Page 91 of The Captive
“Would you like me to take you and Lucy up to Town?” Not that he’d allow his womenfolk anywhere near Girard or his reported whereabouts.
Gilly marched up the stairs toward the third floor. “Lucy might enjoy such a visit, for she needs her papa, but you need not drag me up there.”
“You don’t think the Town staff as loyal as the Severn staff?” Christian asked as he followed. “You don’t think I will need a hostess in Town? You have to know anybody in my employ who disparages you will be turned off without a character.”
She paused at the top of the steps, her skirts swishing about her half boots. “If somebody repeats the truth, they aren’t disparaging my character.”
“I weary of this topic, Gillian. You will either make an honest duke of me and accept my suit or content yourself with my affections on terms more acceptable to you. Those are your options, my lady.”
She fell silent, her eyes pained despite her serene expression. His next tactics were reconnaissance and subterfuge—the distasteful and ungentlemanly business of spying—to determine what, exactly, made marriage to him so repugnant to her.
He stopped her headlong march in the middle of the empty third-floor corridor.
“Do you fear I would treat you as Greendale did? Deny you the gardens, expect you to embroider my stockings, head bent by the hour?”
“You’re weary of the topic, if you’ll recall.” She fired off that retort, and he let her, because his question had been at least close to the mark. Gilly’s marriage had left her afraid, though of exactly whom and what, Christian could not fathom—yet.
He was loath to admit his instincts as an interrogator owed something to Girard’s example.
Six steps in the direction of the nursery suite, Gilly stopped again abruptly.
“What?”
She put a finger to her lips, and Christian fell silent. A sound drifted down the corridor, one he hadn’t heard for some time: a child singing.
“That’s Lucy,” Gilly said, steps quickening. “Oh, thank God, that’s our Lucy, and if she can sing, she can…”
OurLucy.And she was his Gilly, whether she knew it or not. Christian gently hauled her back by the wrist. “The child will fall silent as soon as she senses we’re here.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” Gilly said, wrenching from his grasp.
“She talks in her sleep.”
They conducted this exchange in fierce whispers. “How do you know that?”
Gilly had her routine for the end of the day, and he had his. A patrol of the garrison, so to speak. Before she could argue with him further, Christian addressed her again, loudly enough to be heard in all directions.
“You may not embroider my handkerchiefs with flowers, Countess. Anything other than the family crest or my initials would be unfitting to the dignity of a duke.”
The singing stopped, and Gilly’s eyes, so full of hope, filled with tears.
“None of that,” he said softly. “She can’t know we were eavesdropping. Argue with me, Gilly. You excel at it.”
She blinked back the tears and stood inches taller. “I will decorate where I please, as I please, Your Grace. Even my own papa allowed embroidery on his handkerchiefs, and he was every bit as high in the instep as you.”
“I’m not high in the instep, I’m a duke. You will note the difference.”
“And being a duke is somehow the better of the two?”
He winked at her and let the question go unanswered as they reached the nursery door.
“Good day, Harris,” he said. “Is Lucy free to entertain callers?”
“She finished her sums early today, Your Grace. You should have passed her. She’s down the corridor, in the small playroom with the dogs.”
“Countess, you’ll join me?” He winged his arm at Gilly, and she took it. When they were alone, she hissed and arched her back, and spat and carried on verbally, but she never under any circumstances denied him the opportunity to touch her, and for that, among many other traits, he treasured her.
“Good day, Lucy.” Christian bowed to his daughter to make her smile and saw the countess suck in a breath. Gilly wanted to force the issue of the singing, and he didn’t blame her. “Shall you stroll with us in the garden, Lucy, and bring those two reprobates whom you have ensorcelled here in your tower?”
