“You are teasing me?”
“Most assuredly.”
She did not want to be teased. It caught her off guard and made disliking him harder to do. He knew it, too. “Do you enjoy teasing people?”
“I am enjoying teasing you at this moment. I confess, I am finding it…intriguing. I might have to do it more often.” He straightened away from the table and clasped his hands behind his back. “Dine with me tomorrow evening, Miss Wade.”
“Is that a request or a command?”
“It is a request.”
She looked away, feeling trapped. She did not want to have dinner with him. She did not want to become better acquainted. “I do not believe it would be proper.”
“I shall ask Mr. and Mrs. Bennington as well.” Though his face remained grave, the laugh lines were still there, and a glimmer of amusement flickered in the hazel depths of his eyes. “I will even say please, if that would persuade you.”
Daphne did not want to be persuaded. Still, as he had pointed out a week ago, if they could at least be pleasant to one another, the next three months would be much easier for both of them. “For the sake of civility, I accept your invitation.”
“Excellent. We shall break bread together, Miss Wade. If we continue in this fashion, we might even become friends.”
Daphne stiffened. “I advise you not to place any wagers on that, your grace.”
Chapter 9
Eviction of tenants was always a difficult matter. It was the one part of his position Anthony truly despised. Most peers left all decisions about such things in the hands of stewards, and he could have chosen to do the same, but to his mind, that was a cowardly way of handling one’s responsibilities. He looked across the desk at his steward. “The man is ill. I refuse to believe there are no other options.”
Mr. Cox, who had been Anthony’s land steward for only six months, was not yet cognizant of his master’s little eccentricities in dealing with the yearly tenant rents, but he did know the duke preferred honest opinions to tactful evasion, so he spoke plainly. “Your grace has already given him a year gratis. He has not paid his rent for last year, and because he is bedridden, he will be unable to bring in his harvest this year. By allowing him and his family to remain, you are setting a precedent—”
“Mr. Cox,” Anthony cut him off with some impatience, “with the husband so ill he will not be able to bring his crop in and half a dozen children to feed, I am not going to turn them out of their house. There are other options.”
Cox gave him the resigned look of a good steward. “What is it you wish me to do about this matter?”
“His wife is in health. Have Mrs. Pendergast find work for her and her eldest daughter in the laundry until her husband’s on his feet again, and have some of the other tenants watch his younger children. That will suffice as their rent for last year.”
“Your grace, the wages of a laundress could not possibly cover—”
“Those are my orders, Mr. Cox. Carry them out. A fortnight from now, if he is still in ill health, I want to see some of his fellow tenants bringing his crop in so it does not rot in the ground. Pay them in ale from the brewery. That should make them willing enough to help.”
“Very good, sir.” Cox rose from his chair and departed. Anthony was glad of it, for eviction decisions were finished for another year. He glanced at the window, frowning at the rain pouring down outside. Rain like this played merry hell with the excavations.
He thought of Miss Wade throwing her trowel and berating the English mud, and it made him want to laugh. It was so unlike her. Yet, as she had pointed out yesterday, he had been wrong to think her a milk-and-water miss. She was proving to be far more unexpected than that.
He walked to the window, leaned one shoulder against the window frame and looked out. He lowered his gaze to the huge expanse of lawn below, and what he saw confirmed his thoughts. Standing in the middle of the lawn, without even a macintosh and hat to protect her, was Miss Wade, her head tilted back and the rain washing over her.
What was she on about, standing outside in this sort of weather? Though August had been quite warm, September had brought autumn into the air, cooling the temperatures considerably. If she stayed out there in the rain much longer, she’d catch a chill.
Anthony turned away from the window and left his study. Several minutes later, clad in an oilskin cloak and carrying an opened umbrella like any sensible person out in the rain, he was striding across the lawn toward her.
She was in the same place he had seen her from the window, standing between a pair of flower-filled urns in front of the fountain with her head tilted back. She was not wearing her glasses and her eyes were closed. She stood motionless, hands outstretched, almost as if she were mesmerized by the feel of the rain on her face.
“What are you doing out here, Miss Wade?” he asked.
She opened her eyes at the sound of his voice and straightened to look at him. “Good morning. Did you come out here to join me?”
“God, no. I came to fetch you.” He halted a foot in front of her, holding his umbrella over both of them, observing the smile on her face in puzzlement. What did anyone who was soaking wet on a cool autumn day have to smile about?
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
He felt compelled to point out the obvious. “You are standing out in the rain.”
“Yes, I know,” she agreed, and to Anthony’s amazement, she began to laugh. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
“I believe you have gone quite mad, Miss Wade. That is the only explanation for your unaccountable behavior of late.” He put a hand on her arm, intending to lead her back to the house.
“No, no.” She pulled away from him. “I’ve not gone mad, I assure you. I just want to stand out here a little bit longer.”
“You are joking.”
She shook her head and took a step back, out from under the protection of his umbrella. “I am perfectly serious,” she told him as the rain poured down over her in rivulets. Her clothing was soaked and wet tendrils of hair that had escaped from her bun were plastered to her cheeks. “I love rain. Don’t you?”
“No, I do not. And neither do you. Were you not cursing the English mud just yesterday?”
She laughed. “Well, yes. I hate the mud because it makes my job more difficult. I do love rain, though. I can see that does not make much sense to you.”
“You are correct. If you do not come inside, you will catch cold.”
He stepped forward, again trying to protect her with the umbrella and steer her toward the house, but she seemed determined to stay beneath the downpour. Shaking her head in refusal, she began walking backward away from him as he moved toward her. “No, really. Thank you for your concern, but I don’t want to go inside. Not yet.”
He was still frowning at her, for her smile faded and she stopped evading the protection of his umbrella. “You don’t understand,” she said. “I have lived in deserts most of my life, with only a few short months in Naples or Rome each year to provide a respite. Do you know what it is like to spend nine months in never-ending heat and drought?”
He shifted the umbrella to his left hand. “No,” he answered. “I have never been to a desert.”
“It is so hot in summer that the air shimmers over the horizon in waves, so hot it’s hard to breathe. The heat makes your skin feel stretched so tight over your bones that it hurts.” She closed her eyes and rubbed her wet cheeks with the tips of her fingers as if in remembrance of the hot desert sun. “And all you feel is your own sweat turning the dust on your face to caked mud. Your mouth is dry, and you keep licking your lips over and over, but it doesn’t help. They are so chapped and dry.”
Anthony lowered his gaze to her mouth, watching as she ran the tips of her fingers back and forth over her moist, parted lips. Though they may have been chapped in the desert, there was nothing but softness to them now.
Lust hit him with such unexpected force that he could not move.
�
��Sand blows all the time,” she went on as he watched the tip of her finger slide down over her chin and along the column of her throat. His throat went as dry as her desert.
“The sand blows in every direction and rubs your skin like sandpaper. All your clothes have to be drab colors that hide the dirt. There’s so little water, you can only bathe once a week, and it is never a full bath, just a tin pail of water, soap if the supply caravan has come through, and a sponge.”
He tried to say something, anything, but he made the mistake of looking down, and the thought of any sort of reply vanished from his mind. For once, she was not wearing that apron of hers and her beige cotton dress was plastered to her form, molding to every curve of her body, the rain making the cotton fabric seem almost transparent. She seemed blissfully unaware of the view he had of her, the round fullness of her breasts beneath the cotton layers of her clothing, the deep dip of her waist, the flare of her hips, the fold of wet fabric between her thighs. And her legs. God. How long were they?
This was Miss Wade, he reminded himself. Not a goddess by any means. And yet, he could see for himself that she had a body like one. Never in a thousand years would he have dreamed that such a luscious shape was concealed beneath that horrid apron and drab cotton.
Anthony tore his gaze away from her rain-soaked form to stare instead at the stone image that graced the top of a fountain beyond her left shoulder. A satyr, he realized as the thick heaviness of lust surged through his body. How appropriate.
She worked for him, he reminded himself, and there were rules about that sort of thing. He returned his gaze to her face and tried to focus on what she was saying as he strove to regain his control.
“All my life, whenever I have had the chance, I go walking in the rain, because I love it so. The rain here in England is especially nice, because it is so gentle and misty and your gardens are beautiful. The first morning after I arrived here in March, I went for a walk around the estate, just breathing in the fragrance of wet grass and damp leaves. It was lovely.” She let out her breath in a deep sigh. “Oh, you just don’t know how it feels to be here when you have lived in dry, hot climates all your life.”
Anthony could not form a coherent word of reply. In some vague, dim part of his consciousness, he could appreciate what she meant, and he could imagine how hard it would be for anyone, especially a woman, to live as she had. A flash of anger at her father went through him at the idea of any honorable man subjecting his daughter to such hardships. But for the most part, Anthony could not do much in the way of thinking. Standing in front of him was a woman he had never seen before, a woman whose body was a hidden treasure, a woman whose eyes were the exact shade of the larkspur still blooming in the stone urn beside her, a woman who thought sodden grass and leaves were fragrant. A woman whose innocent pleasure in getting soaked by a rainstorm was proving as erotic to him as any aphrodisiac could be.
With all the discipline he possessed, Anthony set his jaw and reminded himself of his position and hers. “Pray, is this going to become a habit with you?”
She blinked, whether from the water flowing over her face or the sudden hardness in his voice it was impossible to tell. “Is what going to become a habit?” she asked. “Standing in the rain?”
“Enjoying yourself instead of doing the work for which I am paying you, and paying dearly, I might add.”
“What has put you into a fit of temper?” she asked with some asperity. Then, before he could answer, she held up her hand to halt any reply he might have made. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”
“No,” he said, his voice sounding oddly strangled to his own ears, “indeed, you do not.”
“But since you asked about my work,” she went on, “I was working. I was doing research on pottery fragments in the library, but the rain started, and I could not resist the opportunity—”
“To drown yourself, yes, I know,” he interrupted, keeping his gaze fixed firmly on her face. Even that was not helping, however, for when he reached out and pushed a tendril of hair away from her face, he could not seem to pull his hand away. The skin of her cheek felt warm and satiny beneath his fingers. How? he wondered. How did a woman who had lived in deserts all her life have skin as soft and fine as this? He touched his fingers to her lips as she had done. How could her lips be so velvety as this?
She was looking at him, her eyes wide with shock, but in their depths, there was also something else, something that reflected what he was feeling. Yes, desire was in her eyes and in the rapid wisp of her breath against his fingers. It was in the way she stood so still, tense and poised like a deer about to flee. If he slid his hand down, he would feel her heart pounding as hard as his own.
His hand moved an inch in that direction before he yanked it back.
“Come inside,” he said. “You are soaked through, and could very well catch a chill. I know this climate better than you do, and I will not have you becoming ill when we have a great deal of work to do.”
To Anthony’s relief, she did not argue. Holding the umbrella over both of them, he escorted her back to the house. Inside, he handed the dripping umbrella and the dripping Miss Wade over to an astonished Mrs. Pendergast. “A hot bath and a small glass of brandy for Miss Wade,” he ordered.
Turning to Daphne, he said, “Next time you want to feel like you are washing away the desert, or whatever, please take a bath indoors. I hope we may still expect your presence at dinner tonight?”
“Of course,” she said, managing to sound dignified despite the fact that she was forming pools of water on the white marble floor.
“Good. I will see you this evening.” He turned away without another word and started back to his study. He reminded himself that Daphne Wade was a woman in his employ, a young, innocent woman. A woman he had barely noticed and had certainly never desired. Until now.
Now, he thought of her in soaking beige cotton, and he could not rid himself of the hot, smothering desire that coursed through his body, nor the image of the satyr’s face mocking him for it.
Chapter 10
At first, Anthony’s prediction that breaking bread together might make them friends did not seem likely to come true.
For one thing, the dining room seemed absurdly grand for any man having only three guests to dinner, even if he was a duke. The gold-and silver-patterned ceiling thirty feet above their heads, the long dining table and the chairs of crimson velvet, the columns of white marble, the gilt-edged mirrors and paintings of winged cherubs did not induce a comfortable and relaxed atmosphere, at least not to Daphne.
Second, there was the food. Two different kinds of soup from which to choose, one cold and one hot. Then three selections of fish, followed by two courses of four meats each, one an enormous joint of beef he carved himself. It was all beautifully presented, and what she sampled was delicious, but to Daphne, it seemed an extraordinary waste, since only four people could not consume even a tenth of it.
She was accustomed to dining at a dust-covered folding table in a tent, or at a modest Italian pensione, where she, her father, and any other British men involved in the current excavation discussed Roman history and antiquities over every meal.
Third, there was her host. His conversation with all three of them was amiable, and Mr. and Mrs. Bennington were able to return his pleasantries with ease, but she could not. His manner, particularly toward her, was all consideration and regard.
Daphne knew that Anthony’s assiduous attention was just another part of his campaign to keep her in Hampshire. She also knew how charming he could be, but that charm was seldom directed at her and never in a social situation. She had no idea how to respond, especially since she knew what he truly thought of her.
Aside from his concern for her enjoyment of the meal, he also had the curious notion to make a study of her person. Whenever she looked up from her food, she found him watching her, with a strange sort of intensity she could not define.
She did not look any different than usual. She
had taken off her glasses and donned the only nice dress she had, a mauvish-gray muslin frock that must be at least half a dozen years out of fashion, and she had no illusions that either of those trifling changes would cause Anthony to deem her anything worth staring at. She could only think his disconcerting scrutiny was a result of her morning walk in the rain. He had accused her of having lost her mind, after all.
By the time the desserts arrived, she could not help remarking on it. “Mrs. Bennington,” she said, looking at the older woman across the table, “his grace studies me most intently this evening, do you not think so? He examines me as if I were an artifact.”
“Heavens, dear!” Mrs. Bennington exclaimed, a hint of reproof behind her little laugh as she glanced uneasily toward the duke and back again to her. “You should not describe yourself in such a way. Artifact, indeed.”
Anthony picked up his glass of wine and leaned back in his chair at the head of the table. His lashes lowered as his gaze raked over her with the leisure of a well-fed lion. “But Mrs. Bennington, I might describe her that way myself, for artifacts are rare and mysterious things, intriguing and difficult to interpret. One so often draws erroneous conclusions about them.”
Daphne’s hand tightened around the serviette in her lap. What was he saying? she thought wildly. That she was not an unnoticeable stick insect after all? She forced herself to unclench her fist and pick up her wine glass. “You believe I am a mystery, your grace?”
“I do, Miss Wade.”
“I cannot think why.” She took a sip of claret and set her glass back down. “I assure you, I am no great mystery at all.”
“Miss Wade, I believe the duke has a point,” put in Mr. Bennington from her other side. “Why, Mrs. Bennington and I have often discussed that very thing ever since your resignation.”
“I know you were surprised, but—”
“Surprised?” Mrs. Bennington interjected. “Bless us, it was astonishing. Not that we blame you, of course, for wishing to go to Lady Hammond. Such a treat for you, dear, and no question you deserve it. But we had no idea you were such a great friend of the viscountess. So you see, his grace is quite correct that you are mysterious. Close as an oyster.”
Guilty Series Page 9