The corner of his mouth tilted slightly upward. “Of course.”
“Mhm.” She moved further into the room and stopped at a safe and demonstrably reasonable distance from the fire, and from him, and fixed her attention on the nearest shelf.
The door, she noticed, was still half open behind her. That was good. That was entirely appropriate.
“How did you find Lord Aldbury?” he asked.
“Pleasant,” she said.
“Hmm, how damning,” he smirked, seemingly amusing himself at her expense.
She pressed her lips together. “He is an agreeable man.”
“You were watching the clock above the mantelpiece.”
There was no accusation in it. There rarely was with him; that was the problem. The Duke observed things with the same even composure with which other people breathed, and the accuracy of his observations was a consistent source of personal aggravation.
“Three times in twenty minutes. I counted,” he added.
“You were watching me,” she said, her tone accusatory despite the way her pulse had begun to gallop at the base of her throat.
He shrugged easily, and the movement drew her attention to the breathtaking width of his shoulders. “I was observing the room,” he said in a drawl.
Caroline narrowed her eyes at that languid register. “And I was in the room,” she pointed out stubbornly.
“So you were,” he said quietly.
She turned from the shelf to find that he had moved, which she had not realized, and was now considerably closer than he had been at the fireplace. Of course, he was not close enough to be alarming, but he was definitely close enough to be familiar.
She kept her chin level.
“You’re pretending,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?” Caroline nearly sputtered at the sudden accusation, and it was merely her training in social etiquette that kept her still toeing the edge of modesty.
“Out there…in the ballroom.” His gaze did not leave her face, and there was something in it tonight that was different from their other evenings, something more… direct. “Are you going to spend the entire evening performing?”
Caroline did not like the ease with which this man read her expressions and interpreted them. “I am being perfectly agreeable, Your Grace.”
“Yes.” His eyes moved across her face. “That’s what I mean.”
The fire crackled, enlarging the reality of them being secluded here like this. Outside, the distant strains of the orchestra carried through the walls; a waltz, bright and turning.
“You manage it very well,” he continued, and there was nothing harsh in his voice. If anything, that made it more difficult to deflect. “The smile. The questions are placed at their proper intervals. You give the gentlemen precisely what they expect and not a syllable more, and they come away thinking the conversation went very well.”
“Because it did,” she said.
“Did it?” He tilted his head. “What did Lord Aldbury say about Florence?”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. She could barely remember that part of the conversation, when her entire focus had been on the very man in front of her now.
How did he know? How could he possibly have overheard Lord Aldbury mentioning Florence?
His expression did not quite become a smile. “I rest my case.”
Her cheeks heated in an instant. “That is irrelevant—” Caroline decided that she had to try to regain some semblance of control.
“What would you have talked about,” he said, “if you were not performing?”