Page 19 of The Captive Duke
“My thanks.” He stood as soon as she sat back, no doubt glad to be done with the whole business.
“Can you get the shirt off without stabbing yourself? It wants caution. Here.” She didn’t wait for his invitation, but started lifting the hem. She was presuming, but she’d been married for years and years, and his valet was not on hand—if he had a valet—and the shirt was full of pins…
“Really, Lady Greendale, you needn’t.” He reached out as if he would still her hands, but stopped short of touching her. “I can manage, if you’d simply…”
“Close your eyes.” She wasn’t tall enough to lift the shirt over his head unless he bent forward, which he did, allowing her to extricate him from his voluminous, pinned up, inside-out shirt. She stepped back, glad to have the maneuver safely concluded, and carefully folded up the shirt. “There. All done.”
He turned toward his dressing room, and Gilly couldn’t help the sound that came from her. She moaned, an involuntary expression of dread and horror and even grief. He turned to face her, shirtless, and his eyes were colder than ever.
“You insisted, my lady.”
That he’d taken his back from her view helped not at all, for his chest was every bit as disfigured as his back.
Over Meems’s sniffy, tenacious protest, Gilly had insisted Mercia be allowed to rest right through dinnerthe previous night. Meems was in the same excellent rebellious form the next morning, and perhaps of the opinion that a mere interfering countess needed to learn her place in the household.
For Meems was male and must inflict his opinions on all in his ambit.
“His Grace hasn’t stirred, your ladyship, not that we can hear.”
“Not that you can hear?”
“He sleeps with his doors locked, milady.”
Meems’s grave deference notwithstanding, he was happily anticipating how Gilly would see His Grace awakened through a pair of locked doors.
“You’ve tried calling out?”
“If the sitting-room door is closed, that would do little good, milady.”
“Then I’ll wake him myself.” She set her teapot down as quietly as she could, when she wanted to bash the thing over the old man’s head. “You’re heating His Grace’s hot water, are you not?”
“But of course.” He had the temerity to fall in step nearly on the heels of her slippers, until Gilly turned and glared at him at the foot of the stairs.
“Surely you’ll see personally to the duke’s breakfast tray, Meems?”
He indulged in a peevish sniff, then took himself back to the kitchen stairs without a word. Meems was piqued because he wanted to show his duke off before Polite Society for what remained of theSeason, but Mercia was not an exhibit in a public circus.
Gilly tapped on the door to the sitting room and heard nothing in response. “Your Grace?” She leaned her ear against the door, and still…nothing.
And yes, the door was locked.
She extricated a hairpin from her bun and went to work. The lock was well oiled—give Meems credit—and Gilly was skilled, and soon the mechanism gave with a satisfying click. The bedroom door was even easier, and there he was, the eighth Duke of Mercia, facedown in his great four-poster monstrosity.
Gilly closed the door behind her, mindful of His Grace’s privacy, and approached the bed.
If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought the duke dead. He was that pale, as if he’d wandered beyond even the reach of the sun. In his utter immobility, he looked exhausted, like he’d been on forced march for weeks. A castaway quality to how he sprawled among his crisp, white sheets and blue satin pillows suggested he was resting deeply.
“Your Grace?”
His hand—the right hand, the perfect one—slid under his pillow, and his cheek twitched.
“Mercia? Your Grace?”
She was on the verge of reaching out to shake his shoulder, when he rolled onto his back. Gilly took a blinking moment to comprehend he held a wicked-looking knife in his hand. The blade gleamed in themorning light, brighter than any tea service, bright as jewels.
“Good morning, Your Grace.”
“What the bloodyhellare you doing here?” Not his near-whispered drawing-room voice, but the rasp of a savage, one who’d use that lethal knife on any and all comers.
