Page 33 of The Duke’s Defiant Love

"Would you not."

"He is interested in scholarship. In arguing a point until one of us concedes it, which happens rather less often than he'd like." Amelia buttered her toast, avoiding her mother's eyes. "That is the whole of it. He treats me as he'd treat any other person capable of holding up their end of a discussion. There is nothing more to read into it than that."

"Mm." Her mother's mouth twitched. "Well. If it is truly nothing but scholarship, I daresay you won't mind hearing that Mrs. Aldridge saw you both at Richmond and has been telling anyone who'll listen that you looked, and I quote, 'entirely too pleased with each other for two people arguing about Herodotus.'"

"Mrs. Aldridge sees romance in a pair of gloves left on the wrong chair."

"Perhaps. Or perhaps she simply saw what was there." Her mother picked up her cup, and something gentler crept into her expression beneath the teasing. "I am not scolding you, Amelia. I only want you prepared, should this go anywhere. A duke's attention is not a small thing, and neither is the talk that follows it."

Before Amelia could answer, a footman appeared at the door with a small silver tray, a single calling card resting on it. "For Miss Hartwell."

Her mother reached for it before Amelia could, turning it over, reading it with an expression that grew steadily more delighted. "His Grace requests the pleasure of your company for a promenade this afternoon, weather permitting." She held it out, eyes bright. "How very scholarly of him."

"It is likely another discussion of his paper."

"Of course it is." Her mother did not believe that for a single moment, and made no effort to disguise it, watching with open amusement as Amelia took the card, read it twice though the message ran to a single line, and set it down with a composure that feltconsiderably less steady than she'd intended.

Mary, grinning around a mouthful of toast, added, "I believe the modiste can wait after all. I would much rather hear how this goes."

"It is not going anywhere, Mary. It is a walk."

"Mm," said both her mother and her sister, in near-perfect unison, and Amelia was already thinking, despite every effort not to, of what she might wear.

"I shall need to change."

"You have not yet said whether you're going."

"Naturally I am going. It would be rude to refuse." Amelia was already halfway out of her chair, toast forgotten, her mother's soft laugh following her out of the room as she went, and did not slow her steps even slightly, whatever composure she'd been aiming for entirely abandoned by the time she reached the stairs.

The park was quiet at this hour, a handful of nursemaids with their charges and a scattering of early riders the only company, and Amelia's mother followed a discreet distance behind them with a pleased look on her face. Sebastian found himself matching his pace to Amelia's with an ease that felt, increasingly, like something he no longer had to think about doing.

"You never finished explaining your objection to my treatment of the Athenian sources," she said, falling into step beside him. "You promised me a proper answer at the lecture and gave me half of one before Dr. Wetherby interrupted us."

"I have been considering it. I still think you're wrong, though I grant the point about bias in the secondary accounts."

"You grant the point but still think I'm wrong. That is a very fine line to hold, Your Grace."

"I hold a great many fine lines. It is a particular talent of mine." He glanced sideways at her, and something in him eased at the sight of her already half-smiling, braced for the argument like a fencer taking her mark.

"A convenient talent, apparently, given how thoroughly you complained of unreliable sources when we first met and are now quoting one selectively to suit your own case."

He laughed, the sound catching him almost as off guard as it caught her, and thought, not for the first time, how strange it was that a woman who spent half her conversation dismantling his arguments had somehow become the person whose company he looked forward to more than anyone's.

This is dangerous. He let the thought surface and pass without dwelling on it, the way he'd been doing with increasing frequency these past weeks, refusing to look at it too closely.

They walked on a while in easy quiet, and Sebastian found his mind drifting, unhelpfully, to how little effort any of this required, how thoroughly unlike every other conversation he was obliged to have in London.

He did not perform anything with her. He did not measure his words for the benefit of a listening room, did not weigh how a sentence might read in tomorrow's gossip.

He simply spoke, and she argued, and somewhere in the arguing he had stopped noticing the absence of the careful distance he kept with everyone else, until the absence itself had become the thing he noticed most.

"You've grown quieter than usual. What is it?"

"Nothing."

"You are not a woman who says nothing and means it."

She hesitated, before speaking. "I've been thinking about your paper. The one on women and scholarship. You've never once told me why you actually believe it."