Page 21 of Winning Her Duke

“You don’t need to do this.” Her smile was gone again. Her back stiff and chin up in a defiant way.

“I’m aware. In fact, I only need to do very few things. Eat. Sleep. Ride.” They shared a knowing smile. “I enjoy conversing with you, and I’m afraid if we take up a drawing room here until dawn, Lady Tomison will surely lose her otherwise unyielding patience with me.”

Gia laughed in earnest. Not a tittering, breathy exhale, but an actual laugh that brought the attention of a number of people standing nearby. Even he knew laughing was not done. Not that he agreed or understood why.

Lady Tomison returned and extended the dance card to him. Seeing the vast emptiness, he greedily inscibed his name in for two dances. The first dance of the evening and the supper dance.

He was about to take his leave of them when three large shadows fell on Gia’s surprised face.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered to the men grinning at his flanks. Kit, Graham, and Julian wouldn’t miss an opportunity to flirt with someone Hale was interested in, for no other reason than they were charming and disreputable flirts.

“Good evening,” Lady Tomison and Gia said to the intruders.

“Hale, might you do the honors of introducing us to your lovely acquaintances?” Julian prompted.

“I would rather keep my acquaintances to myself, and not have them scared away by my beastly friends.”

The men’s smiles didn’t falter in the least at his rudeness. They simply waited.

“Very well. If I must.” He turned to the ladies and gave his most regretful look. “Please forgive me. I dinna know how horrid they were and now I’m rather stuck with them.”

Gia covered her mouth in a poor attempt to hide her laughter while Lady Tomison waited patiently for their banter to lead to a proper introduction.

“Lord Melville, Lord Penbrook, and Lord Stormont,” he gestured to each of the men as he spoke their titles. “May I introduce Lady Tomison and Miss Gia Landon.”

Everyone bowed or curtseyed as expected and the introductions were over. He stared pointedly at his friends, silently telling them to go away. Of course, they didn’t leave.

To his annoyance, Hale watched as all of his friends asked for dances and scribbled their names on Gia’s card. After a few more pleasantries, he and his friends left the ladies alone.

No one said anything until they had moved out of hearing at the edge of the crowd. Then, as one, as if they’d practiced it, they turned toward him expectantly.

“What?” he said when ignoring them didn’t work.

They simply waited, allowing him enough time to properly hang himself with whatever words spewed from his mouth next. It was a tactic he’d employed with them in the past to great success. He would need to be canny, so as not to get tangled.

“We share a fondness for horses. That is all,” he explained simply. Hale wasn’t sure why the truth seemed so difficult. And it was the truth. They shared a fondness for horses. And, that was all.

Why were ballrooms so bloody hot?

Gia was charming and lovely and talented. Not to mention funny and clever. And lovely. Damn, he’d already thought that. No reason to think it again. He shook his head. This could not happen.

Gia needed to remain a friend. No, better yet, an acquaintance and nothing more. He shouldn’t have even come this evening. He was spending far too much time with her. People would think he was courting her.

He wasn’t.

Except for a moment, he had difficulty remembering why he was so against such a thing.

He didn’t want to marry. Yes, that was the reason.

But, no. He didn’t want to marry for convenience. He didn’t want to marry a stranger he had nothing in common with.

Despite only meeting her the day before, he didn’t consider her a stranger.

Blast and damn. His reasons were slipping. But he didn’t need to rely only on his own reasons.

Gia didn’t want to marry either.

In fact, she seemed more than pleased to live out her days in the country with her horses. Away from the marriage mart, not to mention daily lectures from Lady Tomison.