She turned to look at him quizzically. “You already look very clean to me.”
He smiled ruefully. “I am talking of my past, Anna. Do you think the rain would cleanse me of that?”
Anna’s breath caught in her throat at the intensity of his gaze. “A person’s past,” she spoke carefully, “is exactly that, surely?”
“Is it?” He grimaced. “And what if that past has been less than reputable?”
“But honourable? Always honourable?”
His mouth twisted into a grimace of a smile. “Oh yes, always honourable.”
“Then it must be accepted as the past.” She shrugged. “For the past cannot be changed, we can only hope for the future.”
Rufus felt something shift deep inside him, as if a key had just been turned to open a part of him that had been locked away.
“Anna,” he murmured gruffly as he moved to take her in his arms. “Beautiful, wise Anna.” He rested his cheek against the silkiness of her hair.
Anna had no idea what was happening. Did not fully understand what Rufus was saying. But she did understand that he was in need of warmth and understanding, possibly because of that visit to his family crypt, that she had not been mistaken in how alone he had seeme
d.
Her arms moved about his tapered waist as she rested her head against his chest, and she became instantly aware of the rapid beat of his heart.
They stood like that for some minutes. Long, delicious minutes, when Anna simply enjoyed holding and being held. A time out of time.
A time that surely could not last.
“Would you be ready to do the church flowers now, Miss Anna?”
Anna pulled sharply out of Rufus’s arms, her face blazing with colour as she turned to look at Mrs Faulkner, the baker’s wife. She had arrived to help arrange the flowers. As she did every Saturday...
Something Anna had completely forgotten in Rufus’s company.
“His Grace was sheltering from the rain, and I was keeping him company,” Anna announced brightly as the elderly lady looked at the duke suspiciously. Unlike some in the village, Mrs Faulkner was not a gossip, thankfully.
Anna quickly made the introductions before announcing that it really was time for the two of them to go into the church and see to the flowers.
Rufus eyed her with amusement as he took his leave. “A pleasure to have met you, Mrs Faulkner. We will meet again soon, I hope, Anna,” he added huskily.
Anna was too embarrassed to reciprocate, too mortified at being caught in the duke’s arms by Mrs Faulkner, to even be able to look at Rufus again before he turned and left them.
* * *
“Did you arrange this deliberately?”
Rufus looked at Anna as she sat to the left of him at the mahogany table in the smaller dining-room at Banbury Hall, her head bent as she looked down at the folded hands on her knees, the softness of her voice sounding hurt rather than imbued with her usual fire.
No doubt that was because of the presence of Rufus’s butler who, having served their meal, now stood in attendance near the door.
Rufus motioned for Watkins to leave them, waiting until the other man had closed the door behind himself before answering her. “I am responsible for calling upon your brother after our meeting at the church this morning, and also for issuing the invitation for you and your brother to dine here with me this evening,” Rufus acknowledged. “But I certainly had nothing to do with your brother being called away to tend to one of his flock the moment our dessert had been served, leaving the two of us alone here together.”
Although Rufus accepted that he was guilty of persuading the young parson to allow his sister to stay and finish her meal, after which Rufus had promised he would see she arrived home safely.
Anna looked so beautiful this evening, her gown a pale lemon, with matching slippers on her feet, her hair shining like burnished gold in the last of the evening’s sun streaming through the dining-room windows, her eyes a deep and sparkling blue in her beautiful heart-shaped face.
“You are a duke, sir,” she answered him waspishly as she finally raised her head to look at him, “and no doubt capable of arranging anything you please.”
Ah yes, and there was that sharp little tongue that could amuse and arouse him in equal measure.