“Not any more than being a soldier did,” he said somberly.
“You did not enjoy being a soldier?” If surprise tinged her voice, it could not be helped. Aside from the secret suspicion cast upon him by the Earl of Kilross, public consensus of the Duke of Whitley was he was a celebrated hero who had exhibited fearlessness and unmitigated bravery on the field of battle.
His gaze shuttered. “No.”
She stared at him, wishing she could read him better, but he was far more complex than any cipher whose secrets she had ever attempted to unlock. If he was truly guilty of conspiring with the French, why could she not find evidence of his sins? How could Kilross be so very certain of the veracity of his claims when Jacinda had spent the better part of half a month attempting to unearth a modicum of proof without success?
Perhaps, whispered her heart, he is innocent after all.
That notion frightened her the most, for she realized now she wanted more than anything for it to be true. She wanted to pry open every lock at Whitley House, search each scrap of paper, and return to Kilross with not one shred of evidence against the duke.
She searched for something else to say into the heavy silence that had fallen betwixt them, some means by which she might continue their dialogue, before settling upon the grief he had displayed earlier that evening. “I suppose you missed your family.”
Of course it was a soldier’s fate that he spent his days, months, and even years from his home and hearth and all who were dear to him. Jacinda had known it on the day she had bid James farewell and sent him on his way with a kiss and her heart. But that did not mean that every day she’d spent without him had not hurt like a festering wound.
Nor did it mean she had not agonized over the knowledge he had spent his final living moments alone, bleeding to death in the snow of a strange land as if he were no better than a slaughtered hog. The old pain, the flooding, intense surge of grief so fierce it threatened to consume her, rose like a tide.
“Of course I missed them,” he shocked her by admitting. “I did not realize how much, perhaps, until today.”
She frowned, a fresh assault of guilt mingling with her other unsteady emotions. She felt raw all over, like skin that had been abraded to the quick. “Lady Constance and Lady Honora were pleased to share their keen talents with you. Thank you for humoring them.”
“I should have given them more of my time and attentions long ago.” His voice was low and rough. “It would seem you are not as inadequate in your role as governess as I would have initially believed.”
The duke’s words were far from praise, but somehow coming from his unforgiving mien, she recognized they were as close as he could manage to an apology for his ire of that morning. A heated warmth pervaded, chasing away the icy chill caused by the strains of the present and the pain of her past.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” she managed. “If you will excuse me, I must seek my chamber as well. My charges require me to be well-rested in the morning.”
But something in his expression made her linger when she should have curtsied and skirted around him, hastening her stride on her way to safety. His frank regard was warm upon her, and it glittered with an intensity that had not been present before. She wanted to look away. To treat him as the Gorgon she knew and flee.
She could not stop staring. He was so very handsome in his buff breeches, navy superfine coat, and snowy cravat. His dark hair had a slight curl to the ends, and she longed to run her fingers through it just once more. It had been softer than the sleekest of furs.
“Would you care to join me in the library instead, Miss Turnbow?” he invited, his deep voice sliding over her like a naughty caress.
If only she could, but if anything, this evening had served to remind her of the disparities between them. Not only was she the governess, and he the master of the house, she, his subordinate in every way, but she was also deceiving him with each moment that passed.
She had been mad to entertain, even for the spate of a few wild moments in his arms, the pull she felt toward him. Even if he had not committed the sins he was suspected of, he remained beyond her touch. She was a simple soldier’s widow. He was a duke, a man who would make her his mistress rather than his duchess. Jacinda must not forget.
She shook her head. “It would not be proper, Your Grace.”
His expression hardened, the angle of his jaw going tense. “We are beyond proper, Miss Governess. Surely you recognize that by now.”
Back to Miss Governess again. They had skirted each other as if in wary battle formations, and now they had returned to the place where they had begun. Nothing had changed. Or had it?
“We are not beyond propriety,” she denied, at last calling to mind the futility and danger of remaining in his presence a moment more. She made to swish past him on her way to her private apartments.
Whitley stepped into her path, blocking her dismissal of him. “I had you half-naked on my desk this morning.”
Much to her shame.
And wicked enjoyment.
No.
She banished the rogue thought from her mind, knowing she must stay the course. She had a duty to carry out. Kilross was not a patient or benevolent man, and he held all the power. She was but his puppet.
I had you half-naked on my desk this morning.
Lord in heaven. Those sinful words should not make her weak. Should not make her ache.
“I bid you good evening, Your Grace,” she forced past lips that did not wish to oblige, stepping around him and continuing on her way as though he had not just set her aflame with his velvet reminder of the liberties she had allowed him. The liberties she had so freely and wantonly given.
“I had not taken you for a coward, Miss Governess, but I can see I was wrong,” he called after her, his words and his husky baritone both a taunt.
A gauntlet.
Jacinda whirled about, picked it up. She was not a coward, and nor was she a spiritless miss who would cower when presented with a challenge. “I shall grant you one quarter hour, Your Grace.”
“An hour,” he countered, a smug grin curving his generous lips.
Lips she recalled working skillfully over hers.
Drat. She must not allow such deplorable thoughts. “Half an hour.”
“An hour.”
She gritted her teeth. “I believe you suffer from a misconception, sir. This is not the manner in which a compromise works. You made your offer, and I raised mine by fifteen minutes in an effort to appease you. However, your counter remained the same as your initial offer.”
His grin grew, flashing a row of white, even teeth. How rare was the sight of his full, heart-clenching charm. For a moment, she could forget everything and everyone but him.
And then he spoke again, dispelling the fancy. “I am more than familiar with compromise, my dear Miss Governess. It is merely that I have no intention of engaging in it with you. I wish an hour of your time, and an hour is what I shall have.”
The devil. “Half an hour is all I can spare.”
He raised a brow. “Two half hours is what I require.”
The utter scoundrel. “That is still one whole hour.”
Whitley’s grin only deepened, as if he were enjoying their banter, the knave. “Miss Governess, I do believe you are proficient at arithmetic as well as all the other requisite fields of study.”
“Here is further proof of my aptitude in that subject: subtract one proficient governess from your household on account of your lack of compromise, and zero governesses shall remain,” she pointed out, because she could not stifle her tongue, could not extinguish her pride.
He extended his arm to her. “I have a different sort of arithmetic in mind. Take one governess who needs to maintain her post, add one demanding duke who can easily dismiss her without reference, and what do you have? Forgive me if I am wrong, but I do believe what remains is a thoroughly routed Miss Governess and a duke who continues to eschew compromise. Allow me to escort you
to the library.”
She went. Because his arithmetic was painfully correct.
It was hers that was wrong, for she could not leave her position or this house until she had completed the loathsome task assigned her. She needed to find evidence of his guilt or she and Father faced utter ruin.
Perhaps spending time alone with him was the sole means by which she could have her answers. She could only hope it would not also prove her downfall.
*
Dragooning Miss Turnbow into joining him in the library was not one of his finer moments. Crispin was willing to admit this to himself if no one else as he poured brandy into a snifter, aware of her unsettling gaze upon him. Those golden-brown orbs of hers did not miss a bloody thing, and he spent half his time in her presence feeling as if she saw straight through to his marrow and half feeling as if she could not abide his loathsome presence.
“Would you care for a brandy, Miss Turnbow?” he asked with a calm he did not feel.
Ordinarily, whisky was his poison of choice, but somehow brandy seemed a safer, more gentlemanly spirit to consume in the presence of a lady. Curse it, when had he begun to concern himself with such nonsense? The ladies in his presence generally served one purpose.
“No thank you, Your Grace,” came her soft, husky voice. “It would not be—”
“Proper,” he finished for her, pouring a splash into a second snifter. “Propriety can go hang.”
“Propriety would gladly hang a governess who overstepped her bounds with a duke,” she reminded him quietly.
It was true, damn it. Of course it was, and the conscience he ordinarily drowned in whisky emerged. She was at the mercy of her reputation. No house of distinction would hire a governess who had been closeted alone with her employer in such a fashion. His time away from London had dulled him to the tedious vagaries of the ton. He had spent so many years away from civilized society that returning was an anathema to him. He had never wanted to come back.
After Morgan had been taken by El Corazón Oscuro, Crispin had been determined to vindicate his friend or die trying. But then his brother’s death had come as well, and he had been forced to return to England and a different sort of duty entirely. Also unwanted. Also grim.
He turned to her, a snifter in each hand, pleased beyond measure she was here with him now and yet disgusted with himself for all but forcing her to. “You are free to leave, Miss Turnbow. I will not hold you against your will.”
She eyed him warily as he approached, offering her the glass. She made no move to accept it, but neither did she flee, and he took it as a hopeful sign. “I confess I do not understand your motivations, Your Grace. You press me for my presence here and now that you have it, you tell me I am free to go.”
He knew a moment of shame. “You have always been free to go. I did not force you here.”
She sniffed. “Coerced.”
His brows shot up. By God, she was a forthright article, and it delighted and vexed him in equal measure. “I beg your pardon?”
But Miss Turnbow would not be intimidated. “You coerced me. I plainly exhibited to you a wish to find my chambers and retire. You intimated that if I did not join you, I would be in danger of losing my position. I need this position, and therefore, here I am, Your Grace. But that does not mean I need imbibe with you.”
He lost his patience with her. With himself. “Let us be clear, then. You need not be present in this room. You need not accept this snifter of brandy, though it is of an exceptional quality and I highly recommend its bracing effects. You may retreat to your chamber and God knows what manner of book you read until the early hours of the morn. I shall not dismiss you or send you forth without reference. I am not so desperate or depraved yet that I will force a woman to spend time in my company. Therefore, if you do not wish to be in this library, be gone with you, and make haste so that you need not suffer my presence a moment more.”
But Miss Turnbow surprised him yet again by refusing to move. She stared at him, her expressive eyes darkening. “How would you know that I am reading until the early hours of the morning?”
Blast. Now she would think he skulked about her door in the night, looking for an excuse to barge in and ravish her. Not that the prospect wasn’t a fantasy of his… only in the fantasy, he did not ravish but rather plundered what she so willingly offered.
He swallowed and bit his inner cheek to stave off any unwanted surges of hunger. Seduction had not been his intention in inviting her here. His motivation was far more disconcerting. He had simply wanted her company.
“I have received reports on the inordinate expense of candles being supplied to you,” he lied.
In truth, he roamed the halls at night when slumber could not even be achieved by drinking himself to oblivion. Pacing for hours was sometimes a means by which he might sufficiently weary himself enough to pitch into his bed for a scant few hours without being plagued by nightmares. When he closed his eyes, the day in the farmhouse returned to him, all the scents and sounds and fears. Inevitably, he lay in bed at night as a band of fear tightened around his chest until he could not breathe. Only exertion or drink could dull his mind enough to grant him rest.
If he saw a light beneath her door, it was because of the peripatetic journeys his ravaged mind forced him to make.
Thankfully, she did not see through his ruse. “The cost of the candles ought to be deducted from my wages, of course. I should have exercised more care than to so greedily burn them in the pursuit of my own distraction.”
He had committed far greater sins than wearing candles down to nubs in his pursuit of distraction. “I do not mind the expense,” he said curtly.
Her lips tightened for a moment’s hesitation. “You only wish for my company and not for anything more?”
Of course he wished for something more than her mere presence. He wished for everything, but that did not mean he would not take up what she would give him like a beggar boy being thrown a scrap of meat.
He cleared his throat. “I wish for your presence, freely given. If you are offering it, Miss Governess, I accept. If not, run along and read your books all night long.”
“I will remain.” She was solemn as she plucked the snifter from his hand. “But you must promise me to maintain propriety.”
There it was again, the thorn upon a rose. Bloody hell, if there was any word he was beginning to detest, it was surely that one. Propriety. He could not speak it aloud without the urge to spit. A viler epithet he could not countenance.
“Your virtue is safe this night.” He gestured to the chairs flanking a fire that crackled merrily in the grate. “Please do sit, Miss Turnbow. It has been a long day, and I have a pressing urge to settle my bones.”
She eyed him as warily as one might an enemy soldier who had just surrendered. Her distrust of him was apparent in her rigid bearing. Fair enough. He did not trust himself with her either.
“I expect my fichu to be returned to me,” she surprised him by demanding.
In her haste to escape his evil clutches, Miss Governess had left behind her delicate, altogether too large, lace fichu. The very one that obstructed his view of her delectable bosom. Because he had a history with the cursed thing, he had stuffed it inside his coat pocket. And later, slipped it beneath his pillow for reasons he did not wish to explore.
The bloody atrocity smelled of her, and while he could not approve of its use, he was wholeheartedly in favor of having something that smelled of her close at hand.
“No.” The answer left him of its own volition. For the same reasons he had stowed the adornment beneath his pillow, he was also unwilling to part with it.
His response made her brows snap together. “No?”
“It cannot be returned to you, as I have burned the thing.” A prevarication he would gladly make as a mark upon what remained of his soul, for he would not admit to keeping her fichu so he could smell jasmine and stroke his cock when the need arose. Which had been once already that day, as it happened
.
Sparks flared in her sherry eyes. “You had no right to destroy one of my garments. That lace was quite dear in price, I will have you know.”
With his snifter, he gestured to the replacement fichu she wore now. “You seem to have managed in its absence with another abomination.”
Delightful pink color kissed her cheeks. “For the purpose of washing, and in case any fichu requires mending, I own three.”
He made a chastising sound with his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “Two now, I am afraid. None at all if I had my way.”
Displeasure firmed her full lips into a tight line. “My toilette is none of your concern, Your Grace.”
That was where she was wrong. Everything about her was his concern. From the moment she had turned up in his study in her drab, shapeless gowns and her fichus and her nonsensical caps, she had become the force propelling him through each day. He spent his hours alternately consumed with desire for her, hating his weakness, and fashioning the means by which he could spend more time in her presence.
“On the contrary.” He took a sip of his brandy, timing his rebuttal to heighten her discomfit. He liked her when she lost her rigid grip upon the reins of her control. “If you are instructing Lady Honora and Lady Constance in the feminine arts, should you not demonstrate an aptitude for the fashionable?”
If it was possible to flay a man alive with a murderous glare, she would have done him in then and there. “Your Grace, forgive me, but my dress does not inhibit my ability to teach Lady Honora and Lady Constance French, Latin, and German. Nor does it limit my instruction on music or art or any other topic suitable for ladies of their distinction.”
He had promised to behave, and yet something in him did not wish to honor that promise. There was no means by which she could reclaim the bloody fichu. And now that he had warmed to his subject, he realized he longed to see her in fine gowns that flaunted her glorious figure and displayed her beauty rather than cloaking it.
Regency Scandals and Scoundrels: A Regency Historical Romance Collection Page 13