Page 31 of A Duke Changes Everything
“I’m a dreadful dancer.” He didn’t know why he was admitting to his faults. Especially when he loathed the flicker of sympathy in her gaze.
“You could hire a dance instructor.”
“I don’t give a damn about balls. I have no interest in mixing with Barrowmere society. Gambling club owners, like lady stewards, have little cause for dancing.”
He’d touched a nerve. She bit her lip, tapped her fingers against her thigh in an angry tattoo. She opened her mouth, and he wondered if she might curse him to Hades. Instead, she snapped her jaw shut and strode past him, kicking up a cloud of dust in her wake.
Nick glared at the damaged wall, calculating the cost of repairs, trying not to think of the disappointment in her eyes.
A few minutes later, Wilder’s deep voice echoed to the high ceiling. “You’ve upset Miss Thorne.”
“I’m the one who should be upset.” Nick glanced back as the old man approached. “No one told me this place was falling to ruin.”
“Not as bad as all that, Master Nicholas. A few broken bits. Easily remedied.” Wilder matched Nick in height and stood shoulder to shoulder with him, hands clasped behind him. “’Tis your duty to see to improving the place now.”
“I will never reside here, Wilder. Nothing could compel me to think of this place as my home.”
The butler dipped his head, a semblance of a bow. “Your prerogative, of course. But the damage must be dealt with or it will fester. And repairs do take time.”
Nick side-eyed the butler. The man stared ahead, chest puffed, chin up, hands laced in that dutiful, obsequious way behind his back.
“You could do better than either of them, Your Grace.” Wilder’s voice was infused with the sort of rock-solid assurance Nick only ever felt about business matters. “Better than your brother or your father. You could be a good duke. Perhaps a great one. Succeed where they both failed.” The butler cast him a raised-brow glance. “Would that not be the very best revenge?”
Wilder’s opinion mattered to Nick, but he wanted none of what the old man described. Not the title, or the house, or all the troubles that came with them. But he understood the need to see an enterprise to its end.
“Three weeks, Wilder. That’s all I’ll give this place.” Nick pivoted on his heel and strode from the ballroom. He looked down both ends of the hall but detected no sign of Miss Thorne, just a few lingering whiffs of her floral scent. Ten long strides took him to her half-open office door.
She looked up as he approached, swiping at her cheek and then rising from her chair.
Before she could get out a word, Nick stepped inside. “The wall needs to be repaired. See to it, Miss Thorne. Whatever the cost.”
She blinked at him in shock. “I will. Immediately.”
Nick walked away, but her face lingered in his mind’s eye. Along with a shocked gaze, she’d offered him the hint of a smile.
He liked her smiles. Far too much.
Chapter Nine
“The duke’s missing.” Hildy slipped on the patch of polished wood in front of Mina’s office door in her haste to reach the threshold.
“Again?” Mina laid down her nib pen and tucked away the ledger book she’d been working on.
The man had a habit of wandering off. Usually out of doors, traversing the fields for hours, as if he couldn’t bear to remain inside Enderley’s walls.
“Vicar Pribble came to call, and when Emma went to the duke’s chambers, the man was gone.”
“The vicar’s not waiting, is he?” Mina silently prayed no one told the man they’d misplaced the Duke of Tremayne.
“Emma sent him on his way, but what shall we do about the duke?”
“I’ll find him. He has to be somewhere.” Never mind that there were fifty-eight rooms in which to hide. Based on the rain-drenched turn of the weather, she guessed he hadn’t ventured out of doors. “Let me have a look.”
His disappearance gave her an excuse to explore parts of the estate she usually had little cause to visit. After sticking her head into the conservatory and each bedchamber, sitting room, and drawing room, she headed for the library.
Instantly she knew she’d found him.
There was a new energy in the somber, high-ceilinged space. Stepping inside quietly, she stopped and listened for movement. From the far corner, behind an enormous table covered with maps, she heard the distinctive sound of someone flipping the page of a book.
