“I was under the impression that you had quite liked being kissed. It would be a shame to never have another opportunity for it.”
Yes, it would. “No, it would not.” She lifted her gloved hand to her face and pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose in aggravation. At the very least she seemed to have exhausted the last of her embarrassment—even that unwise comment had failed to draw a blush from her. “Are you trying to embarrass me?” she snapped.
“Good lord, no,” he said. “I’m trying to flirt with you. Which would be much more enjoyable if you would cooperate.”
Flirt with her? Men didn’t flirt with her. Oh, maybe they once had, but it had been years since then, years since she had last had to suffer the patronizing attentions of men who assumed that simply because she had been abandoned by Lord Kirkland that she would welcome their suits, that as a woman of advancing years she would be desperate for any attention they deigned to give her.
She wasn’t certain she knew how to flirt any longer. She could only stare, dumbstruck, mesmerized by the curious emotion in his eyes. Not quite amusement, but something deeper and warmer, a secret he was attempting to communicate silently to her. A secret shared just between the two of them, a sort of intimacy that made her nervous. She didn’t want that—she just didn’t. Not with him and not with anyone.
And yet that blue gaze that ought to have seemed ice cold seared straight through her, and she felt the warmth of it straight to her toes. Distantly she was aware that he had spoken last, and that she ought to have said something in response, but it took her longer than she would have liked to cast her mind back to what it was he had been discussing and snatch at the conversation.
“I don’t flirt,” she said at last, a touch defensively.
He collected her free hand in his, and his fingers caressed her palm, and she did not know why she did not pull her hand away. She truly did not.
“I can see that; you’re rubbish at it. But I have faith you will improve.” His teeth flashed white, half grin, half leer. “You only require practice.”
How was she meant to respond to that unsettling remark? And where was Nora? She desperately required her presence, needed her to be a buffer between James and herself. Not James. The duke.
“I am not going to practice flirting. With you. Or anyone,” she managed at last, goaded into a response by his knowing smile. Good heavens, how was it that he flustered her so easily? He had the regrettable tendency to provoke her into either anger or embarrassment, and she suspected he did it entirely on purpose, to keep her unbalanced.
Unfortunately, even when he managed to rile her, it was more exasperation than actual anger. Even more unfortunately, she suspected he knew it.