Page 52 of A Duke Changes Everything
Curse the man. Full of bluster one moment and unexpected charm the next? He’d been downright magnanimous to the villagers. More than his father or brother had ever been.
But could she or any of them count on his new display of generosity when the man changed his mind like the flip of a coin?
One day burning portraits and a week later promising villagers repairs to their cottages.
Mina would never forget the moment they met. The reassuring grip of his hands as he’d held her steady as she descended the oak tree. The tall imposing figure of the man as he stood with Millicent crooked in his elbow. The odd frisson between them when they finally stood face-to-face. Not only was he far more appealing than she’d anticipated, he’d made her feel seen. Noticed. Not just as another servant, but as a woman whose knowledge of the estate he respected.
He was nothing she was expecting in the duke whose arrival she’d so feared. Even now, she struggled to reconcile the man whose anger toward his father shocked her and the one she’d seen show empathy to Barrowmere’s villagers today. As she attempted to fit all the pieces of him together in her mind, the memories that burned brightest were the moments when they’d touched.
The slide of his finger against her chin. His warm, solid embrace. The heat of his mouth on hers.
Mina groaned, set her book aside, and closed her eyes. She’d had enough of ruminating on the Duke of Tremayne for one night.
Yet Nicholas persisted in her mind’s eye. Strands of black hair dipping over his brow. His surly slouch in the carriage. His awkwardness when admitting he wasn’t proficient at ballroom dancing.
A cry sounded below her. Nicholas’s voice calling out. She thought she heard her name. Slipping from bed, she crept toward the door and listened. The cry came again, but muffled. Turning, she knelt by her oval rug, peeled back the edge, and pressed her ear to the chilled floorboards.
“Leave,” she heard him say distinctly. Then he repeated the phrase with one word added, “Don’t leave. Let me out!”
Mina stood, donned her dressing gown, and tiptoed into the hall. She detected no movement in the servants’ rooms and walked as carefully as a cat on a ledge as she descended the stairs, trying not to make a sound.
In front of his door, she paused with her hand on the latch.
What she was about to do wasn’t proper, or ladylike, or anything else others would expect of her. But she refused to turn back.
Her pulse started a wild, stuttering dance when she stepped into his room.
Lying in bed, he looked still and peaceful, no longer crying out. Then one word came, quiet and anguished, no more than a breathy whisper. “No.” He twisted his head on the pillow, then lifted his arm as if grasping for something. “Please don’t go.”
Mina wasn’t certain if he was awake or still lost in a night terror. Drawing close, she struggled to see him clearly as her eyes adjusted to the dim light of the single lamp turned low by his bedside.
He was a breathtaking sight without a frown marring his mouth or lines of worry notched between his brows. Black hair spilled over his forehead and cheek, obscuring part of his face.
Mina crouched beside the bed and pushed the strands back, revealing the jagged line of his scar. The wounded flesh contrasted sharply with his pale unmarred skin. The cut had been deep. Who would dare attack a duke’s son, especially one who towered over most men?
She jolted back when his eyelids lifted.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Despite the warning, he reached out and clasped the hand she held hovering above his face.
“I know.”
But he didn’t let her go. He stilled for a moment, watching her. There was a glint in his eyes, a hint of a curve at the corner of his mouth. As if he was pleased to see her, relieved to wake and find her beside him.
Then he swept his thumb against her palm, a delicious caress that made her gasp.
She leaned closer, impulsively reaching out to trace the curve of his mouth with her fingertip. His lips trembled under her touch.
“Mina.” He whispered her name with a rasp of desperation.
She wanted his mouth on hers again, wanted it so badly that it frightened her. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be here.”
He sat up in bed and swung his legs over the side, all the time stroking ribbons of heat along her wrist with his thumb. “So you’re short-temperedandimpulsive.”
“And you’re difficult and moody.” Mina preferred the heat in his gaze to his teasing tone. She was tired of pretending. “Now that we’ve identified each other’s character flaws, I’ll go back to my room.”
Mina straightened, and he stood too so that they were toe to toe. This close, she had to arch back to look at him or stare at his bare neck and the patch of chest his open shirt did nothing to hide.
He loosened his hold on her hand, but the bleakness in his eyes called to her, echoing her own loneliness.
