Page 15 of A Duke Changes Everything
Mina noticed she didn’t take a single word of it back. She couldn’t. The old duke had been a tightfisted bully, and his son a spendthrift dilettante who’d merrily bled the Tremayne coffers dry.
“Sometimes we must tell the truth, even if it’s not kind,” Mina put in. “My father always did.”
Mrs. Scribb cast her a sympathetic look. “Aye, he was a good man.”
The best Mina had ever known.
“We know the new duke is good at business,” Emma said as she returned Mina’s brush to a bedside drawer. “That’s already an improvement over his brother.”
A vast improvement. And hehadhelped her down from the tree and refrained from dismissing her on the spot when he’d learned of her deception. Maybe she’d judged Nicholas Lyon too quickly.
Frantic footsteps sounded in the hall outside her bedchamber. A moment later, Hildy, the youngest maid, burst through.
“Come quick,” she said, clutching her chest to catch her breath. “The new duke’s gone mad.”
“That was fast,” Mina said drily. Hildy did have a tendency to exaggerate. “Where is he?”
“The study. He’s behaving very strangely, miss.”
Mina followed Hildy and tried to match her frantic sprint. Halfway down the hall, the young maid failed to notice a bucket left in the hallway.
“Watch out,” Mina called, catching the girl by the elbow before she hit the freshly mopped floor. “You take care of the bucket. I’ll see to the duke.”
What Mina couldn’t see were the steps as she descended the stairs.Blasted skirts.They did nothing but keep her from maneuvering as she wished. Wrenching her hem up, she strode quickly toward the duke’s study. Mrs. Darley, the estate’s cook, stood outside the door, knotting her apron in her hands.
A man’s voice emerged through the half-open door. A deep rumble.Wilder.
Mina pushed into the room, and her breath tangled in her throat. Wilder shot her a look of desperate uncertainty.
Nicholas Lyon loomed above both of them, standing atop a Chippendale cherrywood table pushed up against the unlit fireplace. Polished black boots planted wide, he stared down at her, skin glistening with perspiration, eyes aglow. Then he turned his back on her.
He’d shed clothing since she’d last seen him.
Don’t stare, she told herself. But her mind cataloged broad thighs, a tight, muscled backside, and a wide back encased in a scarlet waistcoat straining at the seams as he reached above his head.
“Your Grace?”
“There will be new rules in my dukedom, Thorne.” He unbuttoned the cuffs of his white shirt, rolling up his sleeves to reveal a dusting of black hair over muscled forearms. “First rule. Don’t call me that.”
“What shall I call you?” Mina cleared her throat. “And what, if I may ask, are you doing?” She glanced at Wilder, who merely shook his head in the same miserable manner he employed when Mrs. Scribb was on a rampage or Mrs. Darley burned his favorite apple tarts.
“This”—he pointed at the painting above his head—“needs to come down.”
The duke lifted off his boot heels and grasped the edges of an elaborate gilt-framed portrait of his mother. Without a moment’s hesitation, he plucked the painting from the hook that had kept it affixed to the wall for decades.
“We could,” Wilder began in his slow, steady drone, “get a ladder.”
Whether the duke failed to hear him or was giving in to the stubbornness Mina had already encountered at the oak tree, he ignored Wilder’s suggestion. The portrait came down at a precarious tilt, but his arms were long, his shoulders broad, and he managed to gently maneuver the enormous canvas to the floor.
“Wilder, see to preparing this for transport back to London.” The duke jumped down with a bone-shaking thud and placed the painting in the old man’s hands. “Take good care of her.”
Wilder nodded solemnly and then shuffled out, maneuvering the tall frame through the doorway.
Mina closed the door behind him, shooing off the gaping gaggle of staff who’d assembled in the hall.
“Your Gra—”
“TryMr. Lyonorsiror whatever you damn well please. I could even live withmy lord.” Tremayne moved toward his father’s desk, an enormous bulk of dark walnut that Mina always thought looked as if it had been carved from the hull of a Viking ship.
