Page 18 of The Dueling Duchess

Well, it was more than she’d hoped for.

Cecile turned to her guns and resumed loading them.

“And I will only do it in exchange for a favor,” he added.

She whipped around. “A favor? What do you mean?”

“I believe your command of English is excellent. Don’t you know the word?” he teased.

She cut him an irritated look and he chuckled.

“Does your favor require any part of my body touching any part of yours?”

The way his eyes widened told her that she had shocked him.

He gave a low, wicked laugh. “Er, no. But I wish I had thought of that.”

“What favor?” she repeated, annoyed by how her belly fluttered at his laughter.

“I want you to talk to me.”

“We are talking.”

“No, I mean talk to me. Not at me. As much as I adore being insulted by you—called a fool, an oaf, and so forth—I am interested in a more meaningful transaction.”

“Meaningful? What are you babbling about? Just come out and say what you mean.”

“Specifically, I want you to answer some questions.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What sort of questions?”

“Why do you look so suspicious?” he asked, a half smirk curving his sinful lips. “Just what have you heard about me that has put you so much on edge?”

“The women have been talking,” she admitted, and then wished she’d kept her mouth shut.

“Well, they can’t have been saying too much because I have been on my best behavior.”

That was what she’d heard, too—that he’d been disappointingly gentlemanly and courteous and oblivious to the blatant lures that several of Farnham’s employees had dangled to bring him into their beds.

Cecile had seen them flirting with him, calling on him to help carry things they normally would have carried themselves, summoning him for pointless errands, and lots and lots of giggling when the women of Farnham’s were not, normally, gigglers.

Everyone had noticed, even Barnabas, the least observant man in England.

The Fayre’s owner had complained about it at dinner, chiding Marianne for engaging the man.

“The other two aren’t so much of a distraction,” Barnabas had groused, “but that Darling fellow is a bloody menace to women.”

Cecile had been hugely amused that Barnabas didn’t appear to have guessed the true identities of his three newest employees, which meant Cecile wasn’t the only one Marianne wasn’t confiding in.

As diverting as Barnabas’s ignorance was, Cecile wholeheartedly agreed with the normally clueless man when it came to the Marquess of Carlisle.

Neither the Duke of Staunton, who was a very handsome, imposing man in his way, nor the third man—a dark-haired, slimly built, and rather mysterious-looking gentleman named Smithy, whose real identity continued to elude her—caused as much havoc among the female employees as Lord Carlisle.

When Cecile had looked at Marianne to see what her reaction was to her uncle’s comment on the Darling, the younger woman had just stared at her food.

Marianne had become quieter and quieter lately and had been avoiding Cecile. They used to go for tea every Tuesday afternoon, just the two of them. But they’d not done anything together since the day of Cecile’s birthday almost a month ago. Which was, coincidentally, right before Marianne had engaged the three aristocrats.

Yes, her friend had changed a great deal since the men had entered their lives.