Page 105 of Duke with a Reputation

“I beg your pardon. I assumed the creature was male.”

“Naturally.” She gave him a pained smile that was more of a taunt than aught else, those full lips that would have been better served on a courtesan distracting him.

Her one-word response felt like an insult, and Stuart knew he ought to let the matter go, but he was as obstinate as she, and he couldn’t.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Because it is very much like a man to assume that every creature in his path must also be male, in his mold,” she said.

“Your opinion of my sex is clearly poor.”

Again, her brow arched upward. “Can I be blamed?”

The past lay unspoken, a heavy burden. They stared at each other, two unsmiling enemies—Rosamund with her shrewd gaze and the airs of a queen and Stuart with his swallowed pride and a disgust for his scoundrel of a brother that surely rivaled hers.

“Of course not,” he relented. “What my brother did to you was unconscionable.”

Her smile was serene. “What he did made me stronger and wiser.”

She was utterly unflappable, and this was new. He did not remember such self-possession in her, the ability to flay a man with nothing more than her eyes and tongue. The line of buttons bisecting her bodice drew his attention as she inhaled, the urge to undo them, to muss her irritating perfection perversely rising from nowhere.

“I am relieved to hear it,” he forced out.

A tap at the door heralded the arrival of the tea tray. They were silent as a servant bustled in, laying the tray on the table separating them before excusing herself with a curtsy. The dishes of tea which had been laid out looked as if they were antiques, fashioned of fine porcelain lined with gold and decorated with enamel Libra scales on the cup and a water carrier on the saucer. He watched as she prepared his tea precisely as he had always liked it: a splash of milk first, followed by tea and two lumps of sugar.

She had remembered.

Her attention to detail felt somehow strangely intimate, particularly when their fingers brushed as she handed him histea. The sweet bergamot of Earl Grey rose from the steaming cup.

“Thank you,” he said, deciding the fine porcelain he held was likely Meissen.

He wondered if Rosamund had purchased the cups and saucers herself or if they had belonged to her mother, whose eccentricities and affinity for collections had been rather notorious.

She finished preparing her own tea. “You are most welcome. To the tea if not at my home.”

The reminder that they were bitterest enemies was pointed. She would serve him tea and recall precisely how he liked it made, but she drew the line at false pleasantries.

“Megs want a tea cake,” the parrot called from across the room, reminding him of her presence.

Well, at least she hadn’t called him a gormless shite again.

Progress.

“You shall have one in a few minutes, darling,” Rosamund returned, her voice gentling as she responded to the bird.

And Stuart found himself suddenly, irritatingly envious of the feathered menace still glaring at him from her perch.

“Now then,” Rosamund said suddenly, returning the full, disconcerting force of her attention upon him. “I don’t imagine you came here for idle conversation or tea. What is it that brought you to me, Camden?”

His heart thumped hard. Here was his opportunity. And yet, the words felt thick and heavy and improperly formed. His tongue was stuck, his mouth dry. He, who had faced death and destruction and the hells of war, was terrified of four little words that, taken separately, were all rather inconsequential save one.

He could do this.

Hehadto do this.

The contents of the letter he had received yesterday was still burned upon his soul.

Stuart took a deep, steadying breath, holding Rosamund’s dark stare. “Will you marry me?”