Her Duke of Secrets

by Christi Caldwell

  She chewed at her lower lip. There was, however, one certainty: Whichever decision she came to, she had to commit to that course. One of the many gifts she’d learned under her father’s tutelage had been decisiveness. She either had to acknowledge that her resentments ran too deep to ever properly help William. Or, she had to separate those emotions from her logic and evaluate William as she had every patient before him.

  Bear butted her hand with the top of his head.

  “I can’t,” she whispered. Whether she proved a disappointment to her father’s memory and made a disgrace of the most important lessons he’d passed down, she could not do this.

  Bear nudged her again.

  Elsie closed her eyes. No.

  We help, Elsie … We…

  “Help,” she silently mouthed. When she opened her eyes, she drew in a breath. It was but three weeks. Where she was able, she would help William and then be free of him and the Brethren.

  “Very well.” She spoke in barely audible tones for Bear’s benefit. Smoothing her palms down her skirts, she nodded.

  With a spring in his usually now slow step, her dog sprinted into the breakfast room.

  She stared after him a moment, trying to puzzle through the inexplicable loyalty he showed at every turn for the man who owned this household. Pulling her shoulders back, she joined Bear… and William.

  He remained standing behind a chair placed at the right-hand head of the table. The enormous piece, with no fewer than forty seats, was longer than the length of her entire cottage. With silver candelabras with new wax candles, the table setting was fit for royalty and certainly not for a simple country doctor’s daughter.

  Elsie forced herself to continue. A servant came forward to pull out her chair. She held up a staying hand. “Thank you. I have it.” What manner of world was this in which even the simplest task was carried out for one? She glanced around at the small army of crimson-and-gold-clad servants stationed around the breakfast room. Since she was a small girl, Elsie had conducted work within their modest cottage, cared for the animals in their stables, and assisted her father with any of the medical procedures as he’d required it. This extravagant show was foreign to all she had ever known.

  “Do you intend to sit?” William’s voice echoed off the walls in a reminder of how very barren this palacelike space was.

  Elsie’s cheeks warmed at being caught gawking like a country miss. “I’d ask you to dismiss the servants.”

  Throughout the room, the footmen cast sideways looks at one another.

  William frowned. “And why would that be?” The lethal edge there sent shivers up and down her spine.

  For the first time, she looked at the servants. Really looked at them. Nearly as tall as, or the same height as the duke, the footmen also possessed muscles that strained the fabric of their uniforms. It was both their form and their gazes. Their eyes were life-hardened. Cold. Unforgiving. She hunched her shoulders protectively. These were no servants. It was an unnecessary reminder of the perilous world she’d allowed herself to be drawn back into. Elsie dropped her voice to a hushed whisper as she spoke. “The sole purpose in my being here is to assist with your injury. I trust that is information you would rather not be shared publicly with your… servants.” She’d have him know that she saw more than he credited her for and was not one to be underestimated.

  His black brows dipped a fraction. He’d of course detected the slight emphasis she’d placed on the latter word. Elsie brought her chin up.

  After an endless unraveling of time, William gave a slight nod.

  The dozen footmen stationed throughout the room instantly fell into a neat line and filed out with an efficiency that Nelson’s troops likely couldn’t muster.

  As soon as the door clicked shut behind the last servant, William reached past her.

  She stiffened, but he merely took the back of her chair and dragged the seat out. “I trust there is nothing else you require before you begin your… services?” he asked, coldly mocking.

  Elsie searched for a hint of the vulnerable man from last evening who’d sought comfort in Bear’s presence… and found none. She might as well have imagined the entire exchange. And this was far easier. Far safer. Seeing William as only a cold, empty-hearted stranger was vastly easier than looking upon him as one who appreciated an old dog like Bear.

  Elsie stared pointedly at his hands until he drew them back. She waited, continuing that silent battle. With stiff, reluctant movements, he capitulated first, reclaiming the chair he’d vacated.

  After he’d seated himself, Elsie slid into the folds of the thronelike, velvet-upholstered mahogany chair and brought herself closer to the table. “You’d call into question my abilities before you even truly allow me to assess you,” she noted, settling into the surprisingly comfortable carved piece. “And yet”—she dropped her arm atop the table and rested her chin in her hand—“you insist I remain. Why is that, William?”

  A muscle in his jaw jumped. “The same reason I requested Bear stay with me last evening. Because I am bored.”

  Not your dog. But rather, Bear. “I don’t believe that,” she said without missing a beat.

  William matched her body’s positioning, framing his jaw with the palm of his hand, stabilizing it as he spoke. “You speak with a good deal of confidence, Miss Allenby.”

  She was Miss Allenby when he sought boundaries. Elsie studied him contemplatively. William Helling was a leader within the Home Office and yet transparent in so many ways. “If you were bored,” she said softly, “you’d not be shut away indoors.”

  “I have plenty to keep me amused and enthralled within doors.” He curved his lips up into a wicked grin. “Or I did.”

  She pushed her chair back and stood. “Do you mean the whores?” His cheeks flushed red. “Or the drinking?”

  William yanked at his cravat and eyed the door for a moment. Was he thinking about escape? Looking for help from his servants? Either way, good. The miserable bugger.

  Elsie laid her palms on the edge of the table and leaned over him. “If you think to disconcert me with talk of your previously scandalous lifestyle, you are destined to be disappointed,” she informed him. He tilted his head back, and she braced for the fire in a furious gaze.

  Heat spilled from within the fathomless depths of his eyes. Volatile. Alive. And there was certainly not anger there, but some unidentified, but equally dangerous, sentiment.

  Elsie drew back quickly and rushed to the buffet. A vast array of breads had been neatly laid out: hot rolls, cold breads, honey cake, morning cake. The generous offering of quality wheat was so vastly different from the half-penny loaf those like her and her late father had eaten. Giving her head a shake, she regained her bearing and filled two plates. Next, she added a small porcelain dish of baked eggs to William’s selections. Plates balanced in her hands, she carried them over and set hers down first. She held the other out.

  William eyed it in puzzlement.

  She waved it under his nose. “You take it,” she said gently, without recrimination. Because he’d been born and bred to a position of power, it was hardly his fault that such mundane tasks should escape him.

  He swiftly caught the dish and lowered it before him.

  Elsie snapped her skirts and settled into her chair. Humming to herself, she made a show of gathering her serviette and laying it upon her lap.

  So it began.

  Chapter 11

  Humming, challenging him, Elsie Allenby was a master of her emotions.

  So much so, that any other person might have easily overlooked the exchange that had taken place moments ago in the corridor.

  William studied her bent head as she neatly took apart a cold roll and fed it to the dog seated at her side.

  She was haunted.

  He’d recognized the dark, vacant glint because it was one that faced him in any mirror he passed. His company had been minimal this past year, and his dialogue even more sparse. But he’d heard the single
utterance she’d sought to disguise. Help.

  And he, who’d cared for nothing beyond his own miseries and losses, found himself wanting to know about this woman’s.

  “Do you have a queue?” Elsie directed the query to the ugly mutt at her feet. At last, she picked her head up.

  “Do I have a…?”

  “It is generally a single piece of leather. A velvet ribbon, even?” She shoved back her chair, the legs scraping along the floor noisily, and sent her dog scrambling onto all fours. Elsie stood.

  “I know what a—”

  She reached behind her and caught the neat plait that hung down the middle of her back, and his annoyance, all rational words, a basic reply, fled his mind as he stared on, transfixed.

  Elsie brought the braid over shoulder and tugged free the sapphire velvet piece. “Here,” she murmured.

  “What are you…?” His words emerged slightly garbled to his own ears, for reasons that for once had nothing to with the pain of moving his jaw and everything to do with his body’s heightened awareness of this unconventional woman.

  Sticking the frayed ribbon between her teeth, she proceeded to gather the tangled mass of black hair about his face.

  William stiffened. He should order her to release him.

  He should send her to the devil with curt orders on how to get there for her insolence.

  Instead…

  His eyes, of their own volition, slid closed. How long had it been since anyone had shown him such tenderness? When was the last time he’d been touched in this way? Had he ever? As a child, there’d never been any shows of affection or warmth. His wife, Adeline, had blushed when he’d taken her hand, but never so much as touched him unsolicited.

  After her death, the exchanges William had allowed himself had been mindless meetings driven by that empty emotion of lust. Each one had been nothing more than a primitive joining of like beasts, satiating one another’s basest urges. And he’d wanted to be that animal, because his lovers did not know the searing agony of loss and failure and shame.

  Is that truly what you’ve wanted?

  He balked. Until Elsie had arrived, he would have answered an unequivocal yes and ordered one of his men to fetch any number of the beauties who’d warmed his bed this year to join him for the day. Lust was safer than… really anything. It was the most primal of the sentiments, where one simply felt sexual gratification that allowed a fleeting release from… everything.

  But with Elsie silently stroking his scalp, a different hungering gripped him. One that defied the physical acts of these past months and enshrined warmth and… a host of other sentiments life hadn’t given him the experience to identify or name.

  While his mind was in tumult, Elsie continued her work. She wound her fingers through the tangle of strands. She drew them delicately between her fingers, like a comb being expertly applied. His scalp tingled under her ministrations. What magic did she possess that she made him remember how life once was and yearn for that existence and not the one he’d laid out for himself?

  After working some order into the too-long strands, Elsie drew them back and then, with that aging ribbon that had seen better days, tied them at his nape.

  Elsie stepped back and assessed her work. “There,” she said, and with a pleased nod, she sat once more, picked up her bread, and popped a bite into her mouth.

  That mundanity hit him like a fist to the solar plexus.

  His life… had become, at best, a farce.

  This slip of a woman had left him sitting here, exposed. Hair that had once been a curtain left his bearded cheeks visible to her intense gaze. You can always send her away… keep her out, just as you’ve kept out the members of your family. Guilt cut through him, an all-too-familiar sentiment. Guilt and something else, something that felt very much like melancholy at the prospect of her leaving. “I do not see how matters of my personal hygiene are important to you, madam,” he said gruffly.

  She set her roll down and dusted her palms together. “I cannot fully assess the state of your jaw if you go about hiding your face from me.”

  “I’m not hiding myself from you,” he gritted out, and agony shot down his jawline. Gasping, William dropped his fork and caught his chin in a hand, cradling it, stabilizing it. To no avail.

  Through the pain, he registered Bear’s nervous whine.

  Muscles he’d never known he possessed in his face throbbed, and if he were a weaker man, he’d weep from it. He squeezed his eyes shut. Pinpricks of light danced behind his eyes, and he forced them open…

  To find Elsie’s intense gaze trained on his, eyes that could look into a man’s soul and steal the secrets he desperately sought to cling to. “You are hiding from someone,” she said somberly. “Or…” She leaned forward in her chair, closer to him. “Is it something within yourself?”

  “How do you…?” William recoiled, halting that damning admission.

  There was no triumph in her gaze, which made her discovery all the more intimate, and terrifying for it. Her openness also, for the first time since Adeline’s passing, brought the truth freely from his lips. “My wife was killed.”

  Her lips parted slightly, but she did not seek to follow his statement with empty apologies.

  “My enemies are great, and she paid the price. A carriage accident that was no accident at all.” His lips twisted in a wry grimace. “And I was the fortunate one to survive.”

  “But you are… fortunate. And you are squandering that gift of life.”

  “What rot,” he spat. “This,” he hissed, slashing his hand in the air, “is some kind of gift?” He shoved back his chair with such alacrity that the seat toppled over behind him. “Who the hell do you think you are?” he rasped. “I did not invite you into my household to pry into my past.” You freely offered the details and now you’d rail at her. William thrust aside logic and fed his frustration.

  Pushing her plate aside, Elsie rested her palms primly before her on the table. “Your past is part of your present pain, William.”

  My God, she was fearless. A slender slip of a woman, and yet, Elsie Allenby was unmatched in courage and strength. And more terrifying, she was dangerously accurate with every supposition she leveled. “You think you are so clever, Elsie.”

  “I never presumed to be, nor do I seek to impress anyone in any way,” she said calmly. “I’ve confidence enough in who I am and my abilities.” That pronouncement couldn’t have been more accurately placed and vicious than if she’d slipped the dagger from his boot and shoved it into his belly.

  She was, in short, everything he’d once been… and never would be again. William towered over her, willing her to look at him—and unsettled when she did. “I didn’t refer to your talents, but rather, your ploys.”

  Her cheeks colored. “My p-ploys?” For all her remarkable strengths, she was still rot at subterfuge.

  Her unevenness restored him. William walked a path about her seat, circling her in the predatory manner he’d perfected under his father’s tutelage. “Come,” he urged on a silken purr. “Let us cease the games.”

  “I don’t know what games you speak of,” she said in a threadbare whisper. “I did not come here to play games. I was forced to come, and you required that I stay.”

  Fair point. It was an admission he’d not concede.

  “Your display, Elsie? Taking meals together so you might… assess me?”

  The long column of her throat moved. Her skin paled. And the evidence of her nervousness should have been a victory. Except… William slowed his steps so that he stood behind her chair. Her unease did not make him feel any better. Rather, it made him feel like a damned bully, and he hated himself all the more for that weakness. “Hmm?” he prodded when she still said nothing.

  “It is t-true.” The warble there spoke of a partial lie buried within her words.

  William perched his hip on the edge of the table, letting the moments pass, at ease in the silence until she finally, reluctantly lifted her gaze to his.
“Is it?” He caught the strands of her braid that had fallen loose since she’d freed them of the ribbon.

  She flinched and shot a hand out to try to slap his fingers.

  William caught it, anticipating the move. Holding her gaze, he gently lowered her hand back to the table, freeing her, but also reminding her of who was in command of this exchange. “One’s past is inextricably linked to one’s present.” He repeated the words she’d recently spoken. “Every word to leave your lips, every statement you utter, why…” He dipped his head lower, placing his lips alongside her ear, so close that he detected her audible inhalation. “Every uneven breath you take speaks of your feelings… and your intentions.” William shifted his mouth closer, filling his lungs with the citrusy scent that clung to her skin. It was intoxicating. She was more potent than the spirits or the laudanum they’d plied him with. And he resisted that pull. “So do not pretend all of this,” he whispered, his lips brushing against the shell of her ear, “was driven by a need to evaluate my jaw movement.” His pulse throbbed loud in his ears, making a mockery of the illusion of control when his body was so attuned to Elsie’s every movement. “You intended to pass our meetings off as medical in nature, when really you sought answers to questions you have.” Sneering, William straightened. “About my past.” Their gazes locked. “Ask them, but do not play games with me, madam. For you… will never win.”

  Another would have been cowed by the fury he let spill freely from his eyes. “Would you answer them?” she asked quietly. This woman proved the contrary one in every regard.

  “You don’t deserve answers.”

  “I don’t,” she agreed, pushing her chair back and getting to her feet. “But you deserve to share whatever keeps you imprisoned, because until you do, William, you will not be free.”

  He caught her hard about the waist, ringing a gasp from her lips.

  Through the fabric of her gown, his fingers curled reflexively into the generous curve of her hip. “I have no desire to be free,” he whispered, dipping his head so he might better hold her stare. “I have no desire to…”