Page 25 of Duke of Wickedness
She hated how much she faltered, how, at the first hiccup, she became a stuttering little fool. But maybe it was for the best, because the next flicker in the man’s expression was kind and sympathetic, maybe even a little bit knowing.
And at least she had gotten her stuttering out in front of possibly the only kind butler in England instead of the Duke of Wilds himself.
“He does not,” the butler reassured her. Ariadne nearly had to take a step back with the force of the relief that those words sent through her. “I believe he is still awake; I can go see if he is accepting company. Who shall I tell him is call—” He cut himself off. “I shall tell him someone is calling for him.”
“Thank you,” she said, really meaning it.
The time he left her in the kitchen, which was warm and dimly lit from the banked fire, couldn’t have actually been more than three or so minutes. It felt, however, like hours.
When the man came back, he gave her a slight bow.
“His Grace will see you, Lady…Pandora.”
She bit back a smile, both at the man’s hesitation, which showed that he knew the name was not hers in truth, and at the alias that the duke had chosen to give her.
Pandora, who had been so curious that she had opened a box full of evil. She had to fault him for part of this—she was nearly certain, for all the debauchery that she’d witnessed, thatevilwas taking things a bit too far when it came to the Duke of Wilds—but he deserved far greater credit for his cleverness.
Not only had he protected her identity and made a quip about their circumstances, but he had noted her grandfather’s odd penchant for Greek Antiquities, the one that had given three generations of Lightholders names taken from myth.
Clever.
Drat it all if she didn’t like it a lot.
“Thank you,” she told the butler.
There was still a little smile on her face as she followed her guide to the upstairs study.
The smile died the instant the butler opened the door to reveal the duke.
On the surface, he was merely sitting, sipping a drink. It was an innocuous activity, except for how nothing about what he was doing seemed at allinnocuous. Instead, everything, from the slight curve of his lips, to the way he had one ankle crossed over the other knee, to the way his fingertips tapped against the arm of the chair—it all felt…debauched.
“Thank you, Newman,” the duke said to the butler.
The butler bowed and left.
And then Ariadne and the duke were alone.
“Pandora?” she asked lightly. “You know, given my family, there’s a good chance I could have had a cousin called Pandora.”
He took a sip of his drink.
“Idon’t, but you realize I could have,” she said. Something about his quiet observation made her nervous.
Ha.Something. Nearly everything about him made her nervous, but, strangely…she liked that, too.
“Also,” she went on when he just kept looking at her, “your butler was very startled to find me here. Is he new? Wait—Newman. New man. Is he literally the new man? You might want to learn his real name--and you might want to inform him of the kinds of things he is likely to see in this house, for, if he was surprised by my mere appearance, he will no doubt be quite scandalized by…other things…”
She tapered off, realizing that she’d been blathering at an unforgivable rate. What waswrongwith her? She knew how to be decorous in public. She’d built an entire life around being decorous in public.
“Finished?” the duke asked mildly.
Ariadne didn’t trust herself to speak. She nodded.
“First,” he said, and his coolness and composure stood in such stark contrast to her flustered speech that they might as well have been speaking two different languages, “you will be shocked to hear this, but the Lightholder family is actually quite well-known. I am aware of your cousins and the names they do and do not have.
“Second,” he continued, “Newman has worked for me for eleven years, suggestions of his surname aside.”
Ariadne frowned. “But?—”
