As the vicious volley of his diatribe lashed her, he continued forward until there was no distance at all. He moved with the grace of a predator. Like a lion.
She stepped back. Once. Twice. Her skirts met the wall. Her head found the cool, slick hardness of the window. She swallowed. Her hands fisted in her skirts, shaking. If he was trying to intimidate her, he was succeeding. If he was attempting to frighten her, his mission was accomplished. But that did not mean she would allow him to see her vulnerability even for a moment.
She pinned him with a glare. “Come no farther, sir. You have already encroached upon me, and I do not care to be crowded by servants.”
There. She had done it. Used her knowledge to cut back at him. Dredged up the past to wield against him.
His nostrils flared. “Understand this, Duchess. I am not your servant.”
She took pains to keep her expression one of icy condescension. “Nor are you my equal. I did not give you leave to speak to me as though we are acquaintances, for we are not.”
We were, once, whispered her foolish heart. More than acquaintances. So much more.
“I will speak to you as the situation merits,” he said, his voice as cold and dead as the winter ground. “If I am to conduct my duty here, I will need your cooperation. In case you have not realized this, the danger to you is very real, else the Home Office would not have placed six men here alongside me.”
Of course it was. Thinking again of the faceless, nameless men who had slaughtered Freddie made a sea of sickness churn inside her. It chased away the heat and left her impossibly chilled. She shivered, rubbing her arms.
He noticed. “If you are cold, Your Grace, I will see that a fire is built for you.”
It was early spring, a time of damp, cool mornings. A time when the hope of renaissance remained elusive. Burghly House had been built in the beginning half of the eighteenth century, and its cavernous chambers never seemed to warm. For some reason, it had not ever felt like home to her. Even less so now that Freddie was not there to fill it with his infectious laugh and indomitable sense of humor.
He had been such an optimist.
Always believed the best of everyone around him.
Look at where his optimism had landed him.
“I want you to build it,” she said.
The moment the demand left her lips, she wished she could recall it. Indeed, she did not know why she had uttered it aloud. One moment, she had been swept away in memories of her dead husband, and the next she had been speaking. She did not even want his continued presence in this chamber. Why, then, would she require him to linger?
Because you can, came the knowing voice inside her once more. Because you are relishing the power you have over him, to make this big man feel small.
He stiffened. “I beg your pardon, madam?”
Here was her chance to rescind the order. To dismiss him and send him away from her. But somehow, she could not.
“The fire. I wish for you to build it for me.” The cold of the outdoors leached into the glass pane. She felt it through her hair. It was calming and comforting. It made her bold. “If you are to remain here at Burghly House, you may as well make yourself useful.”
She waited, hoping for his mask to crack. For his lip to curl. For him to rage against her, tell her to go to the devil, for him to leave the drawing room and this time never come back. Instead, he stared at her.
He stared and stared, raking his dark gaze over her face, lingering at her throat. The silence swelled, growing heavy. His eyes dipped lower, lingering on her breasts as if it were a caress. She felt it, felt the heat of his perusal, her breasts tingling and her nipples tightening into stiff buds behind the protective cover of her corset.
And then his gaze fixated upon something, darkening. His jaw tightened. She knew what had caught his attention without looking down. It was her mourning brooch, gold and carved jet with glass trapping the lock of Freddie’s hair.
His eyes flicked back to hers, his countenance as impassive as if it had been hewn from rock. “Ring for a servant to build the fire, Your Grace.”
He spoke her title as if it were an epithet. As if it tasted tart upon his tongue. He was a duke’s bastard, but she had become a duchess. He may have rejected her all those years ago, leaving her behind as if she had meant nothing to him, but she had achieved the status he would never have.
The realization gave her no joy. All she knew was the same acrimony he emitted.
Abruptly, he gave her his back and quit the chamber. The door closed softly behind him. Not a slam, but worse in its deadly calm.
Perhaps she had chased him away after all.
She turned back to the window, looking upon the busyness of the street below, and tried to ignore the pang the notion of his departure left in her heart. He had not even been here for one day, and he had already torn the fragile peace she had erected in the wake of Freddie’s death asunder.
Ara shivered again, but it wasn’t from the undeniable chill in the air. And no fire in a grate could quell it.
She was beneath Clay’s skin. In his blood. Like a contagion. She had been another man’s wife. The reminder had been a harsh but necessary rebuke. She carried a lock of her husband’s hair, pinned with pride to the mourning weeds she wore in his honor.
He had never been her husband. He had been her lover. Her secret. Ultimately, her shame. The man she had rejected. The man she had marked forever.
Clay stalked down the main hall of Burghly House. It was not the finest home he had ever been inside, and nor was he unaccustomed to opulence and wealth. He had lived in a home that was larger, grander, and more ostentatious than this one. But that had been a lifetime ago, when he had believed he would ever have a hope of being perceived as something more than his father’s bastard son.
The son to be pitied.
The son to be reviled.
The one who would never be good enough. Who would never quite be able to rise above the ignominy of his birth. To the polite world, it did not matter that Leo’s mother’s marriage with their father had been loveless and arranged or that Clay’s mother had been their father’s true love. Love was not good enough when it came to the quality, and it was a lesson Clay had learned as a lad but one that nevertheless ached like an old wound—like his bloody scar—even after all these years.
But Ara’s scorn burned hotter than all the fires of condemnation combined.
He wanted to hate her, but her tremor had reminded him that she was only human, all too fallible. What he actually hated was the cold that touched her. The fear that infected her. Despite her icy hauteur, he had seen the terror in her eyes.
He wanted her to be warm.
Even though he should not. Even though he had told himself, as his gaze caught on the lock of her dead husband’s hair she displayed above her heart—the heart that should have been his, damn it—that he would not do as she bid, he knew he could not leave her to the chill.
He located a footman dressed in the distinctive Burghly livery of scarlet coat and black trousers and stopped the young man. “You will build a fire in the drawing room. Her Grace is chilled.”
The fellow bowed. “Yes, my lord.”
“Mr. Ludlow,” he corrected, for he knew his place here. He was not, and nor would he ever be a lord. He was a commoner. A baseborn bastard. He was the brawn, the fighter, and the killer. He was not what Ara had chosen. He was not a duke. He was the darkness. The reflection of what a duke could never be.
He was nobody’s duke.
“Of course, sir,” the footman said, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously in his throat.
“Why do you tarry, lad?” he barked. “Attend your duties at once.”
“Yes, Mr. Ludlow.” The footman bowed again and fairly fled in the direction of the drawing room.
It occurred to him that he had yet to interrogate the staff. He needed to make certain none of them would pose a danger to Ara. If the Fenians had managed to either plant themselves amo
ngst the ranks of the Burghly House domestics or sway a domestic already in her employ in some fashion, it could prove ruinous. This house was to be their stronghold.
She had to be safe here.
He had to keep her safe here.
He followed the lad, doing what he had sworn he would not. She bid the footman enter at his knock, and Clay stepped back over the threshold. Back into her realm. She stood at the window once more, her back a stiff, elegant line, her wasp waist more pronounced by the sweeping train pooling in a fall of silk and ribbon around her. Glittering jet ornamentation called attention to the graceful column of her throat, the carefully wrought upsweep of her copper curls.
Why did he recall how soft those curls had been when they had fallen to her waist, when they had brushed over his bare chest? He did not want to remember. He wished to hell with everything in him he could forget. That he could remove the memories of the stolen moments they had shared a lifetime ago, but they were as intrinsic to him as his organs, and they would not part from him.
“You are here to build a fire, I presume,” she said coolly, without bothering to turn to face the person who had entered.
By God, had she not listened to a word of the stern warnings he had just issued? There were murderers who wanted to slaughter her just as they had the duke, and she did not even look to see who had intruded upon her solitude.
“Yes,” he bit out grimly, a heated surge of anger rising in him at her lack of regard for her own safety. Was she daft, foolish, or merely defying him out of spite?
His voice pried her from her vigil. Her eyes were wide when they collided with his, her expression startled until she quickly replaced all emotion with her customary hauteur. Who was this stranger she had become? Every inch of her was a duchess.
Her face remained the same, but beyond that he could not recognize even a hint of the Ara he had known. Of course, that Ara had proved a lie.
“Why have you returned, Mr. Ludlow?” she demanded in a frigid tone.
His gaze flicked to the servant, who had the beginnings of a fire kindling in the grate, before returning to her. “It is my duty to remain near to your side, madam.”
Something flashed in those violet-blue orbs, but just as quickly, it was gone. “No, Mr. Ludlow, it is not.”
He would not argue with her before the domestic. He did not want the staff to become aware of the enmity between them, for it would undermine his authority in the household, and the last thing he needed was to perpetuate any vulnerability. “I am afraid the matter is not open for discussion.”
She paled. “How do you dare, sir?”
He said nothing, maintaining his silence.
The longer the quiet between them stretched, punctuated by the scraping and toiling of the footman stoking the fire, the more pinched her lips became. At last, a roaring, snapping fire filled the fireplace, sending a burst of warmth into the chamber. The servant bowed and excused himself.
They were alone. Again.
With nothing to stop him from giving in to his instincts to take her in his arms.
Nothing except his sanity, that was.
The door had scarcely clicked closed behind the footman when she unleashed her ire upon him. “If you returned thinking to offer me further remonstration, you may go, Mr. Ludlow. I neither require nor want to hear your warnings concerning the ruffians who plot against me.”
“Ruffians.” The bitter bark of his laughter was torn from him. “The men who want you dead are barbaric murderers, Your Grace. The sooner you acquaint yourself with your new reality, the better each day shall go for you.”
“I am already more than acquainted,” she snapped. “Do not think to condescend to me or I shall contact someone at the Home Office myself and have you removed from this post for insubordination.”
“How amusing, Your Grace.” The smile he gave her was equally dark and mirthless. “Do you not think that I have already attempted to have myself removed from this most unwanted post? Did you not imagine I would have done everything in my power to avoid being tasked with the protection of the woman I loathe?”
She froze at his queries, going paler still at the last. Was it his fanciful imagination, or did he see hurt in her expression for a fleeting moment? And if so, why? She had to know he would hate the sight of her after what she had done. After not only her betrayal but also his scarring. To this day, he did not know whether or not the knife to his face had been her idea or her darling papa’s, but if he ever needed a reminder of why she could not be trusted, he only had to look upon his reflection.
Did she view the evidence of her treachery with shame, he wondered, or with pride? His scar burned and throbbed on his cheek. For a moment, he could feel the blade again, slicing through his flesh, leaving behind the permanent mark of his stupidity. An aide-mémoire he could have done without.
“If you do not wish to be here, then why do you remain, Mr. Ludlow?” Her question cut through the grim silence that had descended.
“Duty,” he answered swiftly. “Unlike most, when I make a vow, I honor it.”
Damn it. He had not meant to speak with such candor. Had not meant to even hint at their shared past. Their shared sins.
She inhaled as if he had struck her. “Forgive me, Mr. Ludlow, but I seem to recall a vow you did not honor. I will ask you again. Why do you remain here if you do not want either this task or my loathsome presence? Why are you here now, within this chamber, with me?”
How dare she suggest he had not honored his every vow? He had made many vows to her, and he had remained true to them all with the exception of one. I vow to you I will always love you, Ara. You will have my heart forever and the century next.
But of course he had stopped loving her. He had needed to after what she had done to him. To them. He could still recall each word of the letter she had written as if it had been branded into his skin.
He ground his jaw. “Do not presume to speak to me of such matters, madam, when the evidence of your duplicity is plain for all to see.”
“How dare you?” She moved at last, stalking forward, her skirts swishing, fire in her cheeks.
He knew what she intended before she had even reached him. He caught her wrist easily, deflecting the blow she would have delivered. How small she was, how fine-boned beneath his grip. His hands swallowed her. If he exerted enough pressure, he could crush her as if she were as delicate as a baby bird.
He could not hurt her. Would never hurt her.
“It would not go well for you, Your Grace, were you to strike me,” he warned.
“I want you gone!”
Her anguished cry echoed in the room, the first real display of emotion she had shown since he had first laid eyes upon her yesterday. Did she hate him that much? Or, like him, did she hate the weakness that lingered?
Unlike time and the two of them, her scent had not changed: vibrant summer blossoms of a rose merged with a hint of orange. It hit him then, along with a wall of memories. Dancing in the forest, her eyes laughing up at him, stealing his first kiss from her soft, supple lips. Riding with her beneath a black velvet sky studded with glittering stars.
How brilliant the future had seemed then. How rife with possibility.
No longer.
Here he stood looking down upon the ghost of the girl he had loved, a vast, gaping chasm of emptiness threatening to consume him. He released her wrist. Took a step back from her because it was necessary. He feared he could not control himself where she was concerned here in this moment, with the tension and the pain of the past vibrating around them.
“Do not dare to attempt to strike me again, madam,” he seethed. “And do not keep your back to the door. From this moment forward, you will trust no one. Assume everyone wishes you ill, myself included. Though it grieves me to say it, if you wish to survive until the bastards behind your husband’s death are caught and clapped into gaol, you need me here. The Home Office has decreed it, and it is my duty to remain. That is why I am here. The very inst
ant the danger has passed you, I will be gone from your life forever, and that is one vow I can promise you I will uphold above all others.”
He did not wait for her to speak, for he could not bear to hear another word. With a curt, mocking bow, he took his leave of her for the second time. He could only hope the Fenians who had murdered Burghly would be caught.
Soon.
Chapter Four
Eight years earlier
His name was Clayton.
Ara had tried it out on her tongue in the privacy of her chamber. She had written it on her sketchbook in charcoal. She had penned it into the margins of her journal as if it were the lyrics to a favorite hymn. Over and over again, small and neat, large and dramatic, sometimes with a flourish, sometimes accompanied by a heart. What silly doodles. What foolishness.
She was old enough, wise enough, to know her heart could not possibly love him already after having met with him in secret each day for the last fortnight. And yet, she could not stifle the emotion bubbling up inside her, like a kettle filled to the brim upon a hot stove.
She was boiling. Threatening to overflow. He was all she could think about. His name, his face, his hands. They were so large, the fingers so long and thick and handsome. Could fingers be handsome? Yes, she decided, they could. For if anyone had a question regarding such a notion, they had only to look upon Clayton’s hands.
They were lovely and gentle, sculpted perfection. Capable of anything really, but most of all tenderness. Though he had not touched her with them, she had lain awake at night in the loneliness of her chamber and imagined those strong, masculine hands upon her. Lifting her nightdress. Skimming over her ankles and calves. Caressing her in the place only she had dared trespass upon, though she knew how wicked it was.
Nobody's Duke (League of Dukes Book 1) Page 3