To Marry The Duke by Julianne MacLean Page B

Mary. I must go and say hello to them.” She stood, crossed the room, and went to meet her friends.
    Sophia was now sitting alone with James in front of the huge marble fireplace. There was no fire; the grate was clean.
    “Lily is lovely,” she said.
    “She is indeed. Lovely and uncontrollably defiant.”
    Glancing over at James’s sister, giggling with the two young ladies, Sophia was not surprised. “I sensed something was wrong. She seemed troubled.”
    James gazed at Lily, too. Candlelight glimmered over his classically handsome profile. “We had a disagreement recently. Over her marriage.”
    Sophia tried not to voice her shock. “Her marriage? But she’s so young.”
    “Precisely what I said. Mother would marry her off tomorrow if she could, and when I told Lily that she didn’t have to worry about that because she was too young, she didn’t seem to realize that I was on her side. She accused me of underestimating her maturity as far as ‘passions’ were concerned.”
    Sophia smiled sympathetically. “She’ll come around. I’m sure she’ll meet someone respectable who will suit her well.”
    James leaned his temple on a finger and gazed at Sophia. The lines around his eyes softened, and he smiled lazily. “How is it possible that we found a way to be alone in this crush?”
    Sophia smiled. “I’m not complaining.”
    “Nor am I,” he replied, uncrossing one long leg and crossing the other over it. At the sight of his powerful, muscular thighs, she felt a tingle of desire move through her and had to pull her gaze away and try to focus on her gloved hands instead. “I recall admiring art with you a few nights ago,” he continued. “We were alone, then, too.”
    “Yes. I’ve been thinking of those paintings we looked at. Especially the Rembrandt—the
Young Woman Bathing
. It was like peering into someone’s private moment. I’ve wondered what she was thinking about.” Sophia paused and gazed off into space.
    James stared intently at her. She supposed he was witnessing her own private moment.
    “I believe there is another Rembrandt out in this hall.” He gestured toward it. “A self-portrait.”
    Sophia looked at the doorway that led out into the hall, and back at Lily, who was still conversing with her friends on the other side of the drawing room.
    Could Sophia go alone with James into another room that seemed currently uninhabited?
    Could she
not
?
    Even here, sitting across from him in this drawing room, she was too far. She felt that “apartness” again and wanted more than anything to bridge it. Perhaps it was a physical thing; she wasn’t sure. She only knew that flame-hot desire was pulling at her, wrenching her away from her common sense.
    Sophia stood up. “I would very much like to see the painting. Lily will see where we are going.”
    Lily did, at that instant, lean out to watch them walk together out of the drawing room and into the hall.
    Sophia and James crossed the quiet room. Her heels clicked over the marble floor and echoed over their heads; she looked up at the high cathedral ceiling. Even though she’d always considered herself a liberal girl, she nevertheless felt uncomfortable with what they were doing.
    “Over here.” James led the way to a painting at the bottom of a wide staircase.
    Sophia stood before it and let her mind relax about where she was and who she was with. She stared for a few minutes at the portrait. “He looks dignified.”
    “Yes. Self-assured.”
    “But sad, too. Look at his eyes. I wonder what he was thinking when he painted this.”
    As she stared up at the work of art, she felt James studying her profile. “You often seem to wonder what people are thinking.”
    She shrugged. “I suppose so. People are a mystery, are they not? You never know what is going on in a person’s mind or heart, and even if they tell you, how do you know they are telling you everything?”
    He continued to stare at her profile. “I believe you are the most