Most unfortunately, she did need him. But only to discourage Adrian.
His Grace, the most noble Duke of Rushton, bent his head close to her ear and said, “Do you know, Jilly, I do think you are actually starting to like me.”
An astonished flutter of laughter broke from her throat. She didn’t—she couldn’t. She didn’t want to like him, certainly. She didn’t want to enjoy his entirely inappropriate attempts at conversation. She didn’t want him to flirt with her, or to encourage her to flirt back, or to hold her hand and rub his fingertips against her palm, or to whisper in her ear.
Well. She didn’t want to want those things. And for three exceptionally long years she had not. She hadn’t been tempted into kissing a man in a secluded garden while bathed in moonlight. She had been moved to neither exasperation nor embarrassment by anyone’s attentions. She had never had such contradictory reactions to a man in her life. She had buried her emotions so deeply inside her, and had never expected them to be unearthed again—only, he was managing it, coaxing them all out one at a time, and she didn’t know quite what to make of it. She didn’t know how to handle them anymore, how to sort through the great tangle of them and make them make sense.
It should have been horrifying. And it was. But she laughed anyway, because she had buried that, too, and somehow he had found it for her again.
His brows lifted in surprise. “I can hear the difference,” he said, his voice low and awed. “Between a contrived laugh and an honest one. I like your honest laugh better.”
She had, too. But it had shriveled and died with the rest of her. She hadn’t heard it in so long. It was glorious, and wonderful, and lovely.
And terrifying.

Chapter Eleven