For all the mistakes he’d made, for his betrayal of Alexandra, he had never for one moment ceased to love her with such depth that it frightened him with its intensity. The moment he’d seen her stamping through Lady Williams’s card room, her face etched in agony, Nathan had felt the only part of him that resembled something good wither and die in his chest. He had been the monster to inflict a pain deep enough to harden the perpetual smile in her eyes.

“Well, what do you say to that?” Olivia pressed, jerking him to the moment.

“I’d say I would agree with you on most scores today with the exception of that charge. I loved your sister. I still do.”

Olivia’s mouth fell gaping open. “I don’t believe you.”

So now he was a liar. Which in thinking on it, Olivia was correct there as well.

She continued. “I am certain there are many good, honorable gentlemen out there, men who will give freely of their heart. You, sir, are not one of those men. I can no longer sit here and converse freely with you.”

A servant rushed forward and pulled her seat out. She climbed from it as regally as if she were the lady of the manor and stormed from the room.

Nathan stared several moments at the open doorway and noted when Olivia cautiously reappeared. Clearing her throat, she glided back towards the table and snatched the partially eaten gingerbread up. “I still say you do not deserve the treat.”

With that, she took her exit.

And confirmed his road to winning Alexandra back was going to be an arduous one, indeed.





“What kept you, gel?”

Alexandra tried not to jump at the question barked across the Duke of Danby’s office. She took a steadying breath and entered the lair.

“Your Grace.” She prided herself on the steady way she delivered that greeting.

“Close it,” he instructed a hovering servant.

She cast one longing glance towards the exit. This had been the moment she’d dreaded since the scandal had erupted. She was alone with the dragon.

Alexandra sighed. She’d always been a bit of a coward where the duke was concerned.

“I don’t have all day, Alexandra. Take a seat.”

She dropped her eyes demurely and counted the steps it took to place her directly in front of the Duke of Danby. “Twenty.”

“Twenty what, Alexandra?”

Alexandra gave a startled shake of her head. “Nothing, Your Grace,” she murmured and slid into the seat. It was large, so large it nearly dwarfed her. She felt like a child about to be delivered a stern scolding, which, in a way, she supposed she was.

“You know why you are here.”

“Because you missed your granddaughters and Mother and desperately and wanted to see us?” She blinked at the boldness of her own cheeky retort.

Danby gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Seems you acquired a backbone during your time in London.”

And a broken heart.

“I’m getting on in age, girl. I’m not as hale as I once was.”

“You seem to be in fine health,” she countered.

“Yes, yes. You and the physician are of like mind. That isn’t the point. I’ve had enough of reading about the scandalous behaviors of my offspring. I never expected it of you, though.”

Alexandra sighed. “I never expected it of myself, Your Grace.”

He leaned forward in his chair. “So then why did you make a cake of yourself over some gentleman?”

She could give him two thousand and twenty-five reasons she’d counted in the carriage ride. She settled for one. “I loved him.”

Danby arched a brow. “Loved? Are my granddaughter’s sentiments so fleeting then?”

Alas, someone who didn’t expect her feelings for Nathan to simply vanish like a cold breath of air on a winter’s day. Who would have believed the Duke of Danby would be the one?

“No, Your Grace. I love him still.”

“I take it your sniveling father was not particularly fond of Pembroke.”

“That is putting it mildly, Your Grace,” she concurred.

“What? That your father is sniveling or that he wasn’t fond of him?”

Alexandra’s lips twitched with her first real amusement since she’d learned of Nathan’s betrayal. “Both, Your Grace.”

Danby laughed and settled back into his seat, eying her. The easy camaraderie they’d shared dissipated under his ducal regard.