NOT JUST A WALLFLOWER Read Free

off his cloak and hat and handed them to Stanhope before striding across the vast hallway to where Ellie stood at the bottom of the wide and curving staircase.
    —as well as being the most arrogant—
    She drew in a breath. ‘I sent a note earlier this evening requesting that you call—’
    ‘Which is the very reason I am here now,’ he cut in.
    —and impatient!
    And considering that Ellie had sent the note over two hours ago, she found his delayed response to that request to be less than helpful! ‘I had expected you sooner...’
    He stilled. ‘Do I detect a measure of rebuke in your tone?’
    Her cheeks felt warm at the underlying steel beneath the mildness of his tone. ‘I—no...’
    He relaxed his shoulders. ‘I am gratified to hear it.’
    Her chin rose determinedly. ‘It is your grandmother whom I believe may have expected a more immediate response from you, your Grace.’ Indeed, that dear lady had been asking every quarter of the hour, since she had requested Ellie, as her companion, to send a note to her grandson, as to whether or not there had been any word from him. The duke’s arrival here now, so many hours after the note had been sent, was tardy to say the least.
    ‘This is my immediate response.’
    She raised red-gold brows. ‘Indeed?’
    Justin looked at her as if seeing her for the first time—which he no doubt was; companions to elderly ladies were of no consequence to dukes!—his eyes glinting deeply blue between narrowed lids as that disdainful glance swept over her from the red of her hair, her slenderness in the plain brown gown, down to the slippers upon her feet, and then back up to her now flushed face. ‘The two of us are related in some way, are we not?’
    Not exactly. Ellie’s mother had been a widow with a nine-year-old daughter—Ellie—when she had married this gentlemen’s cousin some ten years ago. But as both her mother and stepfather had since been killed in a carriage accident, it rather rendered the relationship between herself and the duke so tenuous as to be practically non-existent. And if not for the kindness of his grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Royston, in taking Ellie into her own household as her companion when she had been left alone in the world without a penny to call her own, Ellie very much doubted she would have seen any of the St Just family ever again following her mother’s demise.
    ‘We are stepcousins once removed, at best, your Grace,’ she now allowed huskily.
    He raised an eyebrow, the candlelight giving a gold lustre to his fashionably tousled hair, the expression in those deep-blue eyes now hidden behind those lowered lids. ‘Cousin Eleanor,’ he acknowledged mockingly. ‘The fact of the matter is, I was not at my rooms when your note was delivered earlier this evening and it took one of my servants some time in which to...locate me.’
    Justin had no idea why it was he was even bothering to explain himself to this particular young woman. She was only a distant relative by marriage. Indeed, he could not remember even having spoken to Miss Eleanor Rosewood before now. He had noticed her, of course—bored and cynical he might be, but he was also a man!
    Her hair was an intriguing shade of red, despite attempts on her part to mute its fieriness and curl in the severity of its style. Her eyes were a stunning clear green and surrounded by thick dark lashes, freckles sprinkled the tops of her creamy cheeks and the pertness of her tiny nose, and her mouth—
    Ah, her mouth... Full and pouting, and naturally the colour of ripe strawberries, it was far too easy for a man to imagine such a mouth being put to far better uses than talking or eating!
    She was tiny in both stature and figure, and yet the fullness of her breasts, visible above the neckline of her plain and unbecoming brown gown, emphasised the slenderness of her waist and thighs, her hands also tiny and delicate, the fingers long and slender in wrist-length cream lace