Page 39 of His Mad Duchess
Margaret stood so still she felt the tick of her own pulse in her teeth. She had not expected that the Duke of Ravenscourt would be undone by his own exhaustion, all the cold polish stripped away by sleep.
For a heartbeat more, she watched him. She did not let herself wonder what softness might lie behind that sharp mouth or whether he dreamed of battles long finished or battles yet to come.
She could have left him. Should have. Instead, her eyes found the shawl draped over the arm of the settee, half-forgotten. She caught it up gently in both hands, careful not to rustle the papers. The cloth was warm where it had rested by the fire.
He would wake chilled and cross if she left him like this. That was the excuse she chose as she eased closer, careful not to wake him. She draped the soft wool over his shoulders, smoothing it across the slope of his arm. Close enough to catch the faintest scent of ink and brandy and that spice she’d grown used to in the hallways he’d just left.
She did not linger. Her heart rattled like a startled bird as she stepped back. For a moment, her fingertips hovered near his hair, one soft lock that might have needed tucking aside. But she dropped her hand. He would not want that. She did not want that.
It was only kindness. A human kindness. She told herself so again as she eased the door shut behind her and stole back into the corridor.
Someone ought to see that he ate, she thought again, but perhaps tonight, sleep would do him better.
By the time she reached her room, she had already told herself three times that it meant nothing at all.
CHAPTER 12
“Your Grace, please! You’ll slip!”
The voice yanked Sebastian from sleep before he’d even registered the cold crick in his neck that protested the angle he’d found sleep in. The study was quiet, the air stale with the smell of dying embers and half-spilled ink. He blinked hard, dragging a hand over his jaw as he tried to gather the hours he’d lost.
His eyes caught on the shawl draped across his chest.
Margaret. He sat forward, the shawl slipping into his lap.
The faint trace of lavender and starch still clung to it. He pictured her, slipping in quietly as a cat, lying over him while he slept like a lout in his own chair. The thought sat warm in his chest for all of three seconds before a sharp, high voice cut through the stillness.
“Your Grace, please! You’ll slip!”
He was on his feet at once, the chair legs scraping back.
“Please come down!” another voice squeaked, closer to panic.
He left the shawl draped over the chair and crossed the hall in long strides, the calls growing clearer as he neared the open vestibule. Outside, morning light and the scent of damp earth met him.
Parsons stood at the threshold, glancing between the gravel drive and the patch of green just beyond the hedge.
Sebastian stepped past him, following the angle of the steward’s stare. For half a heartbeat, his mind refused to make sense of what he saw.
Margaret apparently had perched halfway up a stubborn old pear tree, skirts bunched inelegantly about her ankles, bonnet half-askew. Below her, two maids and a stable boy hovered, all wide eyes and anxious hands fluttering uselessly in the air.
“Please, Your Grace,” the girl begged up at her, “it’s not worth the risk; come down before you hurt yourself!”
Margaret did not so much as twitch at the plea. She was leaning out along a knotted branch, fingers outstretched, whispering coaxingly toward a streak of shadow in the leaves. A cat, black as sin, with its tail flicking disdain at the fuss below.
Sebastian’s heart gave a traitorous thump. She leaned further. A slip of bark, a flash of panic in the maids’ squeals, and Margaret’s foot skidded. Not far but enough to steal his breath clean from his throat.
He was moving before he knew it. “Hold there, Margaret—” His voice cracked sharply in the air.
She glanced down then, eyes bright, mouth curved in that startled half-smile that always made him feel five steps behind her. “Oh. Your Grace. It’s quite all right?—”
“It’s not,” he snapped, stepping to the trunk. “Stay still.”
One of the maids gaped. “Your Grace, surely?—”
But Sebastian was already in the branches, boots scraping bark, coat snagging as he found the lower limb. The stable boy swore under his breath as the Duke of Ravenscourt, a man who ought to have known better, began climbing like a reckless schoolboy chasing apples.
“Hand me the blasted animal,” he growled when he was close enough to reach her hem.
