Slightly Dangerous by Mary Balogh Read Free Book Online

made his way toward her.
    A path opened before him as if by magic. There was nothing magical about it, of course. Everyone stood out of his way—he probably took it so much as his right that he did not notice it happening.
    Oh goodness, she thought as he approached, he really did have a magnificent
presence
.
    He stopped walking when the toes of his Hessian boots were a few inches from the toes of her slippers. Danger loomed, Christine thought, her heart fluttering uncomfortably in her chest despite herself.
    “I do not believe we have an acquaintance, ma’am,” he said, his voice cultured, slightly bored.
    “Oh, I know who you are,” she assured him. “You are the Duke of Bewcastle.”
    “Then you have the advantage of me,” he said.
    “Christine Derrick,” she told him. She offered no other explanation. He probably had no interest in her family tree—or Oscar’s.
    “Have I inadvertently caused you some amusement, Miss Derrick?” he asked her.
    “Oh, yes, I am afraid you have,” she said. “And it is
Mrs.
Derrick. I am a widow.”
    His quizzing glass was in his hand again. He raised both eyebrows in an expression that could surely freeze grapes on the vine and cause ruination of the harvest for a whole year.
    Christine took another bite out of her cake—and that necessitated another lick of her lips. Should she apologize again? she wondered. But why? She had apologized at the time. Was his right eye a little pinker than the left? Or was she just imagining that it was so?
    “Might I be permitted to know why?” he asked, raising his glass almost, though not quite, to his eye.
    What a marvelous weapon it was, she thought. It set as much distance between him and troublesome mortals as any drawn sword in the hand of a lesser man. She rather thought she might like to use one herself. She would grow into an eccentric old lady who peered at the world through a giant quizzing glass, terrifying the pretentious and amusing young children with her hideously magnified eye.
    He was asking why he had amused her.
Amused
was not quite the right word, but she
had
laughed at him—as she was doing again now.
    “You were so very outraged—you
are
so very outraged,” she explained, “that I failed to obey your command.”
    “Outraged? I beg your pardon?” Both eyebrows arched upward again. “
Did
I issue a command?”
    “Indeed you did,” she told him. “You discovered me looking at you from across the room, and you raised first one eyebrow and then your quizzing glass. I ought not even to have noticed the glass, of course. I should have dropped my gaze obediently long before you raised it.”
    “And the raising of an eyebrow constitutes a command and that of a quizzing glass
outrage,
ma’am?” he asked her.
    “How else do you explain the fact that you have crossed the room to confront me?” she asked in return.
    “Perhaps, ma’am,” he said, “it is because, unlike you, I have been circulating politely among my fellow guests.”
    She felt genuine delight then. She even laughed out loud.
    “And now I have provoked you into spite,” she said. “It would be better to ignore me, your grace, and leave me to my chosen role of spectator. You must not expect me to show fear of you.”
    “Fear?” He raised his glass all the way to his eye and observed her hands through it. Her fingernails were cut short. They were also clean, but it seemed to her that he could see very well that she actually
worked
with her hands.
    “Yes, fear,” she said. “It is how you rule your world. You make everyone afraid of you.”
    “I am gratified that you presume to know me so well, ma’am, on such short acquaintance,” he said.
    “I suppose,” she admitted, “I ought not to have spoken with such frankness. But you did ask.”
    “I did indeed,” he said, making her a stiff bow.
    But before he could turn away and leave her, Melanie appeared at his side.
    “I see you have met Christine, your grace,” she said, slipping