“I’m sure he will. You did a very good job.”
A knock sounded on the front door.
“That’s him!” Jocelyn cried. She started to run to the entryway.
“Jocelyn,” Verity said, her throat suddenly dry as she followed her daughter at a more sedate pace. “A lady doesn’t run.”
If she were honest, she would add that she doubted she could have run to the door if she wanted to, for her knees felt shaky.
“Good afternoon!” Jocelyn said as she threw open the door and stood beaming at Galen Bromney.
“Good afternoon, Miss Davis-Jones. Good afternoon, Mrs. Davis-Jones,” he said as he bowed.
“Please, won’t you come in?” Verity replied stiffly, attempting to muster some calm.
As he came inside, she had the sudden sensation she was inviting a hurricane inside her house.
“This is a lovely home.”
“Thank you. Won’t you please come into the parlor, Your Grace?”
“I should be delighted.”
Jocelyn skipped forward, while Verity maintained a dignified manner as she led the way, incredibly conscious that Galen was behind her.
She gestured toward the sofa in front of the windows.
His unremitting gaze fastened onto Daniel’s portrait, which hung over the mantelpiece between two silver candlesticks.
“That’s my papa,” Jocelyn offered.
“He looks…nice,” Galen said as he sat.
Verity took the chair opposite him.
“He was very nice,” Jocelyn replied decisively. “Would you like to see my book?” she asked, picking it up.
Verity wished he would look anywhere but at her and the portrait as his gaze flicked between them.
“I should enjoy that very much, and you can tell me about it,” Galen said. “Sit beside me here, and then I shall be able to see the pictures, too.”
With a gleeful grin and not an inkling of shy hesitation, Jocelyn did as he suggested. She snuggled closer and Verity saw him tense. “Jocelyn, don’t crowd the duke.”
“It’s quite all right,” he replied with a hint of sharpness.
She instantly regretted making him think she would deny him this little coziness with his child.
Jocelyn opened her cherished book, the last gift Daniel had given her before he died. “Let’s read ‘Ali Baba.”’
“Why don’t you read it to me?” Galen suggested, turning his attention back to Jocelyn.
Jocelyn gave him another beaming smile, then started reading.
As she did, Verity didn’t even make a pretense of sewing. Instead, she watched as Galen listened, his dark-haired head close beside Jocelyn’s as he bent to see the pictures.
Verity had thought Galen Bromney would be out of his element when it came to conversing with children; however, as his behavior at Potterton Abbey and now in Jefford demonstrated, she was wrong.
He was wonderful with Jocelyn, and it was quite obvious she was happy being with him.
Was that so surprising? she asked herself. They were of the same blood, even if Jocelyn didn’t know that. Perhaps there was a bond between them that neither ignorance nor distance could destroy.
If only she and Galen could begin again! If only she had not been so impetuous—but if she had not gone to him that night, she wouldn’t have Jocelyn, and if it were not for Jocelyn, he would never have come back into her life.
Yet he could never be in their lives any more than this.
She stood up. “I shall make the tea. Would you care for some tarts, Your Grace? Jocelyn made them.”
Galen gave his daughter a delighted smile. “That would be wonderful. I’m sure they’re very good.”
“They are,” Jocelyn replied frankly. “I spilled some jam, though, so Nancy was a little cross.”
“Nancy? Who is Nancy?” the duke demanded, the underlying stern tone in his voice making Verity linger.
“Nancy is our servant.”
“What does she do when she’s cross with you?”
“She makes me sit in the corner for a very long time.”
“Anything else?”
“If I have been very naughty, sometimes I don’t get jam with my bread at dinnertime,” Jocelyn complained, casting him a look that was both shy and indignant, as if appealing to his sense of justice and not sure he would concur.
His shoulders relaxed.
“I’m good most of the time,” Jocelyn hastened to add, “but sometimes I just have to do something and I don’t think whether I’m behaving myself or not and then it’s done and there’s nothing I can do but say I’m sorry.”
“This sounds serious.”
Jocelyn regarded him quizzically. “Don’t you ever do things that other people might say are naughty? Don’t you ever feel you just have to do it, or you’ll burst?”
“I must confess I am guilty of hasty acts without proper consideration,” Galen said honestly, giving Verity a glance that set her heart racing. “What naughty things have you done?”
Jocelyn frowned and shook her head. “I’m not telling!”
“Not treason or some great crime, I hope?”
“No!”
“You are not a highwayman, perchance?”
“No.”
“Do you break into houses or pick pockets?”
“No,” she said with a giggle.
Galen heaved a sigh of relief. “I am very glad to know I am not in the company of a career criminal,” he remarked gravely. “And I think you really like Nancy, even when she’s cross.”
“I love her!” Jocelyn declared emphatically.
Galen told himself he had no right to be jealous. Jocelyn hadn’t even met him until a month ago; she had likely known this Nancy all her life.
“Although it is rude to leave our guest alone, I could use Jocelyn’s help with the tea things,” Verity said.
“I offer my humble assistance,” Galen said, rising. “I do know how to boil water and I would much rather go with you to the kitchen.”
“Very well,” she replied with a smile, the sort of smile that belonged to a girl who could play pranks on her schoolmistress. “I would like to see a duke in a kitchen.”
Galen made an elegant bow in response. “I shall endeavor not to disgrace myself if you will but show me the way.”
“Follow me, Your Grace.”
“Gladly,” he murmured as he obeyed.
“May we use the good plates?” Jocelyn asked as she skipped ahead of them down the hall.
“For a duke, we would use nothing else.”
“Does she always dance like that?” Galen asked quietly.
Verity tried not to notice how close beside her Galen was. “When she is happy, she does. Apparently you have that effect on her.”
“I am glad to think she doesn’t find me imposing.”
“There may come a day you wish she did,” she replied ruefully. “She can be quite stubborn.”
“So can I.”
He put his hand lightly on Verity’s arm to delay her, his supple fingers wrapping around her forearm. “I truly didn’t mind her sitting so close.”
“You tensed,” Verity replied, wanting him to understand why she had chided Jocelyn.
“It’s true that I am not used to such easy familiarity.” He gave her a sardonic, yet woeful, smile. “The only intimacy I have known in the past thirty years is the sort we have shared.”
The intimacy she so well remembered. “I am sorry to hear that.”
“I was sorry to live it.”
Their gazes met and held for the briefest of moments—yet in that instant, Verity felt as if the world had suddenly tilted on its axis.
Or love—sweet, delicious, devoted love—had slipped unnoticed past the barriers of years and experience and gained a foothold on her heart.
His hand dropped from her arm and she stepped back, actually unbalanced.
“Mama, what’s taking you so long?” Jocelyn called from the kitchen.
Feelin
g as if she had been startled awake, Verity hurried to the kitchen, a large, whitewashed room fitted with all that was new and modern, and where Nancy usually held sway with despotic authority.
Then she gasped at the sight that met her eyes.
Jocelyn stood precariously on a stool in front of the tall dresser, reaching up for a covered plate on the top shelf.
“Jocelyn!” Verity cried, hurrying around the large pine worktable to grab her by the waist. “What are you doing?”
“The raspberry tarts are up there.”
“You should have waited. I will get them when it’s time to serve them,” Verity said as she set her daughter on the stone floor.
“I only wanted to get them down for the duke,” Jocelyn mumbled, her head lowered.
“You might have fallen,” Galen said sternly, coming to stand beside Verity.
When Jocelyn’s bottom lip started to tremble, Galen went down on one knee. “If you had fallen, you might have hurt yourself, and I would have been very upset, especially if you injured yourself trying to get a treat for me.”
He rose and reached for the covered pewter plate. “And what if these had fallen, too, and been squashed? A tragedy!”
That made Jocelyn smile, while Verity suddenly remembered why they were in the kitchen and went to fill the kettle.
“Stop!”
Verity halted in midstep at Galen’s command.
Then he winked at Jocelyn, destroying the tension that had momentarily filled the room, before he strode forward.
“Madam, if you please,” he said imperiously. “I am to boil the water, am I not?”
“Yes,” she agreed.
He took the kettle from her, their hands momentarily touching.
Galen cleared his throat. “Yes, well, as I said, I can boil water,” he remarked. “Sadly, that is all I can do.”
“If you can boil water, you must be able to boil an egg,” Jocelyn noted.
“Alas, I have never been taught, and when I think of all the times I have craved a boiled egg and been without a servant…” He sighed mournfully, yet his eyes twinkled as he set the kettle on the range.
“I can boil an egg,” Jocelyn said proudly.
“Is it difficult?”
Verity stifled a smile while she got out the tea and the pot and the other accoutrements for their refreshment.
“Not at all! Mama, can we do an egg for the duke?”
“Yes, certainly,” Verity replied. “Fetch one from the pantry and I shall get a pot.”
Jocelyn hurried from the room while Verity headed for the row of newly tinned pots to find one suitable for a single boiled egg. She glanced over her shoulder at Galen, who was studying the range and adjoining oven. “These look very modern,” he remarked.
“Daniel wanted the best.”
“I would say he got it.”
Verity lifted down a suitable pot and faced him. “Nevertheless, we must seem rather rustic to you.”
“On the contrary, I envy you.”
“You envy me?”
He nodded slowly. “I envy you your charming house, and your simple life. I envy you your friends, for even Eloise stands up for you, and there are not many for whom she would do that.” He came around the table toward her. “Most of all, I envy you all the time you’ve had with Jocelyn.”
She flushed hotly and her grip on the pan tightened. She could almost feel his lips upon hers again, and the strength of his powerful arms embracing her. “Galen, I—”
“I’ve brought the biggest one I could find!” Jocelyn crowed from the doorway.
“What do we do now?” Galen asked, going to Jocelyn and deftly sidestepping a large basket of potatoes near the leg of the table.
“Well, first we get the pot.”
“I get the pot,” Galen said. He took the one Verity proffered without looking at her and she was, naturally, grateful for being spared another awkward moment.
“Then you fill it with enough water from the bucket near the range to cover the egg.”
“Enough water to cover the egg,” Galen repeated as seriously as if these were the instructions for a medical procedure. He took the pot to Jocelyn, who still held the egg.
“Now I put in the egg, and we put it on the range. We let the water come to a boil, and then when it has done that a little while, we plunge it into the cold water in the bucket,” she finished triumphantly.
“I see,” Galen said, doing as he had been told with regards to putting the pot on to heat. “So now we must wait for all this water to boil.”
“And while we do that, Jocelyn and I will set out the tarts and tea things on a tray to take to the parlor.”
“Oh, surely we can have our tea here,” Galen asked with a hint of wistfulness. “I’m tired of formality.”
“But you’re a duke!” Jocelyn protested.
“That may be, but I have never had the pleasure of having tea in the kitchen.”
“But I don’t think—”
“Jocelyn, the duke is our guest, and what did I tell you about when we have guests?”
“Oh.”
Galen had no idea what precise instructions Verity had given Jocelyn about the treatment of guests, but he suspected it was along the lines of accommodating oneself to their wishes—and for that, he was glad. He meant what he said: he had never had the pleasure of tea in a kitchen.
He very much liked this kitchen, too, with its air of comfort and domesticity. He liked the range and the oven; he liked the dresser with its knicks and scratches that told of daily use; he liked the smells of the smoked ham and onions hanging from the rafters. He liked the potted flowers on the sill.
Most of all, however, he enjoyed the company, even if he was also more disconcerted than he had been for years.
He had told himself he could return to England because, surely by now, his reputation would be nearly forgotten, replaced in popular gossip by the fresher scandals of the past ten years. Instead, he had discovered that the moment he appeared, everything he had ever done seemed to leap, rejuvenated, into people’s minds.
That he might have learned to live with.
He had also convinced himself that he had forgotten things over the passage of ten years. He had believed he had forgotten how he had felt when Verity had come to his bedroom, that he no longer remembered the texture of her skin, the softness of her lips, or the way her breast felt in his palm. He told himself he could not recall the low murmur of need she had made in the back of her throat when he had first kissed her, or the heated passion that had coursed through his body when she removed her nightdress.
Surely he had forgotten how her blue eyes could flash with desire, or how her shy smile seemed to reach deep inside of his soul to something long buried, and bring it to shattering, vibrant life.
What a fool!
And he wished he had never seen the portrait of Daniel Davis-Jones. He had envisioned the older man as either frail and elderly, or old and fat.
It was very disturbing to see that Daniel Davis-Jones had been what women would call a “fine figure of a man,” with friendly dark eyes beneath iron-gray brows. The fellow had had broad shoulders, no extraneous plumpness and masculine hands.
Hands that had also touched Verity. Intimately.
Chapter Nine
G alen rose abruptly.
“I thought I should check on the water,” he said by way of explanation to his startled companions. “I don’t want to be remiss my first time boiling an egg.”
Jocelyn and Verity exchanged smiles, and another shaft of painful regret lodged in his heart. What would he not give for this to be his home? he thought as he went to the range. His wife. His child, who knew he was her father.
His eyes clouded as he peered into the pot. Get a hold of yourself, Galen, he silently commanded.
Gentlemen don’t cry.
“Is it boiling?” Jocelyn asked as she left the plate of tarts, surreptitiously licking a bit of jam from her finger.
“Not yet
, but the kettle is about to, I think. Do you mind if I open the window?” he asked Verity. “I’m finding it rather warm.”
“So am I,” she murmured, not meeting his gaze.
“The kettle’s boiling, Mama!” Jocelyn cried, and Verity moved as if glad of the distraction.
“So is the water for the egg,” she observed.
“Ah!” Galen hurried toward the range. “I am to take it off—”
“Wait!” Verity cried as Galen went to grab the pot handle with his bare hand. “You’ll burn yourself.”
“Good God, how stupid of me,” Galen muttered as Verity, holding a cloth, went to take the pot herself.
“No, please just give me the cloth,” he said to her. “I would like to do this all myself, if you don’t mind. Otherwise, I shall feel utterly incompetent and as if all that remains for me is the life of a totally useless aristocrat.”
Verity handed him the cloth. “I don’t think it would be possible for you to be useless.”
“Why not?” he asked as he wrapped the cloth tightly around his hand. “I have not been terribly useful thus far in my life.”
“But you’re a duke!” Jocelyn exclaimed from the vicinity of the tarts.
“And you’re a little girl who’s going to be in trouble if you’ve been sticking your fingers in that tart again,” Verity observed pointedly.
“I haven’t!”
“Little Jack Horner…” Galen murmured as he glanced at Verity with a twinkle in his eye.
“I haven’t!” Jocelyn protested.
“We believe you, don’t we, Your Grace?”
“Of course we do,” he replied, unable to resist the compulsion to add a slight emphasis on the delightful “we” even if he was not at all pleased to be addressed by his formal title.
“However, Jocelyn, I must point out that I have done nothing to earn the title except be my father’s eldest son,” he continued as he carefully lifted the pot from the range and set it on the hob. “Two of my half brothers have already accomplished more than I, and they are quite a bit younger. Now what do I do?”
“Take that big wooden spoon and lift out the egg, then put it in the bucket very carefully,” Jocelyn ordered.
Galen nodded, then bit his lip as he gingerly followed her orders. When the egg was successfully deposited in the bucket, he looked at his young teacher. “Is that all?”
The Duke’s Desire Page 10