Page 26 of The Captive Duke
“You’re back.” She rose, planting a smile on her face despite the inanity of her words. “How was your visit?”
“These are ruined.” He pulled off his dress gloves with his teeth, and passed them to her. “His Highness sends you his condolences. Have we anything to eat?”
“He didn’t feed you?”
“He didn’t… He… I forget.” Mercia ran a hand through blond hair coming loose from its queue. Gilly did not offer to tidy him up lest he use his teeth on her.
“I’ve ordered a cold tray.”
He muttered something as he wandered to the bed of daisies pushing up along the back wall.
“I beg your pardon?” Gilly raised her voice to carry over the clopping hooves in the alley beyond the wall.
“I said, you need not join me, Countess. I can take the tray inside.”
Despite his snappishness, the duke should not be alone. “I want to hear of your call upon the Regent.”
He wandered a few more steps, plucked a daisy, and began pulling off its petals, one by one. “You do not want to hear about my call on the Regent, which was perfectly prosaic, boring, in fact.”
“Was it boring for four or five hours?”
“I beg your pardon?” He lifted his gaze from the half-dismembered daisy, and Gilly saw the depths of an arctic winter.
“You were gone for nearly seven hours, Mercia. Prinny observes the courtesies, but by bestowing a few words here, a few minutes there. You missed tea.”
“I missed tea?” Those blond eyebrows rose, and Gilly steeled herself for a blistering set down. “So I did. Perhaps that’s why I’ll have something to eat now.”
He hadn’t said he was hungry, putting Gilly in mind of all the times she’d been too upset to eat. She was saved from concocting some reply when the footman arrived bearing a large tray.
“I’ll set it out,” Gilly said, offering the footman a smile. “My thanks.”
He bowed, shot a puzzled look at the duke, and withdrew. Mercia’s household endured a great deal of puzzlement of late.
“Come sit, Your Grace, unless you’d like to perambulate while you dine?”
He tossed away the denuded daisy and stomped over to the table.
“Strawberry?” Gilly held up a large red berry, wanting to stuff it in his unsmiling mouth. She’d worried about him, and here he was, no explanation, no apologies—nothing.
Mercia took the strawberry from her fingers with his teeth, and the air between them grew less tense.
“Please do sit, Mercia. If you loom over me, you’ll spoil my digestion.”
“Heaven forfend.” He took a seat, despite his sarcastic tone.
“You are a duke,” Gilly said, putting a half-dozen fat strawberries on a plate. “This petulance does not become you, despite what you may have heard about the privileges of rank. Shall I make you a sandwich?”
He eyed the strawberries. “Some buttered bread and cheese.”
Gilly met his glacial gaze, and folded her arms across her chest. “You forgot to say please. You are being perverse, perhaps because your afternoon left you in the mood to brawl with somebody. If you must indulge a violent urge like a territorial beast of the jungle, take yourself off to Jackson’s boxing salon, then. I am a lady. I do not brawl.”
Though God knew, the very thought of plowing her fist into Greendale’s soft belly had provided her a greatdeal of satisfaction. Restraining the urge had provided more satisfaction yet.
She passed the duke a roll, sliced in half and liberally buttered, a thick piece of cheddar tucked between the halves. She wanted to stuff it down his throat.
Also to cry, though she’d given that up years ago.
To think she’d worried over this…this…
