Page 34 of The Captive Duke
Well, damn him. Damn him and his elegant, scarred hands and his beautiful, soft voice and his lovely eyes and his kindness toward the child. Damn him for all of it.
And especially for kissing her. Those gentle, nearly chaste kisses had been so…so… Gilly had lost sleep trying to find words for Mercia’s kisses. One word kept careening into her awareness, no matter how stoutly she batted it away. Mercia’s kisses had beencherishing, as ifGilly were the reason he lived, the reason he’d bested demons and nightmares to return to her side.
Which was balderdash. He’d meandered home from Carlton House through the park, and she was pathetic to make so much of a small late-night lapse between two tired adults.
He regarded her now with an expression so far from cherishing that Gilly’s food sat uneasily in her belly.
“We’ve only just arrived at Severn, Your Grace. Must we discuss plans and arrangements now?”
“We must.” He picked up one of the sections of orange and held it out to her. “Please.”
Please eat, or please reveal her hopes and fears, as manifest in the next year’s residential particulars? His blue eyes held an odd light, and Gilly abruptly wished she had the protection of her black silk shawl, for all the afternoon was pleasant. She used her fingers to take the orange from him and popped it into her mouth.
“The army enjoys a surfeit of discipline and structure, as if to counteract all the chaos and upheaval of its daily existence,” Mercia said. “I have not had a settled life, a life to my liking, for more than three years. I impose on your good nature that we might coordinate plans, my lady.”
She chewed her orange, trying not to blame him for wanting his household to himself.
“I have no set plans for the near term.” Marcus had sent her a note of condolence upon Greendale’s passing, and that note had not included assurances that she’dbe welcome in the dower house. Maybe he’d assumed assurances hadn’t been needed—she could occupy the dower house as a matter of right—but the Greendale dower house was little more than a ruin.
Across from her, the duke screwed up his thin-lipped, elegant mouth in a grimace of impatience.
“For the near term, you will stay here, my lady. We are agreed on that for the child’s sake. I’d like you to consider making your home with us permanently, though. You are in mourning, and I certainly intend to live quietly. You know this household, and I have no hostess, no lady to see to the maids and the housekeeper.”
He had no one to see tohim, as far as Gilly could tell, which apparently mattered to him not at all.
“You would take me on as a charitable relation?” Her question held caution and surprise, for his invitation was as tempting as it was unexpected.
He pushed back from the table and shot her an annoyed look.
“I am the relation deserving of charity, Lady Greendale. I will be up to my ears in estate matters, for Easterbrook made it clear the stewards and tenants were as reluctant as the bankers to do anything on his say-so as my successor. I have no time for the household matters, no time for the child, no time for the social nonsense that ought to go along with my title. I quite honestly need your help, and I am asking you to give it on a more or less permanent basis.”
For him that was a protracted and reassuringly loudspeech. The part of Gilly that had wanted only to be useful rejoiced to hear it, but some other part of her—that had been briefly cherished in a shadowed library—was disquieted.
“You’ll remarry,” she said, drawing on that sense of disquiet. He should remarry, and not because he needed an heir. He needed somebody to sit with him in the library when he could not sleep, needed somebody to see that he ate regularly. Needed somebody to find him the perfect valet.
Needed, and deserved, somebody to cherishhim.
“I might remarry eventually, particularly if Easterbrook doesn’t sell out. I don’t look forward to the prospect though, and intend to observe some mourning of my own. I learned of Helene’s passing only when I met up with Easterbrook outside Toulouse.”
This was news. “And Evan?”
“At the same time.”
He was so matter-of-fact…so heartbreakingly matter-of-fact. Gilly was especially glad she’d seen him on his knees, hugging Lucy to him so tightly.
“I will think on this, Your Grace. You are generous, and as a place to bide during first mourning, Severn has a great deal of appeal.” A place to be needed and busy, a place to heal from eight years of being Greendale’s countess.
“First mourning is only six months for some, your ladyship.” He held out the last orange section to her. “Give me a year. Give me and Lucy your full year of mourning.”
In that year, would he give her more kisses? She took the orange and set it on her plate.
“I will think on this,” she said again. “We will see what transpires with Lucy. You might well decide to send her to a convent, where her silence will be viewed as a spiritual achievement.”
“No, I will not.” He appropriated the orange section from her plate and munched it into oblivion. “I am disinclined to send her away for any reason. You have a scar, Countess.”
What on earth?
He took her hand in his and rubbed his thumb over the back of her knuckles. For all his hand had been mistreated, his grip was firm. Also warm. Perhaps even cherishing.
