Truly a Wife (Free Fellows League 4)
“Not particularly.”
“Why not?” he demanded.
“Because you’re not very good at them,” she answered.
“What makes you think that?” Daniel asked, genuinely curious.
“You’re a duke, Daniel.”
“So?”
“You’re out of practice, because no one ever expects a duke to apologize or allows you to do so.”
Miranda spoke the truth as she saw it, and Daniel rewarded her honesty with a smile. He was out of practice among most members of the ton for exactly the reasons Miranda mentioned. His friends in the Free Fellows and Miranda were the exception. “No one expects an unmarried lady to do what you’re doing either.”
“Which is?”
“Bathe a naked man.”
Miranda gave him a mysterious smile.
Daniel was intrigued in spite of himself. “You haven’t have you?”
“Haven’t what?” She looked at him from beneath her eyelashes in a way that could only be called coy.
It was the first time Daniel had ever seen Miranda behave in such a manner. Flirtation had never been her forte. “Seen a naked man before?”
“How impolite of you to ask, Your Grace.” Miranda ran the bathing cloth over Daniel’s torso, rinsed off the soap, then dried him with a length of toweling.
Daniel smiled once again. He was beginning to read her state of mind. Her use of his style was telling. Miranda only called him, “Your Grace,” when she was angry or upset with him. “Impolite or not, I’m asking, milady.”
“As a matter of fact, I have.”
Daniel pursed his lips in thought. The Marchioness of St. Germaine was full of surprises today. “I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true.”
“Whom?” His blue eyes sparkled with mischief. “What man caught your fancy? Come now,” he coaxed, “you can tell me. Was it the gallant Patrick Hollister with whom you danced this evening, or …”
“Last evening,” Miranda corrected.
“Last evening,” he amended. “Or was it Linton? Carville? Nash? Or the Austrian archduke?”
Daniel had seen her dancing with Lord Hollister, but Miranda gasped in surprise when he named the others. They were the gentlemen who’d seen her at Almack’s last season and attempted to court her. She hadn’t seriously considered any of them because she wanted Daniel. And she hadn’t realized Daniel had been paying such close attention. “What do you know about those gentlemen?”
“I know Hollister is a good man who would make you a good husband,” he answered truthfully. “I know that Linton and Nash are fortune hunters, and that Carville’s very well set but has rather interesting alliances. The Austrian archduke is, well—” He paused, trying to find fault with the young, handsome archduke. “Austrian. And not at all suitable for you.”
“I vow that if your opinion of me gets any higher, I shall die from the lack of atmosphere.”
“I’m only trying to look out for you.”
“Do you take me for a complete ninny?” she demanded. “I know Lord Hollister is a good man. I was friends with Clea, his late wife. And I know Linton and Nash are fortune hunters. Everyone knows they’re fortune hunters. To you and to other members of the ton, I may appear desperate to marry, but I refused their persistent offers to court me. I’m not desperate enough to consider marriage with gentlemen who don’t give a fig about my family heritage, or me—gentlemen who would marry a Jersey cow if she came with a lofty title and a healthy fortune.” She glared at Daniel. “Do you really believe I would marry someone who would go through my fortune and leave me to fend for myself? Or that I would ever leave England to marry an archduke, no matter how attractive or wealthy? And what makes you think that I don’t know that Lord Carville prefers young men?”
Daniel widened his eyes in surprise. “You allowed him to pay court to you.”
“I allowed him to pay a call,” Miranda corrected, “to state his business. He proposed generous terms for a suitable marriage arrangement. I refused.”
Daniel was momentarily stunned. “Carville proposed?”