It was too outrageous to think about. Yet it was happening, and everyone would know by dinnertime.
“The world is full of small wonders and miracles and things unexplained, Miss Morrowe. Best start believing.” He chuckled, but he didn’t say anything else, merely guided the carriage along the main thoroughfare of the village.
Eventually, the sounds of vehicles rumbling over the hard-packed earth, the hum of people laughing and talking, and the general din of a Shalford afternoon faded as they moved farther away. Then the bleating of sheep and the occasional moo of a cow and the cheery chirp of birds wove through the backdrop. Anxiety crawled through Alice’s insides. What did one say to a duke, or to a naked man she’d touched, for that matter? They had nothing in common, he and she, for he moved in circles too far removed for her to even imagine, while she toiled for her very existence and remained largely ignored by the world.
Before she had a chance to wrack her brain for the answers, the duke cleared his throat. “How long have you suffered from your affliction, your blindness?”
She gasped in surprise. Either people ignored her or they treated her like a leper. No one in recent memory had ever asked her about her vision or attempted to understand it. “All of my life.” She clasped her hands together in her lap to still their shaking. “When I was small, I didn’t realize I was different. I was loved. My parents never treated me differently than anyone else of their acquaintance.”
“What happened?” Polite interest wove through his voice. “Why are you not still with your family? Love helps to build the bridge of acceptance into many places.”
A lump of emotion formed in her throat. She swallowed around it. “My parents died of a fever that went through our hamlet. I was nineteen, so I was subsequently shuffled off to my father’s third cousin, Baron Weatherly, who resides on the other side of Surrey, in Horley.” Where she was little more than a servant, more or less given the task of looking after the baron’s growing brood, that no self-respecting governess would since the children were such hooligans. More often than not, the oldest ones took advantage of her and locked her in various rooms around the manor house.
“You are not with the baron and his family why?”
The clip clop of the horse’s hooves on the earthen road held a soothing edge and calmed her nerves. Alice sighed. “Those people turned me out two years later. In their eyes, my blindness negated my worth.” She shrugged. Some of the sting had left her history now that she told it to him. “I couldn’t catch a decent husband or make important connections, let alone watch over their offspring with any sort of authority, so I was therefore considered a burden.”
Something akin to a growl emanated from him, but he said nothing.
Thus encouraged, Alice continued. “The baron and his wife made plans to send me to an institution in London, a place where sight-challenged people are put when they cease to make themselves useful.” She clutched her fingers tighter. “I refused—loudly—so out I went. It was either go to the institution where I’d no doubt be treated little better than an experiment or trust my luck on the streets and citizens of Surrey.” Her chin trembled as she remembered those early days when she slept in barns or other places that could provide shelter before she came to Shalford. “I have been looking after myself since then.”
“What a horrible story.” The duke sounded properly shocked. And rightly so. No one should be made to feel unwanted simply due to events they couldn’t control. “I’m sorry to hear of your ill-luck and your family’s treatment, but it doesn’t surprise me.” A hard edge had entered his voice. “The ton, even its rusticating members, craves an impossible image of perfection. Those who do not fit are given the Cut Direct and discarded like refuse.”
Alice turned her head. She focused her gaze over his shoulder, caught the lift of a few strands of his hair as the breeze ruffled them. “Do you have first-hand experience, Your Grace?”
“Unfortunately, I do.” A long stretch of silence followed. “Tell me how you see the world around you.”
“Is it something you truly wish to know about, or are you merely asking to pass the time?” It was odd, this having someone take an interest in her.
He leaned his head toward hers. “I genuinely want to know… for me.” The warmth of his breath caressed her face.
“All right.” She glanced away, for fear of what he might glimpse in her eyes, and she certainly didn’t want him to spy her confusion or budding regard. “As you are aware, I use my fingers to feel an object or a person. Touch gives me a good start.”
“Can you see anything or is the world around you dark?”
“If I look straight at someone or something, my vision presents as white with fuzziness running through it, but if I focus my gaze over a shoulder—or slightly to the left or right of a person—I can see better. Not clearly, mind you, but I can discern outlines, colors. It’s blurry, like looking through cloudy glass smeared with water.” Again, she turned toward him. “However, if I move something very near my face, like when I read, my vision is nearly flawless.” A self-deprecating laugh broke from her throat. “Though it’s the height of improper to press myself against a person in order to read the emotions in their face or eyes. Not that I need worry; most folks don’t bother with knowing me at all.”
Eventually, the duke guided the phaeton beneath a grouping of oak trees that overhung the side of the road. He pulled the brake and then presumably let the horse forage on the grass. “The people who don’t wish to know you are the ones who don’t deserve your attention. It’s they who will eventually regret that they cast you aside.”
Her heart squeezed. Warmth flowed inside her chest. “Thank you. Not even my friend, Fanny, has given me such sound advice.”
“Then you need to seek out a better circle of acquaintances.”
She snorted. “Easier said than done, Your Grace.”
“Donovan.”
“I beg your pardon?” At such closeness, when she peered upward, she discerned the brown hair that curled at his collar and just over his ear. For a duke so high on the instep, he apparently didn’t care about fashion. It was endearing and made him all that more approachable.
When he chuckled, a thrill ran down her spine. The sapphire stickpin in his pristine cravat sparkled in the sunlight. “My name is Donovan. Please make use of it, for I grow weary of formality in most of my relationships.”
“Oh.” She tumbled his name through her mind a couple of times before speaking it aloud. “Donovan. It’s quite a commanding, respectable name.” His sleeve brushed her arm when he shifted into a better position so that he more fully faced her. Tingles lingered in its wake. “Please, address me as Alice.”
“Thank you.” He glanced his knuckles along the side of her face, and she mourned the fact that he wore gloves and she couldn’t feel his skin against hers.
Before she could ask him a question of her own, he spoke once more. “Do you enjoy your life as it is, Alice? Or do you yearn for more, have goals you want to reach in the coming years?”
She sucked in a breath of surprise. His line of inquiry went beyond polite interest. “I am happy, of course. Why should I spend my life in anger or bitterness? That seems a waste of the time I’ve been given. I’m blind, not broken.” Would he think her too bold?
“Is your condition reversible?”
Once more, his question put her at sixes and sevens. “I… don’t assume so. I have never seen a doctor, and it’s been my experience that the eye isn’t an organ the medical profession is rushing to study.” Oh, she’d asked when she lived with the baron, but was told that she might grow out of it, so there was no need for the expense of traveling to London.
“If there should come a time in the future when such a professional could be procured, would you see him?” The tone was low, intimate, much more than a relative stranger would employ.
“I wouldn’t say no, of course, but I cannot fathom how or why such an occurrence would find its way to me.” She
trembled with the possibility, but then in the next breath, she dismissed it. He wasn’t offering, merely speculating. “As for my goals, it’s always been a particular dream of mine to open a school for children who suffer from similar ailments as me, teach them that they still have value to society and that they aren’t throwaways destined only to toil in shops or trades because someone told them ‘that’s the only thing they can do’. I want those children to know there is hope.” Her eyebrows rose. Never had she shared those dreams with anyone, so why him, why now?
“Noble plans, to be sure,” Donovan said with a smile evident in his voice. Did the dimple in his cheek wink? “I commend you on your vision.”
Alice snickered. “Is that a joke?”
He joined in on her mirth. “Not intentionally.”
A grin curved her lips. When he wasn’t in the persona of the duke, he was an enjoyable companion, and though she was flattered by his interest, she warned herself to remain wary. She might be innocent, but she wasn’t naïve. “What of you? Are you a newly minted duke?” Not that she would know, for she’d never before concerned herself with the upper ten thousand.
“No.” His chuckle sent gooseflesh racing along her arms. “Father died ten years ago, when I was a cocky young man of five and twenty. Suddenly, in the middle of my Grand Tour, I was summoned home with the news that my father lay dying of complications from when his heart attacked him.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” She nudged his side with her shoulder. “It’s never easy losing a parent.”
“This is true. Mother died while attempting to birth my younger brother years before that. My sister and I were left to our own devices much of the time, for I don’t believe Father actually thought he’d ever die. In his mind, fate wouldn’t dare interfere in his life.” A sigh sailed from him. “He gave me very little training.”
“Such an impressive responsibility. Do you enjoy your life?” She couldn’t fathom the weight of everything he must carry on his shoulders.
“It has its moments.” Donovan took her hand in his. Again, she wished he was as gloveless as she, for of course she hadn’t been given the proper time to grab hers or even her bonnet. “I’ve found the obligations vastly outweigh the pleasures though.” Was that regret twisting through his voice?
“You seem to find amusement anyway.” His fingers were warm and strong as he held her hand. She felt comfortable in his presence, and that in itself was odd. Surely such a thing would take time.
Donovan laughed and lowered his voice. “I have large appetites and live for only the best indulgences.”
A different sort of shiver raced down her spine to throb deep in her core. “For yourself.” He was a decadent lord she had no business associating with, for it could only mean trouble.
“Perhaps.” Companionable silence brewed between them, broken only by the snap of the grass tearing as the horse took his lunch. Overhead, birds chattered in the boughs.
“And you are here with me why?” She had to know, for she would not be made a fool.
He brought his face close to hers, went so far as to layer his forehead to hers. Alice met his gaze, fell into the brandy-hued pools of his eyes. “Perhaps I have a craving for a sweet country flower, one of such rarity that I cannot find it’s like in London.”
“I see.” She drew in a shuddering breath. With every word they uttered, their lips brushed. Did he mean to do that or was it happy serendipity? “Well then.” What else was there to say? Except, a million questions bounced about her mind like soap bubbles. “You are interested in me… for me, or do you find me an oddity, a puzzle to be solved?” It was best to discover his exact intent now before her heart became too far engaged. At the moment, that organ was in danger of making the jump to affection from his attentions.
“Are we not all puzzles to be solved by someone?” Donovan squeezed her hand and then pulled away, moving farther and farther out of focus until his form vanished behind the fuzzy shield of white. “But yes, I am interested in you alone. Everything else is like icing on the finest of cakes.”
“Oh.” Her heart skipped a beat and she smiled. “That is good to know.” Perhaps he was different after all.
He threw the brake on the vehicle, and grabbing the reins, he set the phaeton into motion once more. “Shall we take tea together in Guildford? I’m rather famished, and cake sounds wonderful. I don’t fancy returning to Shalford so soon.”
As a matter of fact, neither did she. “That would be lovely.” For the moment, she’d enjoy being in his company, and she deserved to live as all the other women her age.
CHAPTER FIVE
September 17, 1815
Alice grows more intriguing by the day.
Donovan’s wolf snuffled in his mind. She is merely a woman.
No, she’s different from any woman I’ve ever known. Which was odd, for that very reason. Being a duke brought him into contact with many of the more delicate beings of the species. So why, then, did this one stand out? Perhaps it was the novelty of her sight condition that drew him to her, perhaps it was her air of innocent curiosity, yet it felt more than that. She was strong instead of helpless; she remained optimistic over bitter from her circumstances. How did she manage it?
I need to know. For mayhap she could help him through his own.
And her dream was selfless and flawless. It didn’t benefit her at all. That made him yearn to understand her mindset. Did she ever do anything for her own selfish pleasure or gain? Doubtful. That wasn’t Alice’s style, but what was? Did she want pretty gowns or valuable jewels or anything a typical woman would wish for? Did she yearn for a husband and children, or was there something else she held close to her heart?
She is not like the women you draw to your bed, his wolf finally agreed. She is… good, pure of heart.
Donovan didn’t answer as he ran through the countryside in his wolf form. He didn’t go to Shalford, for if he did, he’d want to see her again, and another chance meeting while in the nude would draw more suspicion than it already had. She’d ask questions he wasn’t ready to answer for fear those words would run her off. Yet all of his thoughts revolved around Alice, and that was disturbing. Already he’d spent more time with her than he had any of the other women of his acquaintance… and he didn’t have a bedding to show for his efforts. So why, then, did he still persist in seeing her when there were other, easier ways to gain release?
Is she our mate?
The tentative question echoed softly through his mind and shattered his thoughts. I don’t know. Mate? As in a wolf mate, a partner, a helpmeet. Wolves mated for life, so such a thing was equivalent to marriage. And asking a woman to marry him meant a lifelong commitment, speaking sacred vows and giving a promise he wasn’t certain he could keep. Would uttering such a weighty question to Alice mean he was one step closer to breaking the age-old curse?
What will become of me, human? Once the curse is no more, will I also cease to be?
Donovan kept his head down as he ran. What a coil. He couldn’t ignore those very real questions, nor could he banish the trace of fear that echoed in the inquiries. I don’t have those answers. Did he want them? How could he live with himself or enjoy being fully human if that meant essentially killing the beast within?
A life for a life. It didn’t seem right, and how could he be the judge on something so weighty?
On the other hand, even if he could make Alice fall in love with him in order to have a chance at breaking the curse, at the moment, he had no plans to return that lauded and dangerous state. Yes, he was intrigued by her, interested in her as a person, lusted after her body, but he liked his life and didn’t wish for changes. Merely contemplating doing away with his wolf was enough to send chills down his spine even though breaking the curse and living free had featured into his long-term goals all his life. Adding the complication of a female to the mix was enough to fit him for Bedlam.
She’ll want you to change… for the better, his wolf was quick to remind h
im. She’ll demand your fidelity and your time.
I have no wish to change my ways. Yet, he hadn’t bedded a woman since meeting Alice. That in and of itself was disconcerting, for it meant he’d already changed without knowing it.
The woman is under your skin. Inside his head, his wolf howled with laughter.
Not at all, he countered as he jumped over a collection of bushes and shrubbery. My ultimate goal is still the same.
Rut with her.
Yes, and seduce her enough that she falls in love with me long enough to break the curse. Once he did that, this weird obsession with her would fade, he’d kiss her beneath the full moon in two weeks’ time, and he’d continue to enjoy her body for as long as she’d let him. Though, once she saw through his plan, he doubted she’d remain in his company.
And he’d be alone once more… but fully as a human. Thanks to Alice and her noble sacrifice.
What does she want with you?
Donovan didn’t know, refused to contemplate that at the moment, for the answer, he had a feeling, would be terrifying.
Why?
What the deuce was his beast on about with the continuing questions?
He snorted through his wolf’s snout. Did Alice possess guile enough to play him for a fool? Perhaps she wanted the title of duchess after all, and it wouldn’t matter to her whether there was real emotion at play behind his actions. A woman like Alice could do many good works with the prestige that came from his name as well as his reach. Perfectly understandable from her perspective, yet… His gut clenched and he snapped his jaws at a rabbit who’d just emerged from beneath a bush. The animal darted away. Donovan let him go. His heart was in the hunt no longer.
You want more with her even if you won’t admit it. His wolf cut into his musings.
Devil Take the Duke (Lords of the Night Book 1) Page 5