Page 27 of A Duke Changes Everything
“It’s not that he didn’t want it, miss. The duke has left.”
Mina glanced at Wilder again.
“He must be here,” he said with reassuring certainty. “Tobias would have been called to equip the carriage. We would have heard him depart. Are his clothes still in his room?”
Emma blushed as if the notion of examining a man’s wardrobe was nothing short of scandalous. “Didn’t check, Mr. Wilder, but the bed’s made. Perhaps he rose very early or went out last evening.”
Mina frowned. When she’d last seen him, he’d been striding back toward the house. Where might he have detoured? “Perhaps he’s in the breakfast room. Emma, you look about upstairs, and I’ll head to the dining room. Tobias, check the stables.”
Mina’s heartbeat hitched as she searched.
He wasn’t in the dining room, or the morning room, or any of the sitting rooms nearby. She poked her head into the library, one of her favorite rooms, but it was empty too.
“Mr. Lyon? Your Grace?” She still wasn’t sure exactly what to call the man.
She’d never met anyone who hated a place as he hated her home. He seemed to reserve a special wrath for the study, and some instinct led her there. But the room was just as it had been last night. A mess. The window sash still stood open and she crossed the room to close it.
Where would a miserable duke go?
She noted that the door across the hall was crooked open. The door that led to the estate steward’s office. Her office.
Surely he wouldn’t go there.
She nudged the door with the toe of her boot, holding on to the frame to avoid the squeak in the hinges, and found a sleeping giant sprawled on the sofa where she’d once played and read and done her lessons while her father worked.
The duke overwhelmed the lumpy piece of furniture, his body weighing down the cushions, long legs stretched out in front of him. His clothes weren’t the same he’d worn the day before. Apparently he’d risen, washed, and dressed on his own before coming down to speak to her. And then dozed off.
With his head tilted back against the cushions, the unscarred side of his face was turned toward the window. A shaft of morning light gilded his skin, highlighting the high cut of his cheeks, the broad swell of his mouth.
He was a beautiful man. Achingly so. The kind of face she would have drawn if she possessed an ounce of talent.
She took one step closer and studied him. Of all the paintings and sculptures of Roman generals and Greek gods she’d seen in books, none had this man’s appeal. Perhaps because his face was imperfect and the rest of him seemed to push past the bounds of what one expected. He was taller, broader, longer-limbed. A man of contrasts and excesses.
“You’ve found him, miss,” Emma whispered over Mina’s shoulder.
“Perhaps you should bring that breakfast tray here. Or at least some tea.” She made her way quietly into the room, though she wasn’t sure why she took such care. She had to wake him, yet part of her envied him. She’d gotten only an hour or so of sleep herself and would have loved to curl up on the sofa for a doze.
“Your Grace.” A little louder, she tried, “Mr. Lyon.”
Ink-black lashes flickered up, and she found herself staring into his blue and green gaze. He blinked. For a moment he looked frightened. Young. Vulnerable. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“This,” Mina told him softly, “is my office.”
“Pardon me.” Wilder’s deep voice sounded from just outside the door. “Visitors to see you, Your Grace.”
Nicholas Lyon swept his right hand across his head, which only made his ebony hair settle in tumbled waves. “I’m not entertaining guests today. Miss Thorne and I have much to do.”
“What reason shall I give, sir?”
“The duke is indisposed.Isn’t that the excuse you gave on my father’s behalf when he was in one of his rages?” the duke said in an irritated huff.
“Very good, Your Grace.”
“Wilder, who is it?” Mina imagined the triumvirate of magistrate, vicar, and Farmer Thurston descending on the front drawing room.
“Lady Claxton and her granddaughter.”
Even worse.
