Today's Reading
'I do apologise, Miss Bryant,' the Duke whispered.
He was looking down in horror, and delight, and he was not moving to right her. Sylvia stared up at him, head still reeling, and placed a splayed palm against his chest.
The Duke's breath hitched in his throat.
Think. She needed to think, but she had never had to think before with the thoughts of the pressure of a man's lips tingling on hers. Never had to navigate a conversation after falling into the lap of—well.
She had never been kissed. And, unless she was greatly mistaken, that would very soon be rectified. There was no mistaking the look in the Duke's eyes, a heady desire that seemed to spark like lightning between them.
And words were tumbling from her lips, quite beyond her control. 'Well, I— I suppose—if we are already here, then there's no chance of a k—'
The carriage door was wrenched open.
'Sylvia Bryant, I won't have any more attempts to escape the respectable confines of the Wallflower—the Wallflower—'
Ah. Botheration.
Sylvia attempted to sit up, but lounging across the Duke of Featherstonehaugh's lap made that difficult. Her head spun at the sudden rise and stars winked in the corners of her vision.
Think, Sylvia. Think. There has to be a way out of this.
The Duke was speaking rapidly. '—most dreadful misunderstanding—not what it looks like—'
When Sylvia had sufficiently blinked, a most surprising sight came into view.
She was still sprawled across the Duke's lap, and his hand was still delightfully resting on her knee. The carriage door was open and there, standing with her hands resolutely on her hips, her lips so tightly pressed together that they were naught but a thin line—was Miss Pike, her pale skin splattered with scarlet.
Sylvia grinned. 'Oh, dear! What a scandalous situation to have found myself in, Miss Pike. Whatever are we to do about it?'
CHAPTER TWO
Well, this was a disaster.
Theodore tried to take a long, deep breath. It would perhaps have calmed his frantic nerves, prepared him to explain to the shouting woman that nothing, absolutely nothing, untoward had occurred, helped dispel the impression of the beautiful woman nestled in his arms, squirming against his—
He breathed in and coughed at the same time. It sounded as if he was drowning in an inch of mud.
'No amount of spluttering will get you out of this one, young man!' Miss Pike—and he could see now why the wallflower who had attempted to accost the Duke of Warchester's carriage had called her 'the Pike'—glared with such ferocity that Theodore took a step back.
He could not go far.
Miss Pike had insisted he and Miss Bryant be marched up to a small study, perhaps the size of his bedchamber in the lodgings he had taken in town. It was not much of a bedchamber. It was not much of a study.
Within it was a desk, three chairs, a longcase clock that appeared to be stuck chiming, the irate proprietress of the Wallflower Academy, himself—and a woman whose fiery beauty was making it mightily difficult for Theodore to concentrate.
Much to his detriment.
'Are you listening, young man?' Miss Pike snapped.
The honest answer was 'no'. Theodore had not even wanted to come to this Wallflower Academy in the first place. It was his friend, the Duke of Warchester, who had arranged to meet with the stablemaster here for tips on the races. A foolish errand, in Theodore's view, but despite having so much quite literally riding on those next races, Warchester had found himself otherwise engaged. London had been unpleasant, and the man had been such a good friend to him these last few weeks, so Theodore had offered to go in his stead.
He hadn't entered the school itself. Obviously. A place like the Wallflower Academy would not welcome men like himself with no title and no fortune. He was hardly marriage material.
Instead, his carriage had been boarded by a woman with sparkling eyes and a witty tongue, he'd become entangled with her in a way that would absolutely make sleep difficult this evening, and he was now being berated by a woman who, it appeared, would shortly explode.
This excerpt is from the eBook edition.
Monday we begin the book Give Me a Shot by Gia De Cadenet.
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