Her Duke of Secrets

by Christi Caldwell

  “Even if I deserve it?”

  His question was so threadbare that, for a moment, Elsie believed she’d imagined it. And then the enormity sank in. He was punishing himself. She’d taken him as an unfeeling bastard. A man who’d left Elsie and her father to their fates and disregarded all the work they’d done for the Crown. This new side of him—a man conflicted, tormented—added a level of humanity to him she’d convinced herself he was incapable of.

  Elsie sat and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I do not know all of the past that you keep so carefully concealed, William. I do not know the guilt you carry or the memories that haunt you.” But I want to. For reasons that terrified the everlasting wits out of her. “But the fact that you are riddled with regret means you are not the beast you”—or I—“make yourself out to be.”

  All the muscles in his arms jumped. That tautness caused a rippling in the black wool fabric. He passed his penetrating gaze over her face. “What is it about you, Elsie, that makes me want to do whatever you ask?”

  Her heart tripped. Foolishly. “You crave human connection, and I’m the only one who has not allowed you to push me away,” she said, for his benefit as much as for hers.

  “Very well. I’ll agree to your evaluation.”

  “Treatment,” she murmured. This was altogether different. At his capitulation, she should have been flooded with the greatest sense of victory. Instead, she had this unexplainable urge to cry at his lack of protestations to her earlier claim—he believed himself deserving of his pain.

  He stared expectantly at her, jerking her into movement.

  “Remove your jacket,” she said swiftly.

  Without hesitation, his hands went to the gleaming buttons of that expensive article, and he slid them free. He shrugged out of the jacket, and the casual movement sent all the muscles of his chest rippling.

  My God. Her mouth went dry. Focus. “I’ll take it,” she said, avoiding his eyes lest he see the wicked thoughts there that no lady ought to possess. She accepted the garment and then folded it until the fabric formed a makeshift pillow. Elsie placed it beside Bear. “If you would lay your head there?” she urged.

  Wordlessly, William lowered himself onto the blanket and closed his eyes.

  It was an act of absolute trust, when past patients had insisted that her father tend them and had fought him on her presence in their rooms. And yet, William, a duke with strict views of people’s placement and what was proper, ceded his care over to her.

  Shifting herself behind him, Elsie framed his cheeks between her hands. She closed her eyes and familiarized herself with the bones and muscles there.

  “What are you doing?” he asked curiously.

  “Shh,” she urged. Then, using her thumb and forefinger, she applied a light pressure from the start of his brow and worked outward. “Open your mouth, slowly.”

  He complied.

  There it was. The joint slid slightly, leaving his mouth uneven.

  Elsie leaned down, inspecting the old wound. “You broke it badly.”

  “Yes. I was unconscious for two months following… following the accident,” he finished, his voice ragged. “The only time I awakened was when the bone was reset.”

  Oh, my God. That would have been excruciating.

  “Shh, relax your muscles.” Elsie continued working her palms over him. She applied her fingertips to various points over his face. “It is called massage. Asclepiades believed that disease and death resulted when movement was obstructed or disrupted. You’ve just been disrupted.”

  A small groan left him.

  “Is it too much?”

  “It feels wonderful and miserable all at the same time.”

  Her lips twitched. “Now, don’t talk. Just feel.”

  They remained that way, with Elsie discovering every contour and groove of his aquiline-sharp features. A short while later, she dusted her fingertips along his cheeks and then reluctantly drew back and pushed herself to standing. “You would benefit from a straw diet, William. More liquid-based meals. Fruits that are ground up. Puddings.”

  He opened his eyes and stared up at her. “A straw diet?”

  “It’s a device made of wheatgrass that allows you to sip a drink and reduces the amount of movement required of your mouth when you eat.”

  William shoved himself up onto his elbows and worked his gaze over her face. “I don’t think I know anyone like you.”

  Her cheeks warming under that praise, she grabbed her bonnet and jammed it atop her head. “The sun will do you good, William. It will invigorate you and restore you in ways you believed you couldn’t be.” She glanced at Bear so comfortably curled up alongside a man who was just a stranger a short while ago. “I will leave you to your own company.” She hesitated, wanting him to ask her to stay. Craving his company.

  When no request was forthcoming, she gathered her things and left him and Bear staring after her.

  Chapter 17

  The night marked another sleepless night for William, not unlike so many others that had come before it.

  At the same time, it was so completely, so wholly different.

  After his recovery, William had stalked these same halls while the staff slept, allowing himself only that brief time to wander the corridors, a self-imposed prison he rightly deserved.

  With each time he’d wandered, he’d been dogged by guilt and misery—and—rage at all he’d lost. Now, as he walked, the usual darkness didn’t hold him in its grip, but there was an ease he’d never expected to again feel.

  Just as, in the past few days, he’d experienced life in ways long forgotten. He’d laughed again. Teased. Hungered for the company of another person, for reasons that had nothing to do with sex.

  William was many things: a stubborn bastard, a pompous nobleman, a heartless scoundrel. But he was not one who lied to himself.

  It was all because of Elsie.

  He felt… alive, when before he’d only been deadened inside, craving death and embracing the emptiness that his life had become. Because that was what he deserved. His mistakes had cost his wife her life, and as such, what right did he have to live… or know happiness?

  He’d allowed himself to believe that to be truth. He’d accepted it as fact. After all, having survived the same accident that had killed Adeline, did he not owe a penance to his late wife? Only, he’d betrayed her memory with every woman he’d bedded. Those unions had been mindless and as empty as he’d been. That had been the emotionless life he’d thought he wanted. Nay, it was the only existence he thought he’d be able to know—the life of a scoundrel.

  That was not the future he wanted, or needed. He wanted to get back to the gentleman he’d been—honorable, respectable, one whose life was worth living.

  Admitting one is human and flawed is perhaps the greatest mark of one’s strength, William.

  You crave human connection, and I’m the only one who has not allowed you to push me away.

  He’d let Elsie’s statement stand, for that had been easier than breathing the truth into existence… that this need to have her near, the ability to speak so easily, came not just because she was anyone, but rather, because she was… her.

  William stopped at the end of the hall, before the last portrait ever painted of his wife, just six months prior to the accident.

  It was an expert rendering of the late duchess captured in time. The faintest hint of a smile hovered at the edges of her lips, though as restrained as the young lady herself had been.

  She’d not freely laughed, and she’d certainly not teased or challenged him.

  Like Elsie…

  William braced his palm on the wall next to the gold frame and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed into the silence.

  He did not want to continue the unfaithful comparison of those two very different women. Not because of what it meant to Adeline… or his feelings for this mysterious woman who’d stolen into his home and cracked barriers he’d thought so perfectly erecte
d.

  The faintest of staccato clicks filled the corridor, and William forced himself to release his hold upon the wall and straighten.

  He turned toward the fast-approaching sound just as Bear trotted around the corner. The dog froze and then, with a small yelp, bounded over with an agility that did not match with all his graying and white fur.

  With an eager anticipation that he did not even try to deny to himself in this instance, William looked past the dog—to an empty hall.

  All the lightness went out of him.

  Well… not all of it.

  Bear nudged his large head against his side. “Forgive me, I’ve been rude,” William murmured and stroked that favorite spot just behind the shaggy dog’s ears. “You’re alone, I see.”

  Closing his brown eyes, Bear leaned into William’s touch, emitting little groaning whimpers.

  William sighed. If anyone within the Brethren should see him now. Chatting freely with a dog. Before now, he would have derided anyone for that nonsensicality. And yet, Bear, and the tale his mistress had told, marked William not so very different from the dog who’d kept him company these past days.

  Elsie’s lyrical voice whispered around his recent memory.

  They are not so very different from humans.

  “No, they aren’t,” he murmured to himself. Casting a last glance up at Adeline’s portrait, William tapped his leg in the manner Elsie had numerous times, propelling the dog into movement beside him. “What is it? Unable to sleep?”

  Bear panted happily as they walked, confirming nothing with that canine response.

  “Or did your mistress send you?” As she’d done before. An act that had previously infuriated him and now sent a peculiar warmth to his heart. They reached the end of the hall, and the loyal mutt stopped. “I’m to my chambers, Bear.”

  Elsie’s dog cocked his head, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, before ambling off—in the opposite direction.

  William stared after the graying mutt and, with a sigh, followed along after him. For reasons that had nothing to do with boredom.

  He knew ultimately where Bear was off to, and he was as drawn to her as the dog himself. An eagerness that he’d not known or felt or thought himself able to feel energized his steps as Bear led him through the townhouse to—

  William stopped at the narrower hall the dog had taken him to, the unlikeliest of places.

  Though not for a dog.

  He sighed.

  The kitchens.

  William pressed the door handle, letting Bear in. “I’ll feed you,” he said warningly, “but I’ll not join you in ea—” His words trailed abruptly off as he homed in on the small figure seated at the long, rectangular table.

  Elsie stared back with wide, startled eyes. And then sprang to her feet. “William,” she greeted without a hint of fatigue in her voice, despite the late-night hour.

  “Elsie,” he murmured, drawing the panel shut behind the three of them.

  She hovered, with the bench at her knees. “You were talking to Bear again,” she noted softly.

  William gave thanks for the dimmer lighting in the servants’ space that concealed the color burning his cheeks. Blushing, now. Was there no end to the changes this imp had inspired? “He makes for good company,” he conceded gruffly.

  “He does at that.” And yet, despite the darkness, he caught the faintest of grins that dimpled her cheeks. It rang clear in her voice.

  He should leave. At another time in his life, he’d never have visited the kitchens, and he’d certainly not have been one to steal time alone with a young woman in his employ. Only… William frowned. There was something so very wrong in seeing Elsie Allenby in that light. For she wasn’t simply a member of his household staff.

  Nonetheless, a gentlemanly sense of honor had been ingrained in him early on and remained an indelible part of him. “I should leave.”

  “It is late,” she conceded, reclaiming her seat and promptly resuming… whatever it was she was doing.

  His frown deepened. That was… it? She simply bowed her head and… and… went on to the task that had occupied her before his arrival? It was a foreign position for him to be in, a man accustomed to the world’s attention, though it had become a thing of annoyance, a fawning he’d resented. Only, he’d been proven a liar… by this woman, for he wanted her attention. Instead, she sifted through blades of… what appeared to be grass?

  For the first time, he took in the clutter spread out before her.

  Stalks of grass and greenery lay scattered around the table.

  She sighed. The soft exhalation hinting at the young woman’s frustration drew him back from his musings.

  That sigh—a siren’s song, for the pull it had over him—compelled him forward. “What are you doing?”

  “Evaluating the various types of grass growing in your gardens in search of one similar to wheatgrass.”

  “Oh.” That explanation answered everything… and nothing, all at the same time. William stopped directly across from her.

  Elsie looked up. “Sit,” she urged, and William found himself dragging out the bench and sliding onto the uncomfortable oak planks.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked curiously.

  She shrugged, organizing her stalks of grass and leaves into neat piles. “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know.” At one time, he’d known the exact second of every hour and the events to come after it. How very much his life had changed.

  Elsie paused in her task. “Nor do I,” she said with a smile in her voice.

  A smile that was infectious and drew his own lips up in a grin that no longer strained the muscles of his face.

  “Several hours or so,” she finally acknowledged.

  “You’ve been sitting here?” he pressed, his amusement fading as he took in that miserable seating.

  “Mm-hm.” Tapping her fingertip contemplatively against her lip, she lifted a stalk with her other hand. Turning it back and forth, she studied it before setting it aside.

  New benches. His staff deserved something far more comfortable for the work they did. And yet, I never noticed or appreciated how others live. Not outside my own social sphere. Shame slapped at his conscience—also not so very dead, after all.

  They sat in a companionable silence. She, unlike societal ladies given to filling any void with endless prattle about the weather and ton events, exuded complete calm in the face of quiet.

  Elsie drew a faded blade of grass close to her eyes and squinted, deeply entrenched in her task, endearing in her focus.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, besieged by a genuine interest in whatever occupied her attention.

  With another regretful sigh, she dropped that piece of greenery alongside the previously discarded one. “Here,” she said, gathering a small leather book near her elbow. Elsie passed it over, and he automatically captured the book. Turning it over in his hands, he searched for a title. The faintest gold-leaf lettering had long since faded and cracked so that a bare imprint remained.

  William opened the book no bigger than the size of his palm. “The Sumerians: A study in culture, character, history, and literature.” He flipped through the pages, wafting a slight breeze in the otherwise stagnant airflow. “In addition to medicine, you have an appreciation for history,” he murmured.

  “The book belonged to my father. He passed on to me an interest in certain histories,” she clarified.

  William scanned the book, heavily marked with notes in the margins and words and phrases underlined. And stopped. “The straw-drinking you mentioned earlier.”

  “Precisely.” Sifting through her piles of greenery, Elsie gathered up another stalk. “There is nothing definitive on who first invented it, but the earliest rendering found is from the Sumerians. Of course, the image rendered”—without asking permission, she arched over the table and slipped the book from his hands—“reveals what appears to be gold tubing.” With her voice animated and her eyes
glowing, she was beguiling.

  William fought to tear his gaze from her and attend those pages.

  “Here.” Elsie turned the cherished volume out for him to see. She touched her fingertip to the minute sketch of the item she spoke of. “But if you read on…” Fanning the pages, she stopped without so much as a glance on a slightly dog-eared page. “They were created for the commoners with wheatgrass.”

  “With wheatgrass,” he repeated on a murmur. With a dawning understanding, he took in her makeshift workstation with new eyes. “You’re making a straw,” he said softly.

  Had he ever been so awed by any person, man or woman, member of the Brethren, or even his own wife, the way he was by Elsie Allenby?

  She chewed at her lower lip. “I am trying. Without success.” Her shoulders immediately came back. “But I’ve only just started. I expect I can create something similar.”

  William roved his eyes over her heart-shaped face. “And I’d wager my left and right arms combined that you’ll accomplish something far greater.”

  Her lips went slightly slack. “Oh,” she whispered.

  By the glitter in her eyes, he might as well have climbed into the heavens and plucked down a handful of stars intended solely for her.

  Their gazes caught and held—for a minute, for a lifetime?—before Elsie whipped her head down, back to the work she’d undertaken.

  “Who are you, Elsie Allenby?” he murmured.

  She stiffened. “I already told you who I am.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, with a wave of his hand. “You’ve told me your name. You’ve indicated you live in the country, alone, with only your dog for company. Why?”

  “Why?” she asked slowly.

  “It is a waste of your abilities and talents.” The world should know of a woman as skilled and knowledgeable and courageous as she.

  “I’ve already told you,” she said, carefully placing a stalk of grass on the table.

  “What? That the villagers in your town will not allow you to care for them? That you were doubted and disdained by your father’s patients?” Fools, the lot of them.