And he could locate his nose. He was certain of it. But just to be sure, he reached up and touched it. Now she looked as though she were shocked.
By his ability to find his nose?
“Perhaps first we should check in on Rose and let her know what we are about?” He thought that seemed very sensible, and judging by how her lips returned to their natural fullness, it seemed she did as well.
“Yes, that is a very sound idea.”
“So glad you approve,” he replied drily.
“Approve is far too generous a word, Your Grace,” she said in a voice that was trying to be lemony, but instead just reminded him of lemon custard. Delicious, thick, rich, and with a tang that encouraged more devouring.
She turned back around, and he followed, doing his very best not to notice how her trim waist flared out into lush hips, or how the skirts of her gown swung to reveal her ankles, clad frustratingly in thick stockings. Or that he could just see the nape of her neck, that soft tender place where he wanted to place his mouth.
Excellent work not noticing. Of course, not noticing was going to take some forbearance and constraint, two things he’d never had to have before. He would have to learn. Perhaps he should hire his own governess.
Although that, he considered as he continued not noticing, would get him into worse trouble.
Lily walked ahead of him, up the intimidating staircase to the room where she’d left Rose. She was acutely aware of him behind her—his height, his handsome face, his ability to ruin her life with the snap of his fingers—and she wished the agency’s first duke had been someone much less virile. Even for just a few months, it was all going to be so difficult to navigate, what with her feeling as though she wanted to blush, even without going into the Blushing Room, and being so conscious of his being a handsome, wealthy, powerful titled man. A man who always got what he wanted—she could tell that even before she met him—and one who, she knew, would not hesitate if there was something—or someone—he wanted.
She couldn’t think about it now. Not when she had to concentrate on finding Mr. Snuffles.
She opened the door to the room gently, not wanting to startle Rose with a sudden noise. The room was as she left it, with Rose sitting on the carpet, holding a cat. A cat that was all black with white spots.
So not, in fact, all black.
“Mr. Snuffles, I presume?” the duke’s resonant voice said behind her.
Rose looked up, tears still on her cheeks, but with a bright smile. “He came back right after you left, I think you might have scared him.” This, the girl addressed to Lily, who opened her mouth to protest. The cat had disappeared long before she arrived, but she stopped when she felt his hand on her sleeve. A conspiratorial touch that warned her not to argue.
The touch felt so intimate, as though they were sharing something, some communality. As though they were already talking without speaking, that they both had something at stake and were united in their goals to get it. That was a far more frightening moment than when she had been admiring his nose, that was for certain.
She took a breath—a deep, precise breath—and turned to meet his gaze. Noting, again, how intense his eyes were. Dark, dark brown, almost black, with strong, expressive eyebrows above. “Thank you, Your Grace. I believe we can manage on our own for the moment.”
She swallowed as she realized she had dismissed him. And, by his expression, he was not accustomed to being dismissed.
If only it were as easy to dismiss him from her mind.
“If you’ll excuse me, ladies.” His tone was clipped and precise. “I have some business to take care of.” He nodded and spun around to the door, every line of his body indicating he was irked. Perhaps even peeved.
“Duke?” Rose spoke in a quavering voice.
He turned back around, his lips curling into a warm smile.
Oh, goodness, Lily thought, do not look at me like that or I will melt into a puddle on the floor. Which will just get the carpets soggy.
“Yes, Rose?”
“Thank you for taking me after Mama died.” Rose said it matter-of-factly, as though it were an everyday occurrence to be brought to the Mansion of Many Rooms. She returned to petting the cat.
Leaving the two adults in the room entirely at a loss for words themselves.
A duke takes his entertainment as he wishes, as long as the entertainment is not detrimental to his reputation, his wealth, or society in general. Entertainment, therefore, should be limited to reading books of an edifying nature, cavortingspeaking with inappropriate companionship, and perhaps the care and ownership of a carespectable animal.
—THE DUKE’S GUIDE TO CORRECT BEHAVIOR
Chapter 6
He didn’t say anything more, just gave Lily one last look from those dark eyes and left her alone, at last, with Rose.
And Mr. Snuffles.
Lily knelt down on the rug beside both of them, resisting the urge to smooth her hand over Rose’s hair, like Rose was doing to the cat.
“Oh!” Lily held the doll the duke had given her. “The duke wanted you to have this.”
Rose’s eyes widened and she stopped petting Mr. Snuffles to take it, immediately cradling it in her arms as though it were a real creature.
Lily did give in to her impulse then and smoothed Rose’s hair. “You’ll have to give her a name,” because goodness knows your father won’t.
Rose screwed up her face in thought and then nodded. “Maggie,” she pronounced.
“Excellent choice.” Lily hesitated, but she needed Rose to know that she had an ally in the house. One without fur or buttons for eyes, but a friend, nonetheless.
“I know we have just met, but I want you to know that I will take good care of you. As your father will, as well,” she continued, making a promise that was not hers to make. But one she would enforce.
“Mm-hm.”
It might not mean anything to the girl now, but it meant something to Lily.
“Rose,” she said, thinking about her own past, and how she wished just one person had asked, How are you feeling? “I know you just got here this morning. Did you get to ride in a carriage? I have never been in this part of London before,” except to walk through and envy its inhabitants, “and this house is so large. Will you help if I get lost walking around?”
Rose nodded solemnly. Lily was opening her mouth to follow up with something else, something to help the girl feel more comfortable (besides a cat and a doll), when Rose spoke.
“Mama died this morning, and her friend said as how my papa needed to take care of me, and she put me in a carriage with two horses, one brown, one black, and then we were here.” She nuzzled her doll’s hair. “I miss Mama, but the duke said he would take care of me.”
Lily knew she was the one who couldn’t speak now, her words choked in her throat. If only there had been someone who could have taken care of a younger Lily, she wouldn’t have had to find work in the only place she could. But her mother had just . . . drifted off after her father died, eventually dying, and there was no one else. Lily didn’t want to drift herself. She wanted a purpose and joy in her life.
Not to mention food in her belly. Rose was now engrossed in introducing Maggie to Mr. Snuffles, or vice versa, so perhaps she could sneak away for something to eat. “Will you be all right just for a few moments?” She was hoping she could locate the kitchen in no fewer than ten doors. If she was lucky. “And then I will return and we will discuss what we will be doing in the upcoming days.”
“I won’t be alone, Mr. Snuffles and Maggie are here.” Rose said it as though it was perfectly obvious, they were right there, and they actually were, Mr. Snuffles now engaged in chewing on a strand of Maggie’s hair. It seemed the introductions had gone well.
“Of course. I will return shortly.”
As she opened the door, she spotted a maid dusting one of the many pictures in the enormous hallway and asked her to come sit with Rose, who accepted the maid—her name was Etta—with as
much stoicism as she’d accepted being there at all.
Relieved at solving that problem, she headed off to see if she could quell her starving stomach.
She found the kitchen in fewer than ten doors, and was able to introduce herself to the cook and finagle a cup of tea and a scone.
The cook, whose name was Partridge, was thankfully not nearly as stuffy as either the butler or the footman who’d brought the note. Partridge confirmed the duke telling her that Rose had just arrived and was his daughter by “one of them fallen women.” And then the cook pursed her mouth in disapproval, reminding Lily once again what would happen if anyone discovered her own past.
Not that she’d worked in a brothel, but if anyone heard “worked in a brothel” they would assume the worst. Because why would anyone look beyond that, to the woman herself? That all she had done was manage the accounts, as she did now for the agency, was beside the point.
She had to make her own fortune, since her father had been so unfortunate as to lose everything he owned. The risk-taking fool. He hadn’t taught her anything about looking ahead to the future, or done anything beyond showing her just what kind of person she didn’t want to marry, much less be. The kind who just wanted to go off and do whatever he wanted, with no thought for others.
She had to remember her goals, and just what was at stake. Not just for her, but for her partners and all the women they’d helped in the past few months, and whom they hoped to help in the future. People who perhaps had been left behind by others who could have taken care of them—and didn’t.
People who didn’t have a duke for a father, or her for a governess.
She was on her way back up to Rose when she remembered—she had brought nothing with her, and she would be sleeping there tonight. That was certainly a risk, wasn’t it? “Where is the duke?” she asked a footman, who was carrying some dirty glasses and what appeared to be a lady’s corset.
She would not ask about that.
The footman to whom she’d spoken gestured to one of the other doors. “In his study. But—”
Lily didn’t wait for whatever he was about to say. She knocked twice on the door, just to give him a head start on not cavorting, then opened the door and stepped inside, closing the door behind her.
He was not cavorting. He was—he was sitting in a massive chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him, with a gigantic orange cat on his lap. Petting it.
A cup of tea was placed on the side table next to him, and if it had been any other person sitting there, Lily would have thought it a sweet domestic scene.
Especially since he was crooning in some secret cat language in a soft tone of voice, not at all the autocratic, arrogant duke who snapped orders.
Only it was still him, with his attractive nose, and his sharply planed face, and the way he’d shown both kindness and autocracy, sometimes within minutes of each other, and how he’d made her blush, even if he likely wasn’t the least aware he’d made her blush. But there was definitely blushing.
“Your Grace.” She swallowed, and could have sworn his eyes tracked the movement in her neck. Watching as she gathered the courage to ask him.
“I assume that Rose is all right,” he said, “and that you are here to have a question answered that no one else in my household can possibly answer.” His tone wasn’t entirely mocking, but Lily would have to put it at about seventy-five percent mockery. She didn’t want to even think about the other twenty-five percent.
She felt her cheeks start to get warm. She wasn’t even in the Blushing Room.
“Yes, you see, I feel it is my responsibility to remain here, now that Rose is in my care, and yet I have realized I left all of my belongings, and I would ask if I might go retrieve them.”
He frowned. The cat, no doubt nameless, seemed to sense his displeasure, since it leapt off his lap in what looked like a burst of orange fireworks. “Now? But it is getting toward dark, and you cannot go alone.”
“Perhaps you might send a footman with me?”
Please don’t let it be the grouchy footman. Unless that was the only kind he had. And then the grouchy footman would see where she lived, in not the most respectable of neighborhoods, and would report back to all the staff, and she would be unfortunate in an entirely new and different way. Wonderful.
“Unless . . .” Dear Lord. She was really going to ask this.
He raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to speak.
“Unless you knew of something that I might wear this evening? To bed? And then I could go gather my things tomorrow, first thing, after breakfast.”
“So not first thing at all,” he said in a sly tone of voice.
She could not get distracted by the fact that this was the second time in only a few hours that she and the duke had shared a joke. Even if thoughts of laughing together kindled something warm, low in her belly.
“That is, if one of your female staff would be able—”
“I do not have any female staff.”
“But you do, a maid is watching Rose. If you would give me your permission to ask to borrow something—”
“No.” His tone was every inch that of a duke, even though he was the first duke she had ever encountered. She just knew that it was not possible for anyone who didn’t have his rank, his power, his fortune—not to mention his looks—to ever speak so firmly, so commandingly, so certain he would be obeyed. And then, just as she was about to ask him just what he thought she should do, he told her.
Just as someone in his position would do.
“I have plenty of nightshirts, you will take one of mine.” He rose as he spoke, and the combined impact of his height and presence and the shocking thing he’d said made it feel as though all the breath had been knocked out of her.
Except it sounded as though she were breathing faster, so perhaps not. And now she was imagining him in his nightshirt—not that she knew what a man’s nightshirt looked like, especially not a duke’s nightshirt, perhaps it was edged in gold or was made out of butterfly wings—but she could more than imagine what he would look like with fewer clothes on, and that was dangerous enough.
“I cannot,” Lily said, trying to sound calm and in control and mildly disapproving, even though she knew she sounded startled and breathy and perhaps too concerned with what dukes looked like in their night garb. “It is entirely improper.”
“More improper than asking to borrow a maid’s clothing? Do you think they don’t all gossip, and they’ll wonder at the propriety of not only a young girl coming to live here, but that her governess seemed to appear out of thin air with no possessions?” His eyebrow rose as he asked the question, and she felt a moment of embarrassment for being so shortsighted. Beyond the grouchy footman scenario, at least.
But his nightshirt! “I have possessions, I just don’t have them here!”
He shrugged, as though he didn’t care. And of course he didn’t.
“You can borrow my nightshirt, or not. What you sleep in is your concern, but now that the girl—Rose,” he said with a special emphasis, “is here, I will not have speculation regarding anything related to the house.” He seemed to get lost in thought for a moment. “It is time for everyone to behave with propriety.”
So. In order to ensure that his staff did not gossip about him, he was asking her to do the most improper thing she could imagine—well, no, scratch that, if pressed she could certainly imagine more improper things—and wear his clothing to bed. Against her skin.
And if she were a woman who had no interest in her position beyond having a position, she would be leaving her post immediately, because if this was what he said the first day she was on the job, what would he be saying—not to mention doing—on her fifteenth? Her forty-seventh?
But she was invested, far more than he could possibly know, so she would take it and suffer him and his autocracies.
That it came with the bonus of being able to enjoy his looks and his presence, well, that was just a . . . a bonus. Rather like fin
ding that one unspoiled apple in a bushel. And no, she did not want to take a bite of him. Well. Not much of a bite, at least.
“Fine. I’ll take your nightshirt. And then tomorrow I will retrieve my own things,” she said in a voice as frigid as she could make it without being outright insolent.
He waved his hand. “Why bother? If the rest of your wardrobe is anything like this gown, we will outfit you in new things when we go shopping for Rose. She has the same quality of clothing you do, one would suspect that you habituated the same establishments. Dowdy and Daughters, or something like that.”
“That would be most improper, Your Grace.”
His lips lifted into a knowing smile. “More improper than wearing my clothing to bed, Miss Lily? Hardly. So we will go shopping tomorrow, and we will choose some clothing suitable for your position. If you are clothed unsuitably, that will cause talk. And I have just said I wished for propriety, and since I can afford to buy it—I will.”
There was no arguing with him, was there? Of course it wasn’t as though she had that many items of clothing to begin with. She had gowns that she categorized as more or less serviceable.
“An excellent plan,” she said through gritted teeth.
She should not be so irked that he would be buying her new clothing, especially given the state of her old clothing, but it felt uneasily as though he would be buying her. And since she was well aware of what happened to women who’d been bought, she had to keep her guard up.
Although a part of her—that foolish yelping part—was absolutely delighted she was about to have some new gowns.
And wear his nightshirt to bed.
If it is in a duke’s power to buy his governess clothingimprove his surroundings, and can afford to do so, he should, despite what his governess’sothers’ opinions might be on the subject.
—THE DUKE’S GUIDE TO CORRECT BEHAVIOR
Chapter 7
The Duke's Guide to Correct Behavior Page 5