Page 15 of The Captive Duke
No one and nothing had smelled good at the Château, excepting possibly, in the opinion of the cats, Girard’s damned lavender.
Christian took the scone from her. “My thanks.”
“You weren’t always so ducal,” she said, stepping back.
“Ducal, am I?” He was exhausted and unable tosleep; he no longer registered things like hunger or thirst, and he could barely write his own name legibly. Pity the peerage if those attributes were now ducal.
“All the silences, the hauteur, the brooding glances. You do them very convincingly. I hope you don’t plan to approach your daughter like this.”
She was casting that big shadow again, instructing him from the superior height of her familiarity with a child Christian did not know as well as he should. “I will deal with Lucy as I see fit, and so will you.”
He half sought an argument with his small invader, but she merely resumed her seat on the sofa and tore off a bit of orange peel.
Then munched on it—on the orangepeel—as casually as if she were a prisoner bent on avoiding scurvy.
“You call your daughter Lucy. Her mother wouldn’t allow nicknames. She was Lady Lucille to all and sundry, even me.”
“She liked to be called Lucy when she was younger.” He had no idea from whence that assurance came, but he trusted it. The girl was his firstborn, after all. For the early years of Lucy’s life, her parents had had no heir to distract them from their only baby.
“Then I shall call her Lucy too.” She smiled at him, not the fatuous, beaming-idiot smile he saw so often, but something softer and more personal, more inward.
A door slammed down the hall, and Christian nearly dropped his damned scone right on the carpet and vaulted behind the sofa.
“Oh, do come sit.” She rose, took him by his left wrist, and tugged him to the sofa, releasing his hand as quickly as she’d seized it. The riot of reactions that caused had him setting his plate down with an audible racket.
God in heaven, what had he got himself into?
Four
GILLY DECLINEDMERCIA’S OFFER OF IMMEDIATEhospitality, took her leave on a silent prayer she’d done the right thing for her young cousin, and repaired to the Greendale town house.
Her London residence—her former London residence—was a comfortable, even opulent town house, but every room reeked of old Greendale’s cigars, and his effects were everywhere. Humidors, bootjacks, snuffboxes, and riding crops littered the premises like so much scent from a prowling tomcat.
She would miss none of it, and neither did she make any effort to organize or pack away Greendale’s personal property. Let Marcus deal with the lot, and may he have the joy of it.
Gilly departed from the town house the next morning, trying to dredge up some pang of loss at leaving one of her marital homes, the staff, anyone… In the end, she stooped to pet a black-and-white house cat, but the beast tried to bite her as she scratched its chin.
She wanted to swat the wretched feline into next week—Greendale would have kicked it into thestreet—but she patted its coarse head and climbed into her coach.
When she arrived at Mercia’s town house—mansion, more like—she was surprised to find him at breakfast in his library.
“Your Grace hasn’t slept.” Not that Gilly had slept much, either.
“A tea tray, Lady Greendale?” He gave the butler a pointed look before his arctic gaze settled back on Gilly.
“No, thank you, Your Grace.” The butler hovered, despite Gilly’s demurrer, which would not do. “It’s Meems, isn’t it? Perhaps you’d be good enough to attend me in the family parlor in twenty minutes or so, Meems? And I’ll need to speak with His Grace’s housekeeper as well.”
The butler bowed, his face expressionless, and withdrew while Gilly appropriated a chair across from the duke’s enormous desk.
“One should begin as one intends to go on.” She offered Mercia a smile, and got exactly nothing in return. His expression suggested English was no longer his first language, and he had to mentally translate all communication—words, gestures, everything—into some system known only to him.
He would not appreciate displays of compassion—Gilly never had herself—so she made none, though at his wedding, he’d been a much sunnier gentleman; also likely a much healthier gentleman.
“One should, indeed, begin as one intends to goon.” His plate held half a buttered scone, nothing more, though the library was redolent with the scents of ham and bacon.
“You truly do stay up all night, don’t you?”
“I do not sleep much at any hour. Today, when I might have napped the morning through, I must away to the tailors, lest my court attire embarrass those who behold me in it.”
