Perhaps that was all she needed right now. If the duke would hold still, then she could rub up against—
Jacinda stopped instantly, appalled by her own thoughts. What had come over her? She honestly had no idea.
Gathering a semblance of composure, she tore her gaze away from his near-smirking mouth. “What of your aunt’s stipulations?”
“If you procure a bride quiet enough, then my aunt may never know a whit about her character to find unappealing. And I need never reveal your actions today.”
Was he blackmailing her, then? Find him a bride, no matter how incompatible they might be, in order to save the family business?
There had to be another way. She refused to pair a person with the wrong sort and force them into a life of misery and heartache. Before she agreed to forge any match between the duke and his potential bride, she would have to know more about him. “If you would only answer a few more questions, then I’m certain we could—”
“Enough, Miss Bourne,” he snapped, every ounce of humor dissolving.
In the next moment, he angled toward her to grip the doorknob, creating a blockade around her. When she looked up, he hesitated before moving, his gaze dipping to her mouth once more. His early-autumn eyes darkened, the green eclipsed by pupils that expanded like spills of ink, leaving only a penumbra of russet brown. His scent filled her nostrils. She didn’t intend to inhale the warm cedar essence so deeply, but his intrusion into her breathable space made it impossible not to. And now she feared she would never be rid of it.
Then suddenly, he pushed open the door and took a step back in a clear invitation for her to leave. “I have stated all that is essential. If you wish to keep my coin in your uncle’s account, then I suggest you pry no further into my affairs.”
This was likely one of the instances where she ought to let sleeping dogs lie. Yet, something in her nature demanded to have the answers to the mystery he posed. And his attempt at blackmail only heightened her suspicions.
She truly wished he would have cooperated. That way, she wouldn’t have to resort to drastic measures. But now there was only one way to find out all she needed to know.
Jacinda inclined her head. “Very well, sir. I shall see that you have a list of names to consider by week’s end.”
He frowned. “Why not by the end of the day?”
“I’m afraid I will be leaving town shortly on an urgent matter,” she said without elaborating. Then, because her ruse was over, she left the study and walked to the foyer instead of toward the servant’s entrance. She could feel his watchful eyes following her all the way to the wide oaken door at the front of the town house. And with a glance over her shoulder, she confirmed it. “Good day, Your Grace.”
He said nothing more, but merely glowered at her as she plucked the cap from her head and then disappeared into the chilly morning air.
Chapter 3
“Matrimony, as the origin of change, was always disagreeable . . .”
Jane Austen, Emma
Crispin stared down at the polished surface of his desk and tried to regain a sense of composure.
Drawing in a deep breath, he focused on the quadrants. Top right—inkstand. Bottom right—bronze calling card case. Bottom left—stack of ledgers. Top left—he exhaled slowly—an errant feather duster in the place where he would have his tea tray.
It didn’t matter that it was there, he told himself. A servant would tidy up in no time at all, removing every trace of Miss Jacinda Bourne. Then he could forget that she’d been here, standing in this exact spot, and ignore that she’d left a sweet, utterly feminine fragrance lingering in the air. And he also told himself that the only reason his pulse was ticking like a pocket watch wound too tightly was because he’d caught her trespassing. Surely that circumstance allowed a man the right to an erratic heartbeat.
Yet when he’d first entered the room and saw her, those robin’s-egg blue eyes widening, her pink lips parting on a soundless gasp, his first impulse hadn’t been to call the guard. Instead, he’d had the urge to cross the room, take her by the shoulders, haul her up to her toes and . . . and . . .
He shook his head, raking a hand through his hair. No. He absolutely had not had the impulse to kiss her. It had only been a wayward thought, a momentary lapse in judgment.
In these past four years, he’d learned to control all of his base, undisciplined hungers. He certainly wasn’t the least bit tempted by a young woman with criminal tendencies, one who’d disguised herself as a servant in order to rifle through his things.
The only thing that had saved her from a more severe punishment was that he knew she couldn’t have been in the room for any length of time. It was still just past dawn, and she’d had no candle to light her way. So she couldn’t have found anything incriminating.
Besides, he was far too careful. He had to be.
Just then, the narrow servant’s door on the opposite wall opened and the cinder maid slipped into the room. Used to finding him here at this early hour, she did not startle but briefly curtsied, her pail and broom rattling with the motion, before she proceeded to make quick work of sweeping out the ash from the hearth and lighting a fire.
Crispin sat at his desk, positioning his chair directly in the center. Unconsciously, he adjusted the angle of his calling card case and then reached forward to uncap the inkwell. He decided to forget about Miss Bourne’s visit and focus on more important matters . . . like anything other than Miss Bourne.
Yet, as he scrutinized his accounting ledger, subtracting from an already paltry, abysmal figure, her voice entered his mind. Yes, but you conveniently did not reveal your requirement for one with a large dowry.
An immense dowry was closer to the truth. Though, frankly, he was still stunned that the question had arisen at all. The need to state the obvious had never occurred to him. He was a duke. Of course he would marry to increase his wealth and landholdings. Had there ever been a duke who had not?
And with an heiress, he presumed, there would be other benefits as well. A woman reared in the lap of luxury would possess an endless desire for travel, ample friends to keep her company and, most importantly, absolutely no desire to live with him at Rydstrom Hall.
If his bride-to-be turned into someone who wanted to spend every waking moment with him, then once he explained about his crumbling estate, the matter should sort itself out. At least, that was his hope.
He would prefer it if he didn’t have to marry at all and could keep his life just the way he had arranged it. Unfortunately, because of the ever-deteriorating walls of his home and his lack of any constant, reliable income, he—like every duke in his family before him—had to marry for money in order to keep it standing.
“Your Grace,” the maid said, her voice cutting through his thoughts. “I found this on the floor.”
He paused in checking over his figures in the ledger and looked up. The instant he saw the letter in her hand, a chill of icy dread sprinted through him.
“Thank you.” He reached for it with a surprisingly steady hand, pretending to be unaffected. The maid bobbed once more and quietly left the room.
As soon as the door closed, he leapt to his feet and began to pace the room, poring over the contents of the letter, all the while wondering if that meddlesome intruder had read it.
But of course she had.
Only now did he remember that he hadn’t burned it the way he typically did with the other correspondences from his housekeeper, Mrs. Hemple. Instead, he’d hastily tucked it inside a ledger yesterday when Aunt Hortense had entered this room. He hadn’t wanted her to read it either. And he’d left it in the ledger. Of that, he was certain.
There was no way it could have fallen to the floor on its own.
Too late, Crispin crumpled the missive in his fist, the remnants of the wax seal pattering down to the hardwood floor at his feet. Then he tossed it into the flames. The curling paper glowed bright orange at the edges for an instant, then turned to mat black before fi
nally disintegrating into ash.
Gone.
He only wished it was that simple, wished that his efforts to protect Sybil were as easily remedied. Yet he worried that Miss Bourne’s doggedness would prove all his efforts futile.
The woman was worse than a hunting hound, attempting to sniff out every secret he held. The thought made his head ring. He pressed his fingertips to his temples—something he’d been doing frequently since he met Miss Bourne, three days ago.
Usually he stayed away from curious people who asked too many questions. Circumstance, however, had forced him into her company.
When he’d first gone to the Bourne Matrimonial Agency, he’d expected to speak solely with the proprietor, Lord Eggleston. The viscount was an amiable fellow, but one who valued charm above intellect. Still, Crispin had felt a sense of reassurance dealing with him, knowing that he would never question why a duke would need to hire an agency to find him a bride.
Regrettably, at the time, Eggleston had claimed to have another appointment and directed Crispin to a small parlor. And that was where he’d first encountered Miss Jacinda Bourne.
He’d known it was a mistake in an instant. Even before they were introduced, a sense of warning clambered through him, settling into a tense knot at the base of his skull.
Unlike her uncle, Miss Bourne did not smile at him excessively in an effort to put him at ease or welcome him. Instead, she’d narrowed her eyes, studying him from the crown of his head to the soles of his well-worn Hessians with the shrewdness of a geologist identifying the layers of rock cut away from a cliff side. Without a word, she’d scratched a few notes onto a slip of paper, which she’d somehow found amidst the plethora of clutter on the small desk.
Then, the moment Eggleston had left the room, her questions began.
“Why has Your Grace engaged the services of the Bourne Matrimonial Agency?”
Bristling, Crispin hadn’t cared for the impertinence in her honeyed tone. “I should think the answer obvious.”
She’d written another hasty note, a lock of auburn hair falling carelessly over the left side of her forehead, giving her the same disheveled appearance as her desk. As one who preferred order, he’d itched to tuck that lock back in place, but he’d forced himself to look away instead.
From that point, her questions had only become more intrusive. “Are you seeking a love match, or is this visit a means to an end?”
“Surely this is not the method in which you conduct business.” He’d clenched his teeth, his gaze darting back to her. That lock had taunted him, the burnished dark red appearing almost hot to the touch, as if it were leaving a mark on her forehead. He hadn’t understood why she didn’t brush it back. The pull to cross the room and do it for her had grown even stronger, the compulsion making his fingertips tingle.
When she’d leaned forward to dip her pen into the inkwell, a pleat of lavender muslin brushed against a haphazard stack of papers. The top slip had teetered on the edge of her desk. It hung there, suspended, the corner drooping from the weight of gravity pulling it downward. Its hold on the desk had been tenuous at best, much like his patience. And when she’d scribbled on that page again, murmuring something under her breath about uncooperative clients, the paper slid to the floor, drifting on a current of air to land at his feet.
Irritated, he’d swiped the page off the floor and laid it on the small rosewood table nearest him. It was the only surface in the room that was bare and therefore out of place in this chaotic excuse for an office. “Just what could you possibly be writing?”
“I am getting a sense of your character. Now, if you please . . .”
With every one of his clipped evasions, she’d kept digging further, trying different versions of the same questions, and apparently taking him for a half-wit who was blind to her manipulations.
His tolerance exhausted, and a near obsession building because of that errant lock, he’d issued a somewhat forceful request to have a list supplied to him within the week. Then, before he’d turned to leave, Miss Bourne offered her acquiescence, but with a decidedly mischievous curl to the corners of her plump mouth.
He’d seen that same look this morning.
That smirk, along with the challenging glint in her eyes and another stray, fiery lock over her brow, had made him half wild with the need to have her gone from him. He couldn’t account for it.
In truth, that had been the only reason he’d let her leave his study at all. With her, his sole aim was to be rid of her, and the sooner the better.
If he’d been thinking clearly, he would have caught the hint of suspicion in her probing question. “The only family we have listed for you is your aunt, and my uncle was wondering if you had anyone else?”
A chill slithered down his spine as he realized what a mistake he’d made. She had read the letter, for certain. He never should have let her leave without setting matters aright by making up a lie to appease her rapacious curiosity.
Now there was no telling what she might do to find the answer. And he needed to stop her before it was too late.
Chapter 4
“The real evils indeed of Emma’s situation were the power of having rather too much of her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself.”
Jane Austen, Emma
“You did what?”
Jacinda flinched at the harsh volume of Ainsley’s voice, rising to the ceiling, where the delicate plaster moldings likely quivered to the point of cracking. And when her sister shot up from the rose-tufted chair behind the slender writing table as well, it seemed the castigations had only just begun.
Not wanting Uncle Ernest to overhear, Jacinda shut the white glazed door to the hallway. However, just as she closed one door at the back of the Pomona green room, another opened.
From the adjacent sitting room, used as another office, their youngest sister burst into the room in a flurry of buttercup skirts, looking first to Ainsley. “What has happened?”
In response, Ainsley pressed a hand to her forehead and carefully smoothed back the fine chestnut brown tendrils that slipped free an instant ago. “Ask your sister.”
“What did you do this time?” Briar did her very best to look intimidating by setting her hands on her slender hips and casting a blue-eyed glare toward Jacinda. At twenty years old, it wasn’t Briar’s fault that she was the least formidable of them, possessing Mother’s perfect doll-like face and pale, wispy blond hair.
In truth, they each had variations of Mother’s shape and delicate features. Though, Ainsley had a bit more of Father, with his coloring, sealskin brown eyes, and the tendency for her cheeks to turn ruddy whenever she drank wine that wasn’t watered down properly. Jacinda’s auburn hair and the turquoise blue of her eyes, she was told, had come from their grandmother. But Briar was Mother’s perfect copy, all the way down to her fanciful nature and gentle demeanor.
Because of that, Jacinda preferred to shield Briar from many of her less scrupulous activities. “Nothing at all, pet. Ainsley and I had a simple misunderstanding. Say, is that the aroma of tea and Mrs. Darden’s lemon-anise scones in the air? Dear me, but I’m famished. Would you mind terribly . . .”
“I’m not leaving the room this time,” Briar said, her meringue-soft voice cracking from the rare use of force. Jacinda might have been alarmed by this alteration in her sister if Briar wasn’t so adorable.
It gave Ainsley another reason to frown, however. For a woman of six and twenty, and too pretty to be a curmudgeonly spinster, she certainly didn’t hesitate to act like one. “Since the news affects all of us, I see no reason why Briar shouldn’t hear how her sister stole into the Duke of Rydstrom’s town house at dawn—”
“The door was open,” Jacinda added to no avail.
“—crept into his study, and rifled through his things.”
“Rifled is rather harsh, even for you. I merely happened upon a letter.”
Briar gasped, her hand covering her mouth as her eyes grew larger. �
��You read his correspondence?”
“Of course not.” Jacinda tsked, stepping past a pair of gilded armchairs on her way to the mantel where Mother’s music box waited. It was a puzzle box as well, and you had to know the trick of it to hear the music. “I merely skimmed it for pertinent information.”
“And then,” Ainsley continued, her chastising tone adding a touch of unneeded drama, “he caught her in the act.”
Briar sank onto a golden tasseled hassock, her lamenting sigh accompanied by the muffled crunch of horsehair stuffing beneath her. “We’ll be ruined.”
“Nonsense,” Jacinda said with a flit of her fingers, brushing a tiny speck of dust from the center of the glossy rosewood lid where an inlay of gold leaf formed a starburst. “It isn’t as bad as all that. He let me leave, after all.”
Ainsley crossed her arms over her sensible aubergine frock. “Only because he underestimated you. Had he an inkling of your espionage abilities, you would be wearing leg shackles this instant.”
Jacinda grinned, pleased to have her talents appreciated for once.
“Shouldn’t we be referring to the duke as His Grace instead of he?” Briar asked in a whisper as if she feared he was outside this very room, listening. “It seems almost sacrilegious to refer to him—or His Grace, rather—as if he were a mere man.”
“For it to be sacrilege, he would have to be a religious figure. Besides, he is most definitely a man, and a dishonest one at that.” Another one of those currents arced through Jacinda as if she were now a conduit that reacted at the sheer mention of him. And worse, she could still smell him, that warm cedar essence seemed to have permeated her clothes.
Just to be certain, she turned her head and lifted her shoulder for a sniff. And there it was—the scent of Crispin Montague, Duke of Rydstrom, Roman conqueror, Viking, woodsman, and avaricious bridegroom. She closed her eyes and inhaled one more time, but only for utter certainty.
How to Forget a Duke Page 3
