Page 28 of Tamed By her Duke

Grace didn’t always agree with her father. She didn’t go head-to-head with him as often as her brother did, but she found his tendency toward speechifying more tiresome than inspiring. About one thing, however, she agreed with him wholeheartedly: when you had the luck to be born to wealth, to a title, you had an obligation to do honor to that luck.

Well. Her father wouldn’t have called it luck, of course. So perhaps she onlymostlyagreed with him. The point remained.

“I will do what I can,” she told the women. She meant the promise, though she felt that the weight she saw lifting off their shoulders was heaping onto her own. Shewouldtry, but she didn’t know what power she might have, not in the face of her husband’s seemingly indominable will—not to mention his apparent talent for avoiding her.

After the two women left, and after Grace spent a little while resisting the urge to bang her head exhaustedly against the table, she tried to think logically. The first step would be to corner the elusive man she’d married.

She just didn’t expect to do so in the dead of night.

The nightmares hadn’t abated, so Grace had taken to prowling the house at night. She would sleep for a bit, wake bathed in a cold sweat, then wander until her body’s exhaustion drew her back to bed and, finally, to dreamless slumber.

Tonight, she was in the library, the fire banked until it was barely more than coals. In these late-night wanderings, she let herself shed all her guises, let herself justbe, when, finally, nobody was watching.

This only worked, of course, if she didn’t encounter her husband while she was trying to relax in front of the banked fire in the library, wearing a blanket like a cloak, and holding a book over her face to read in the dim light.

“Do ye never sleep?”

Thwack. Grace, startled, dropped the book on her face. She jerked, got caught in her blankets, and by the time she got herself free, her nose was smartingandher cheeks were burning—and her husband was crouched at her side.

“Jesus wept, lass, are ye all right?” he asked, even looking mildly concerned. Grace supposed it was nice to know that he wouldn’t avoid her if she was actively in peril—even if the peril arose from her own clumsiness.

“I’m fine,” she said tersely, shoving him away and scrambling to a (slightly) more dignified position. She kept the blanket held around her. Not only was it chilly with the fire so low, but she had a simplyawfulrecord when it came to encountering her husband while wearing a nightgown.

Because he was the kind of person who had turned being persnickety into an art form, Caleb turned to leave without so much as another word. Grace, fearing she’d not see him for another fortnight, grabbed his arm.

“Wait.”

He looked down at her, eyebrow raised.

“Aye?”

Oh, curse the stupid blankets. Grace struggled to her feet, wishing she were having this conversation while looking less likea child in a closet drama about old monks or ghouls or people with very ugly dresses.

“I have something to discuss with you,” she said primly. If she refused to acknowledge the absurdity of her dress, it would not exist.

If only her husband could go along with her scheme foronce. But no, instead he looked pointedly around the darkened library, then at her garb—if it could be called that.

“Right now?”

“Yes, right now,” she said peevishly. Why was he so good at annoying her? It was intolerable. “Because if I let you get away now, you’ll disappear. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

He looked bashful for precisely one and a half seconds before pasting on that scowl. “I told ye. We don’t need to see one another. Not unless ye’re suggesting we move forward our deadline for heir makin’?”

She ignored this. She would not be distracted by hisnonsense.

“We shall discuss why you are skulking about your own home later,” she said.

“Skulking!” he repeated, outraged.

She ignored this, too. “But first, I want to know why you are neglecting your duties as a duke.”

She hadn’t actually planned this phrasing to rile him into a response, but had she tried, she couldn’t have done better, she realized, as he outright gaped at her in fury. If he was willing to marry a woman that he wanted naught to do with, all for the sake of duty, he’d no doubt respond poorly to being faced with his own negligence.

She pointedly did not react to his outrage. Her thoughts about her husband were…complex, but still none of her well-honed instincts told her to fear his anger.

“I amnotneglecting my duties as a duke,” he insisted when she failed to scamper away like a terrified little rabbit at the force of his glower.

Grace gave him a bored look. “I have it on good authority that your tenants are terrified of you. Some need new roofs. Others need their farming equipment modernized if they’re to keep up with other local producers.” She’d done a bit of investigating since speaking to Mrs. O’Mailey and Mrs. Bradley and had learned that they’d only brought the most serious concern to Grace’s attention—there was far more that needed attending.

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