NOT JUST A WALLFLOWER Read Free Page B

lady.
    ‘It is you whom I am expecting to join me there,’ he explained with a sigh.
    Ellie’s eyes widened. ‘Me?’
    Justin almost laughed at the stunned expression on her face. A natural reaction, perhaps, when this was the longest conversation they had ever exchanged.
    Surprisingly, he found her naivety amusing, and, Justin readily admitted, very little succeeded in amusing him.
    His childhood had been spent in the country until the age of ten, when he had been sent away to boarding school, after which he had seen his parents rarely and had felt an exclusion from their deep love for each other when he did, to the extent that it had coloured his own feelings about marriage. He accepted that a duke must necessarily marry, in order to provide an heir to the duchy, but Justin’s own isolated upbringing had dictated his own would be a marriage of convenience, rather than love. A marriage that would not exclude his children in the way that he had been excluded.
    His three years as the Duke of Royston had ensured that he was denied nothing and certainly not any woman he expressed the least desire for—and, on several occasions, some he had not, such as other gentlemen’s wives and the daughters of marriage-minded mamas!
    Eleanor Rosewood, as companion to his grandmother, was not of that ilk, of course, just as their tenuous family connection ensured she could never be considered as Justin’s social equal. At the same time, though, even that slight family connection meant he could not consider her as a future mistress, either. Frustrating, but true.
    ‘Your Grace...?’
    He frowned his irritation with her insistence on using his title. ‘I believe we established only a few minutes ago that we are cousins of a sort and we should therefore address each other as Cousin Eleanor and Cousin Justin.’
    Ellie’s eyes widened in alarm at the mere thought of her using such familiarity with this rakishly handsome gentleman; Justin St Just, the twelfth Duke of Royston, was so top-lofty, so arrogantly haughty as he gave every appearance of looking down the length of his superior nose at the rest of the world, that Ellie would never be able to even think of him as a cousin, let alone address him as such.
    ‘I believe that you may have implied something of the sort, yes, your Grace, ’ she said stubbornly.
    He arched one blond brow over suddenly teasing blue eyes. ‘But you did not concur?’
    ‘I do not believe so, no, your Grace.’
    He eyed her in sudden frustration. ‘Perhaps it is a subject we should discuss further when I return downstairs?’
    She frowned. ‘I—perhaps.’
    He scowled darkly at her intransigence. ‘But again, you do not agree...?’
    Ellie believed such a conversation to be a complete waste of his time, as well as her own. What was the point in arguing over what to call one another? They’d probably not speak to each other again for at least another year, if this past year—which consisted of this last few minutes’ conversation for the entirety of it—was any indication! ‘It is very late, your Grace, and I believe the dowager duchess, if she has been made aware of your arrival, will be becoming increasingly anxious to speak with you,’ she prompted softly.
    ‘Of course.’ He now looked annoyed at having allowed himself to become distracted by talking to her. ‘I will expect to find you in the library, along with the decanter of brandy and two glasses, when I return,’ he added peremptorily before resuming his ascent of the staircase.
    Almost, Ellie recognised indignantly, as if he considered her as being of no more consequence than a dog he might instruct to heel, or a horse he halted by the rein.

Chapter Three
    ‘I must say, you took your time getting here, Royston.’
    Justin, as was the case with most men, was uncomfortable visiting a sickroom, but especially when it was that of his aged grandmother, the dowager duchess being a woman for whom he had the highest regard and