Not Quite A Duke (Dukes' Club Book 6) (3 page)

Slowly, he turned to face her and his rakish demeanor was gone, replaced by something stronger, something serious, something breathtaking.

“You must think me very cold,” he observed.

She didn’t answer.

Lord Charles cocked his head to the side. “Do you take delight in assuming the worst about your fellow man?”

“I see with open eyes my lord,” she replied honestly. “I do not judge you for your nature.”

He folded his strong arms over his chest. “My nature again, is it?”

“Do you argue that your nature is different than I imagine?”

“No. It would be the greatest hypocrisy to do so.”

She nodded.

“Still, I know what it is like to lose a loved one. . . In unfortunate circumstances.”

Was he truly inferring what she thought? That someone he loved had committed self-slaughter? Such a thing was scandalous and ruinous to admit. It was impossible to not wonder who it had been. Whoever it was had no doubt created that haunted look which now darkened his previously devilish face.

“I do not wish you to go,” he said gruffly. “You may stay as long as you wish.”

“And if that’s until I am old and wrinkled?” she challenged lightly.

“Then so be it.”

She placed the teapot down. “You don’t need the blunt, as they say?”

He leaned forward and shook his head. “That is an incredibly impertinent question.”

“So it is. The shock, you know.”

“Lady Patience, I don’t think even the king dancing a jig in Piccadilly could shock you.”

“Perhaps not.” She held out a delicately painted periwinkle blue teacup towards him.

He took it and, for the briefest moment, their fingertips touched.

She was no stranger to the touch of a man’s hand, though Lord Charles couldn’t know that, but this touch? This touch sent a jolt of delicious pleasure up her arm.

Patience bit down on the inside of her cheek to hide her inappropriate reaction.

It was such a simple thing. Their fingers caressing but goodness. . .

She swallowed and pulled her hand back as soon as he had a good grip on the saucer.

As if he, too, had been stunned by the brief touch, he held the cup in midair.

After a slightly too-long pause, he cleared his throat. “I do not need blunt, to answer your question. And given the misfortune that has befallen you, it pleases me to ensure your circumstances.”

“And yet, I cannot accept your help,” she said quickly. “Such a thing would be beyond the pale of decorum. Perhaps I could purchase the house from you?”

He sputtered on his tea.

She stood, ready to clap him on the back if necessary but he held up a hand.

“You see,” she began as she sat again, “I have quite a fortune of my own.”

Once again, he raked his dark gaze up and down her body.

“You are a woman of many secrets, I think.”

It was tempting to reply that he had no idea.

“I propose that you sell me the house,” she said as she raised her cup to her lips.

Placing his cup back in its saucer he replied, “I propose that I stay and that we determine the best course of action after I’ve learned more about you and the house."

She ground her teeth together. Oh no. She couldn’t have that. She was going up to London tomorrow for a brief research outing and. . . The arrogance of him to suppose he would know what was best for her.

Then again, he was a man.

“Of course you must stay,” she replied with forced good will. “It is your house, after all.”

“I am sorry to cause you such discomfort, but now that I know that my acquisition is far from straight forward, I feel I must take some interest in you.”

She forced herself to smile. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

He stared.

That stare drove straight through her. It felt as if he were searching the very depths of her soul to discover the source of her oddity.

So, she gave him a small salute with her cup and explained, “I so hate attention.”

“Of course.”

He didn’t believe her. Which was impossible. Everything about the Lady Patience she’d painstakingly created, from her scraped back hair, to tense mannerisms, suggested she loathed company.

It was not acceptable that he was seeing slight cracks in her mask. It had taken her years to establish her mask and fool those about her so she might live a very private and very secret life when away from Barring House.

There was only one thing for it.

She smiled coolly at him over the rim of her teacup as she prepared to take another sip.

She was going to have to get rid of Lord Charles. . . Without delay.

Chapter 3

Despite her reserved manner and sense of duty as a hostess, Lady Patience was trouble.

And she was absolutely hiding something.

The four-poster bed, if it could still be called a bed, was full of lumps. The bedding itself was so full of dust he’d have sneezed his head off if he wasn’t made of such a strong constitution. The woman clearly thought he was a delicate flower of a man who would be dissuaded by creature discomforts.

How could she know the years he’d spent abroad in shocking conditions as he’d assisted nobles to escape the reign of terror?

No one knew. Not even his brother, the duke.

His own talent as an actor made it clear to him that Lady Patience was a masker of extreme skill, but
what
was she hiding?

His sense of curiosity was roused and he wasn’t going anywhere until he discovered her secret.

It was perverse. He knew it.

She was a lady grieving the death of a disappointing relative.

Of that, he was familiar.

When she’d related her uncle’s drowning, he’d felt himself slipping back in time to the smell of gunpowder and his father.

No.

He couldn’t think of that. If he did, he’d have to drink himself into a stupor. And such a thing would adversely affect his mission to discover what the devil was really going on in the house he’d won in what had seemed to be a simple hand of cards.

He lifted the single candle he’d been given and used it to make better view of his dark room. . . Though cell might have been a more apt description.

He was familiar with this sort of room though she likely was unaware of that.

This was the sort of room one put an unwelcome guest in the hope they would hie hence with speed.

Well, he wasn’t hieing anywhere. London had grown depressing. All his friends were marrying. It was as if a disease had slipped through his company and men were falling left and right.

Yes. A spell away from them all in the presence of such a prickly woman would ensure his safety from the connubial cage.

The walls were molding.

Molding.

Devil take it but she clearly wished him gone.

He took the single, flickering candle over to the small mahogany desk before the window. There was a crack in the glass pane which let in the cold night air.

The room was damp.

Which was a shame because there was a stack of rather beautiful books on the desk and damp was notoriously bad for books.

He’d have to speak to her in the morning of such carelessness. Let the walls rot. Books had to be preserved.

He picked one up and eyed the title.

The Wicked Adventures and Journey of Calliope Baker.

It was a salacious and typical title of the day. . . It was a title he knew. He’d bought it but had yet to read it. It was the most popular book in London at present written by one mysterious P. Auden.

He’d heard it talked of in the coffee shops and the taverns he frequented. His sister was reading it as well. It was a work that straddled all walks of life.

Everyone was obsessed with Calliope and her flight from the notorious Lord Wakefield.

It was a bit of a surprise to find such a popular work in the home of the seemingly prudent Lady Patience.

She’d gone to bed. Early. Very early. Sending him up to his horrendous sleeping quarters after a very bad dinner.

The meat had been cold. The sauce had been dubious.

In fact, it was very possible they’d eaten horse. It had been impossible to tell.

The wine had been scant and tasted as if it had gone off.

Once again, Lady Patience was in for a long wait if she thought such tactics could send him packing.

He picked up the first leather bound volume in Calliope’s adventure and palmed it.

It was going to be a long night.

Perhaps he should stay in his room, but that would hardly aid him. If he went off in search of brandy and a better, hopefully warmer, nook to read, he’d have a good excuse for searching out clues to Lady Patience.

So, he headed out of his cold room into the ever so slightly warmer hall, his single candle in hand.

The house had to be nigh three hundred years old and it seemed that, for the most part, it had been kept up. . . Still, such places were disastrously difficult to keep warm.

Mayhap he would go in search of some servant to find something, anything, to keep him from shivering. He hadn’t traveled here with the intention of freezing to death. Spring or no, the old house felt largely like an ice cave.

It was completely understandable the wearing of furs and fear of drafts when one could turn a corner and see one’s breath. In a house like this, one could see one’s breath four feet from the fire, in all truth.

Still, in his experience, the English were a hearty lot who were accustomed to such things.

If he protested, he’d, no doubt, be solidifying his role as a
delicate flower
of a man to Lady P, but he was happy to do so if it gained him ground.

The single candle he bore before him barely cast a beam into the darkness but he made his way down the hall with a confident stride.

At the end, he found the beautiful, carved, wooden stair and headed downward.

If he was lucky, he’d find a fireplace with some fuel at hand. Unlike most nobles, he actually knew how to start a blaze.

But as he wandered into the grand foyer, he noticed a faint, glowing light coming from the central hall.

Charles blew out his own candle and quietly stepped along the floorboards which had a deuced inclination to creak.

But with a long ago developed skill, he made his way silently to the arched doorway and peered in.

At the far end, near the towering fireplace which was large enough to take a log that would burn for hours on end sat Lady Patience.

To his surprise, she wasn’t crouched over needlework or a bible. Oh no. She was scribbling.

Furiously.

She sat, not with perfect posture, but bent over the small desk, one arm resting on the wooden surface.

Her pen moved wildly and an intense energy engrossed her entire frame.

The perfectly austere chignon which she had boasted earlier was now loose, falling down. Tendrils of hair fell about her face, shadowing it.

Every few moments, she pushed idly at the stray locks, but each touch seemed to only make her hair wilder, more disarrayed as if whatever she was writing possessed her completely.

She dunked her quill in the ink well, gazed towards the dark window and muttered softly. Then with a huff of breath, she bent again, her pen scratching as she covered the page.

What the devil was she doing?

If it was a letter it was not the letter of a self-possessed young woman.

Was it a diary?

He knew many young ladies kept diaries, putting down their worries and secret longings onto parchment.

At face value, Lady Patience didn’t seem like a woman with secret longings. . . But she was a mystery, no question.

He cleared his throat.

She didn’t hear him.

Carefully, he strode into the room, wondering how far he could approach without her noticing.

He allowed his footsteps to grow heavier. Such tactics still didn’t shake her from her reverie.

The intensity of her form and the speed of her pen didn’t waver.

Her brow was furrowed in the most delightful way as she wrote.

Whatever could she be writing?

He knew he should make himself known with word, but he hadn’t exactly been secretive in his entrance and so, given her parsimonious assignation of his moldy room, he allowed himself the dubious action of peering over her shoulder and reading a few words of her pen.

Lord Althorpe shoved her back onto the voluptuous folds of the kingly bed, ripping her bodice with a bold hand. The fabric tore asunder with a vicious sound.

Melicent’s pale hands fluttered as she struggled to cover the pale swells of her bosom.

“Sir!” she cried. “Take not my virtue!”

Charles gaped. He couldn’t help himself. He wasn’t generally given to gaping but how could he not?

What the blazes was she writing?

A novel.

It had to be a novel.

He coughed loudly.

She jumped in her chair, sending jet ink splattering across the parchment.

Lady Patience grasped her pages, whirled around and spotted him.

Her hazel eyes were the color of amber in the firelight. Her eyes were glowing golden amber and her honeyed hair was wild now about her pale face.

He noticed she was not wearing her spectacles.

Her gown was opened at the throat, exposing the delicate flesh of her collarbones.

Oh, she was not pretty in her wildness. He knew in an instant that Lady Patience would never be pretty. No matter what she wore or how she dressed her hair. She wasn’t that sort of woman.

Lady Patience was beautiful.

Bloody hell, she was striking.

That was the kind of woman she was.

Her nose was a trifle too big, her mouth a trifle too wide, her forehead a smidgeon too broad. Point of fact, she was a little too everything and somehow it made her glorious. It elevated her above mortal women.

Without a touch of face paint or study to her hair or to her clothes. . . She was better than perfection.

She was a goddess.

And he found that instead of wishing to needle her, he wished to get down on his knees and worship her.

For truly, as the light of the fire cast her in a halo and she gazed on him with fiery fury, he found himself absolutely enthralled.