Page 23 of The Captive Duke
She withdrew a pocket comb and gently started tidying up his hair. He’d done the best he could with his own brush and comb, unwilling to ask anybody’s assistance.
He hadn’t thought to ask hers, though she was a widow and a relation, and a woman who, for all her chatter, possessed prodigious common sense. She’d comprehended he needed his oranges peeled, and he hadn’t had to ask.
Nobody should have to look on the evidence of his captivity—he didn’t want to see it himself—and yet, Christian was gratified that when she did look, Lady Greendale calmly accepted what was before her eyes.
So he suffered her to arrange his hair, tying it back with a simple black ribbon. Her diminutive stature helped him endure her attentions, but so did her tendency to chatter.
Hisirritationat her tendency to chatter, rather.
“You do not appear to be looking forward to this great honor, Your Grace. The day is pleasant, fortunately. Perhaps Prinny will be kept overlong at his tennis matches, and then you’ll be spared the royal interview. Where are your gloves?”
He passed them to her, which merited him a frown.
“These are not riding gloves, sir.”
His dignity suffered more than a pinch, but common sense did not make the woman prescient.
“I can’t easily manage the change of gloves myself—I must use my teeth—and I don’t want to risk…”
She didn’t make him finish. “Dress gloves then. I daresay you’ve a pair or two. You were smart not to tart yourself up with too much gold, lest Prinny get ideas. You won’t glower at the poor Regent like that, though, will you?”
She tugged the glove onto his right hand, and he submitted to her assistance as if he were a boy still in dresses.
“What do you mean, giving Prinny ideas?” He knew the man, had been introduced on a handful of occasions as the scion of any noble house might be in early manhood. The Regent was genial when it suited him, shrewd, and not as spoiled as the press wanted to paint him.
“He solicits donations for his causes, the parks, that pavilion by the sea. Some think it scandalous, while we’ve been waging war over half the globe for his papa’s entire reign. Others consider him a visionary, but everybody knows to keep their coin out of his sight. Where are your sleeve buttons, that I might do up your cuffs?”
“Here.” He extracted them from his pocket, and dropped them into her outstretched hand. He hadn’t figured out quite how he was to don them—a footman usually assisted—and Lady Greendale was still blathering away.
“These are lovely.” She slipped one through his cuff, then brought his hand close to her nose to examine his jewelry. “Are those sapphires?”
By virtue of her having appropriated his hand, hispalm was near enough to her cheek he could have stroked her face with his fingers. Had he taken this liberty and dared a small touch of her soft, fragrant person, she would not have rebuked him, but she might have pitied him, and that would have stolen all his pleasure from the moment.
“Those are star sapphires,” Christian said when she let his hand go. “On my personal signet ring, the lion’s eye in the family crest is the same stone.”
“What do you mean your personal signet ring?” She gathered up the right cuff, and slipped the fastener through, then patted his knuckles as if he’d been a good lad, not holding up the coach before the family departed for Sunday services.
“My father was sufficiently practical he kept various versions of the Severn signet ring at our principle houses. He said a groom shouldn’t have to ride halfway across England because His Grace forgot a piece of jewelry and had a letter to seal. I liked the idea of one ring, though,theSevern ducal ring, so I had one made on my eighteenth birthday. Papa no doubt rolled his celestial eyes at my vanity. The sleeve buttons and cravat pin were made to go with that ring.”
“And let me guess, the French took your ring from you?” She seized his left hand and attacked the cuff, his disfigurement of no apparent moment to her.
“My ring was the only thing I was wearing when I was captured.”
Her hands momentarily paused, holding his. Hergrip around his fingers was warm, firm, and lovely. Sensation in his left hand had become dodgy, but he felt her hold on him and made no move to withdraw.
“Then why did they torture you? Your ring gave away your identity.”
Why, indeed. Christian had been weeks in Girard’s dungeon before that question had occurred to him, emerging into his awareness in the middle of a dream about Chessie being led away by the grinning, laughing French.
“What ring, my lady? The ring disappeared, just as they claimed not to have seen my uniform drying in plain sight over the bushes. I was out of uniform, and therefore due none of the courtesies afforded an officer in captivity.”
“A nation of lawyers, the French…” She retied his cravat and repositioned the pin, the whole effect more fluffy and elegant than what Christian had managed. Had she patted his left knuckles too? Christian was too preoccupied with her casual use of the word torture. Even in his mind, he shied away from the blunt term.
Misadventure, ordeal, difficulties, captivity…nottorture.
“You’ll start a fashion with this beard.” She brushed her fingers over his cheek, a passing caress startling in its familiarity. Mothers and sisters might touch their menfolk thus, and wives certainly did, though duchesses did not.
Had not.
