Carcel and Ines turned to the door.
"I never imagined, even in my dreams, that the duke I had only heard of through rumors would be this handsome!"
The voice, a bright, musical, and utterly, joyfully feminine trill, echoed from outside. It was a voice that held the confidence of a woman who had never, not once in her life, been nervous about anything.
Carcel's hand, the one on her shoulder, jerked. He snatched it back as if he had been burned, as if her gray morning dress had suddenly become red-hot iron. He took a fast, guilty step back, his face, which had been so open, so kind, instantly shuttering, becoming, once again, the cold, distant, unreadable mask of the Duke of Carleton.
"You flatter me," Rowan's voice, a low, charming, flirtatious baritone, followed. "In the presence of your beauty, Countess, everything else loses its shine."
