He stopped them in the corridor of shadow between a support pillar and the wall, where the candlelight did not quite reach, and the nearest occupied table was sufficiently occupied with its own affairs.
He turned to face her, and in the dim, his expression was the contained, tight-jawed version she had learned to identify as the Duke experiencing an emotion he did not intend to name.
“The masked man,” he said. “He was flirting with you.”
Caroline looked at him. “I am aware.”
The Duke let out a grunt. “And yet you smiled at him.”
“I was being polite.” Caroline did not see why she had to explain basic etiquette to a Duke, but here they were.
“In a gaming hell.” His voice was very even. “You should not be encouraging men like that here.”
She stared at him for a moment, examining this statement from several angles and finding it, from every one of them, equally bewildering.
“I did notencouragehim. I said thank you, and I did not accept his invitation to venture away to another table.” She kept hertone firm, but gentle. “That is, by most available definitions, the opposite of encouragement.”
“He was flirting with you,” the Duke said again, as though the repetition would solve something.
“Yes. And?” She tilted her head. “Why is that so terrible? Men flirt in gaming hells, I should imagine. It seems rather the atmosphere of the place.”
His jaw tightened, but he did not refute her claim. That did not sit well with her at all.
“You do not,” she continued, with careful, precise reasonableness, “want me encouraging any man in here? Is that what you are saying?”
“That is exactly what I am saying,” he admitted, and the sheer audacity in the statement made her bristle.
That made her ask, “Does that include you?”
His body stilled at the direct question.
The candlelight from the nearest table found half his face: the sharp line of his jaw, the green of his eyes, the flat set of his mouth. She was very aware, in the sudden stillness, of how close together they were standing. The pillar was at her shoulder. The noise of the room moved around them like water around a stone.
His eyes dropped to her mouth, then back up, and the movement was very brief, but she was fairly confident she did not see amiss.
He stepped forward. It was a small step, but it brought him closer, and that made shivers climb all down her spine.
“Especiallyme,” he said, and his voice had gone to the quiet, rough-edged tone that she had heard once before, in a library, four nights ago.
Caroline let out a slow breath through her nose. “I’m not a delicate flower,” she said. “Nor an innocent debutante who requires protecting from a civil remark.”
“No,” he said, his words vibrating low in his throat. “You are certainly not innocent, Lady Caroline.”
“And what precisely,” she said, “is that supposed to mean?”
His mouth curved, briefly, without warmth. “It means that you are quick, and observant, and entirely too comfortable in rooms like this one for a woman who entered it for the first time an hour ago.” He paused to suck in a breath. “It means I am not in the habit of worrying, and I find the present situation distinctly irritating.”
Caroline’s brow flew high on her forehead. “You are irritated that I played well?” she scoffed.
“I am….” He trailed off, pressing a hand briefly over his eyes, a gesture so unstudied and uncharacteristic that it arrested her completely. “No. Your gambling abilities are not the problem at all.”
Before she could pursue it, however, a crash of laughter erupted from the table behind them, loud enough to startle. A round apparently concluded in chaos as cards scattered and one of the young bucks knocked his glass sideways. There was a general cheerful disorder of men who were losing and had decided to enjoy it.
Caroline looked into the room, then back at him. “I should like to continue the evening,” she said.
The Duke glanced upward at the ceiling for a moment, as if he were calling on God for help. But, in the end, he held out his arm.
The second table was smaller, with fewer players and a more congenial atmosphere. This time, the Duke played properly, rather than the half-distracted surveillance of the first table.