Page 38 of The Duke's Forbidden Bride
While he had been amused when he found her kneeling by the flowerbed, now he looked angry.
“I am dusting,” she said. “What else does it look like?”
“You are debasing yourself. This is beneath you, Duchess.”
“Is it, really?” she countered, not realizing how serious this was until his face hardened.
Her joy at losing herself in weeding and dusting deflated.
“Idleness is far more humiliating than labor, no? You have asked me to stop asking you about Charlotte, so I have found a way to remain distracted.”
“I told you to be a duchess,” he growled.
Eleanor’s temper flared, always finding its opponent in his. “Which I am being.”
“You look more like one of the servants, barefoot, with dirt on your face and your sleeves rolled up.”
“Would you prefer a docile, silent duchess who sits in a room embroidering, going half out of her mind with worry?” Eleanor snapped. “I will not be idle. My mind can be a dark place when I’m left without something to cling to. This is one small thing I like to do to escape my own thoughts. It is not evasion; it issurvival.”
The Duke flinched. A shadow crossed his face, his mouth twitching with displeasure as he looked at her. Eleanor stood her ground, folding her arms over her chest stubbornly.
“I do not wish to deprive you of whatever it is you want to occupy your thoughts with,” he hissed, “but must all your ways of survival involve dirt, or do you just wish to vex me?”
Eleanor almost told him what other pastimes settled her racing mind, but she bit her tongue.
“You have no right to dictate what I do.”
Anger flashed in his eyes, and he shook his head. He took a step back and looked away from her as if exasperated. Then, his eyes flicked to hers, and she held them, her mouth set in a grimace, daring him to press the issue.
Eventually, he let out a low growl that sent shivers through her and stormed out of the greenhouse.
She watched him for a moment, a tall, dark figure striding through the bright garden.
Against the red forest in the distance, he looked striking. She swallowed, her eyes lingering on him a little too long. He paused at the end of the garden path, as if he sensed her gaze.
Eleanor whirled back to the fig tree. She did not know whether he looked back at her.
As the afternoon grew hotter, Mr. Fulton came and went with other servants, presenting her with new tools, giving her smiles and nods of acknowledgment.
“From His Grace,” he said as he offered her fresh soil and a garden brush.
“Thank you,” Eleanor murmured, noticing how the Duke looked quite lost in his thoughts. “For the soil and the tools. It was unexpected but lovely.”
She thought of him leaving the greenhouse, of his anger turning into reluctant acceptance. By the time she sat across from him at dinner, she still could not understand why he would extend that kindness to her.
At first, she thought he would argue with her again, but his expression softened slightly and he merely nodded.
The candlelight reflected in his eyes, making the honey flecks within the brown look like sunbursts.
For a moment, she could not look away. Not as the light danced in his hair, turning the russet brown strands into gleaming copper and accentuating the scar on his face.
Neither of them looked away. Eleanor’s hands trembled.
Quickly, she rose from her chair and left the dining room.
“You are sunburned, Your Grace,” Frances noted the following morning after Eleanor had taken a quiet breakfast on the terrace of her bedroom.
She was told that the Duke had left Everdawn Hall early that morning, and she had thought she would lose her wits if she was once again forced to sit in a large room alone.
