Slightly Dangerous (Bedwyn Saga, #6)

by Mary Balogh

“you did not wear your bonnet while you frolicked with our niece and nephews. That is not just a flush. It is a sunburn.” “How can one poke one’s head into small hiding places if it is swollen to twice its size with a bonnet?”

“I promise,” Christine said, “not to trip over his feet but to keep a decent distance.”

Of course, she was a great deal older now. She was twenty-nine—almost ancient. No one could expect her to frolic with the young people any longer. She could be a dignified elder.

Go to your room this instant, you wretch, and start behaving like a guest.”

For one fleeting moment she was given the distinct impression that the Duke of Bewcastle might well be a very dangerous man.

And then something extraordinary happened. He winked at her.

After all, one could not become a hermit simply because one’s brothers and sisters had all married and one’s mistress had died.

He had been brought here under false pretenses to frolic with the infantry of both sexes?

She disliked him, she scorned him, and she would be perfectly happy to be soundly ignored by him for thirteen and a half days.

Why should she lower her eyes when he was making no attempt to lower his? And then he really annoyed her. Still looking at her, he raised one arrogant eyebrow. And then he infuriated her.

What a marvelous weapon it was, she thought. It set as much distance between him and troublesome mortals as any drawn sword in the hand of a lesser man.

She would grow into an eccentric old lady who peered at the world through a giant quizzing glass, terrifying the pretentious and amusing young children with her hideously magnified eye.

He was asking why he had amused her. Amused was not quite the right word, but she had laughed at hi...

“It would be better to ignore me, your grace, and leave me to my chosen role of spectator. You must not expect me to show fear of you.”

“I suppose,” she admitted, “I ought not to have spoken with such frankness. But you did ask.”

She had a pretty, wide-eyed, rather round face, which—it had been impossible not to notice—was sun-bronzed. And, if that were not bad enough, there was a dusting of freckles across her nose.

It was too bad for her that Derrick had been inconsiderate enough to die young.

He had not been on the marriage mart for a long time, and ladies of all ages as well as their mamas had stopped courting him a number of years ago on the correct assumption that he was not to be caught. Nevertheless, though he was out of practice, he could recognize a trap when he encountered one.

Some evil angel must have sent her to this house party just to torment him—or to remind him never again to make an impulsive decision.

She was, he conceded grudgingly, really quite startlingly pretty—despite a nose that was reddening by the moment.

Although as a gentleman he was adept at making polite conversation, he had never been a proponent of making noise simply for the sake of keeping the silence at bay. If she was content to stroll quietly, then so was he.

Then an evil angel really had been at work. She was here only because he was—and he was here only because he had acted quite out of character.

She had been swinging her arms in quite unladylike fashion, but now she clasped them behind her back.

She looked like a woodland nymph, and yet it seemed to him that her movements and gestures were quite uncontrived and unselfconscious.

What might have been coquetry in another woman was sheer exuberant delight in her. He had the strange feeling of having stepped—unwillingly—into an alien world.

There it was—his cue to escape. Why he did not take it, he had no idea. Perhaps it was that he was unaccustomed to being dismissed.

“Are you by any chance, Mrs. Derrick,” he asked, grasping the handle of his quizzing glass and raising it all the way to his eye to regard her through it—simply because he knew the gesture would annoy her, “trying to be rid of me?”

“Love,” he said. “It is a word used by women, Mrs. Derrick, and in my experience encompasses such a wide range of emotions that it is virtually useless in conveying meaning.

I write to each of them once a month. I would, I suppose, die for any one of them if such a noble and ostentatious sacrifice were ever called for. Is that love? I leave it to you to decide.”

I would not want to live, I believe, if my life were not filled with love of almost everything and everyone that is involved in it with me. It is not an emotion to inspire contempt.

We feel a delighted stirring of the senses at the sight of a perfect rose. We feel a deep stirring of the heart at the sight of a child who is our own or closely connected to us by family ties.

It had not seemed so long. It ought to have done. He did not usually enjoy the company of anyone whom he had not chosen with care—and that included all strangers.

If the full truth were told, she would have to admit that she did find him fascinating in a shivery sort of way. And he did have a splendid profile—and a physique that more than matched

The Duke of Bewcastle was definitely handsome in his cold, austere way. But he had something else beyond that. He was sexually appealing.

How very embarrassing. And alarming. He was a dangerous man indeed, though not perhaps in any obvious way.

Now I can happily avoid the man for the next thirteen days.” “His loss, my gain,” Justin said, grinning at her. “I would love to have seen his face when you crashed into him.”

Wulfric, who had not intended subjecting himself to the tedium of watching the game, found that he could not take his eyes off her.

She was the sort of woman who was pretty even in repose, but she was quite extraordinarily lovely when animated. And animation seemed to come naturally to her.

But no true lady had any business being so bright-eyed and vivacious and . . . rumpled when in genteel company.

The fact that she looked twice as pretty at the end of the game as she had before it began said nothing to the issue at all.

Mrs. Derrick, looking less than pristine but really very pretty nevertheless,

She was wearing her usual bonnet—a straw one with a brim made floppy from age, though he had to admit that it looked very becoming on her. She

backing up with a few running steps, heedless of the fact that she was providing her audience with a shocking glimpse of her ankles,

It was a massively vulgar display despite the laughter with which it was enacted—and she had shown a considerable amount of leg on the way up.

And she launched herself downward. She came. Part of her skirt did not.

Wulfric was certainly not the closest to her. He was, however, the first to reach her.

Afterward, it seemed to him that he might actually have stood against her. Certainly he could remember her body heat and the smell of warm sunshine and woman.

He shrugged as quickly as he could out of his coat—not an easy matter when it had taken all his valet’s considerable strength and ingenuity to get him into it earlier—and held it open against her while she did the best she could to gather the torn sides of her dress together.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Derrick said, “I must be very heavy.” “Not at all, ma’am,” Wulfric assured her. “You look downright morose,” she said. “I suppose you have servants who usually do things like this for you.”

He made her a curt bow. How, he wondered, did such a shabby creature contrive to look not only remarkably pretty but also vibrant with life?