He would do this. He would sit his arse down and read this goddamned book and he would not think about any of the things he wasn’t doing, because the man in that coffin wasn’t doing them, either.
He sat. Opened the book cover. Fauna of the Tidal Flats of Devon.
Perfect.
He leafed through the pages, found a plate illustrating a clam digging through mud. And damnation if the clam’s extended foot didn’t look exactly like a man’s—
“Excuse me, Your Grace. I thought I should see if you require anything for your comfort.”
Miles’s voice cut into his thoughts and nearly startled him. She stood there looking...younger than he might have liked. His comfort? Oh, indeed—but not at all in the manner she meant. “Thank you, Mr. Germain. I’m doing well enough at the moment. Are you settling in?”
“Yes.”
“And everything is to your satisfaction?”
“Not at all, Your Grace.”
Somehow that was no longer a surprise. He watched her wander into the library and wondered if she realized how much her face gave away as she stared at the vast shelves.
She had a hunger for these books that he could scarcely fathom.
Her lips were parted a little, and he studied them, only now realizing that he knew their curve and color by heart.
He returned his attention to the book. “There are some who find my estate quite comfortable, believe it or not,” he said, feeling unaccountably grouchy.
“No doubt they do.” From the corner of his eye, he saw her move closer. He shifted his eyes, watching her legs as she moved. “What are you reading?”
His gaze snapped back to the page. “A treatise about tidal flats.”
“Have you a particular interest in tidal flats?”
“Yes.” He’d never thought about tidal flats in his life. “I find them fascinating.”
“Indeed? I never would have guessed.” She didn’t sound pleased.
“I can hardly keep my eyes from the page.” He started to read aloud. “‘The lugworm is a creature that buries itself in the soft, wet sands,’” he began, then wished he hadn’t, because the concept of being buried in anything soft and wet was not helpful. He skimmed ahead. Ah, yes. “‘It feeds on detritus left behind by other creatures, such as the fecal matter of clams and other burrowing mollusks.’” He looked up at Miles and smiled. “Fascinating.”
That line appeared above her lip. “Such a marked change from your interests in Paris, which as I recall, were—”
“I am quite aware of what they were.” He looked up now, straight into her eyes—good God, he knew those by heart now, too, with their deep brown streaks set in rich walnut—and held her gaze on purpose, but she refused to look away. “As I’ve said, this house is my retreat from the world.” Starting yesterday, anyhow. “When I’m here, I indulge all of my quieter interests.”
“Such as reading.” She said it doubtfully, as if she wondered whether he could read at all.
“Among other things, yes.”
“What other things?”
Oh, for God’s sake. “Any number of things. Was there something you wanted, Mr. Germain?”
Because the longer she stood there, the more there was something he wanted, and he could not start down that road or there would be no end to the torment. He was alone in this blasted house, and the only women here now were the servants, whom he refused to turn to because he wasn’t running a brothel...
And her.
She smiled tightly. “Not at all, Your Grace. I shall leave you. Happy reading.”
Oh, indeed. He let his eyes follow her as she walked out—her legs, anyhow, encased in their breeches—and thought of something that would make him incredibly happy, and it had nothing to do with reading.
CHAPTER SIX
“READING.” HARRIS SCOWLED, then narrowed one eye. “Well, if it’s reading he wants, then I know just the thing.”
Ten minutes later, Millie stood with Harris in an attic room packed with erotic art. “He ordered it all stored away up here,” Harris said, and led her through the statues and paintings to a set of trunks, which he opened to reveal a large collection of books. “If he wants to read, let him read these.”
And so as evening fell, and His Grace was safely upstairs resting, Millie snuck into the library. Tidal flats, indeed. If he was going to change his mind about Greece, he would not change it because of any feces-eating lugworm.
Millie finished slipping the seventeenth potential motivation onto the bookshelves in His Grace’s library—thank you, Harris and Sacks—and stepped back. In a library this size, he might not even find these books. Perhaps...
She glanced at the desk, where three books sat together in a stack. If it wouldn’t be too obvious, she would plant one there. But he had certainly set those books aside himself, and he would know immediately if someone had added a title—especially a title as eye catching as A Widow’s Adventures, being the Story of a False Virgin Unmasked.
She narrowed her eyes at a shelf near the floor by the window, where a book had fallen over. Hmm. She glanced over her shoulder, went to the bookcase, crouched down. Added A Widow’s Adventures on its side next to the other fallen book—A Beekeeper’s Guide—and stood up. Nudged the widow’s adventures a bit to the right with her toe.
There. That stood a good chance of catching his attention. Except...
She frowned at a space on the next shelf up. Would he ever notice a book lying so close to the floor?
She picked it up. Spent a moment second-guessing the new location—
“Looking for any book in particular, Mr. Germain?”
Devil take it.
The book felt coal-hot in her hands. She didn’t dare put it down, didn’t dare keep it—
“Not I, Your Grace,” she said accusingly, turning, holding the book out, “but I see that you have been doing a bit of reading—and exactly the sort you should not be doing. This is precisely the kind of thing I advised you against,” she preached, tapping the book’s cover. “And here I find it within easy reach of your desk. How do you expect to make any sort of quick recovery when you’re exciting the senses with—” she leafed quickly through the book and stopped at the first image she came to “—with this.”
Which turned out to be—dear God—an engraving of a man fondling the merry widow’s breasts.
The duke glanced at it, at her, and raised a brow. “How indeed.”
“I can’t think why you hired me if you didn’t plan to follow my recommendations.” Millie’s cheeks flamed hot. She pretended it was indignation.
“You needn’t be embarrassed in front of me,” he said. “I am all too sympathetic to a man’s weaknesses.” He reached for the book, took it from her hands. “Let us see what you’ve been entertaining yourself with, shall we, Mr. Germain?”
“Your Grace, I assure you—” That I was not entertaining myself.
“Mmm, yes,” he murmured, paging through it, glancing at the images, skimming. He looked up. Offered a little grin that she felt in her knees. “Do let us peruse it together, shall we? Perhaps with a bit of snuff and some brandy?”
Because that, apparently, was what men did?
“There’s nothing healthful about snuff,” she said. And I don’t wish to peruse that book with you. Except there could be no assurance that he would peruse it on his own if she made her excuses.
“Just the brandy, then. Ah—here’s a fun one.” He turned the book around and held it out so she could see the image.
She nearly choked, and he had yet to call for the brandy. “Exceedingly fun,” she said. If you enjoyed images of a man’s exposed organ taking aim at a woman’s exposed—
“Read to me while I pour, will you?” He handed her the book.
“Your Grace, you misunderstand the situation. I suppose it’s time for me to admit that I cannot stop you from such pursuits with any amount of healthful reasoning.” She put the book down—open, of course, to the plate he’d found, and
facing his direction—and gave him what she hoped was a look of resignation. “Perhaps there is something healthful about a man’s happiness, even if it comes from...”
He returned with two glasses and glanced down at the book. “From the wheelbarrow position?”
“Precisely.”
He held out a glass, and she took it, and her fingertips brushed his—warm, thick, solid.
A quiet tingle found its way down her throat to her belly, and she swallowed before even raising the glass to her lips.
“Let me assure you,” he said, “that I instructed every form of entertainment in the house to be locked away in the attic before our arrival. I have the utmost respect for your medical opinion, Mr. Germain.”
Indeed. Now that he’d brought her to England. “You will tell me if you start to feel any adverse effects from the deprivation,” she said.
His lips curved. “Consider yourself told. I have been feeling any number of...adverse effects since we left Paris.”
“Well, then. That certainly explains why you couldn’t resist the need to...” She gestured toward the book. “Indulge.”
Now he laughed, coming around the table and standing much too close to her—or he probably only seemed too close because the wicked light in his eyes was making her very, very uncomfortable. Her gaze fixed on his mouth, and suddenly she wondered what it might feel like to have a man’s lips—his lips—pressed against hers. What it might feel like to be kissed. By him.
She pushed the thought away as quickly as it came.
“Mr. Germain,” he said in a confidential tone, “surely, as a man, you understand all too well—and believe it that I confide in you only as my medical advisor and for no other reason—that my idea of indulging includes a great deal more than simply viewing a crude sketch of such a pleasurable activity.”
“Indeed. All too well.” His scent filled the air around her, aristocratic and sensual, and if only she were taller she could look him more directly in the eye instead of having to look up at him. “But perhaps, until the opportunity presents itself, you will have to satisfy yourself with the sketches.”
The corners of his mouth curved up, and his eyes brightened with a kind of pained amusement, and she watched him tip his head back and drain his glass.
“Perhaps I will, at that. Enjoy your time in the library, Mr. Germain. I shall leave the Widow’s Adventures here for you—perhaps it will aid you in the study of anatomy.”
* * *
HIS OWN ANATOMY was bursting to conduct a study of its own, and three hours later when he lay on his stomach during her now-routine late-afternoon check of his injuries, he decided that it was a damned good thing his wounds were on his back and not his front.
Her competent hands moved over him, arousing him in a way that suddenly presented a much bigger problem than it had seemed to in Paris.
Especially if she was going to start calling his attention to erotic books.
Perhaps—perhaps—a single book had been overlooked as the rest were being packed away, but for her to have found one straggler among an entire library full of tedious volumes...
It defied the laws of probability.
And it savored strongly of Harris’s and Sacks’s handiwork. He hadn’t missed the looks of alarm passing between his butler and valet when he’d ordered the company away in Paris. That was no surprise. But Miles...
She was trying to divert his interest toward sex, and there could be only one possible reason: she imagined it would cause him to decide to go to Greece.
And what in God’s name a young woman wanted in Greece, he didn’t know. Clearly she spoke Greek...a lover she left behind? No, she was too obviously a virgin. A lust for adventure?
He turned his head and found himself face-to-face with her crotch. If he peeled away those breeches, what would he find?
“Did I hurt you?”
Her voice nearly startled him. “Pardon?”
“You made a noise. I thought I hurt you.”
“Not at all.”
“Good.” She sounded relieved. She may have been playing a game with him in the library, but whenever she attended to him medically she turned deadly serious. “Your wounds appear to be healing nicely... I feared there might be a festering I couldn’t see.”
Oh, there was a festering all right, digging hard into the mattress beneath him.
Devil take it. He should have slammed that book shut the moment he realized what she’d held. This was never going to work if he couldn’t stop goading her.
This was what it had come to: fantasizing about a woman who was dressed as a man. And who wasn’t even the caliber he preferred.
But right now, female was the only caliber he preferred.
* * *
“HE NEEDS COMPANY, that’s what he needs,” Harris said as they sat around the card table in her dressing room late that evening.
Oh, certainly. A debauched house party. That was all the unwanted return to England needed to make it truly perfect, Millie thought.
“I’ve never seen him do without it in all my years of service,” Harris added, genuine concern in his eyes.
“Has he said anything about invitations?” Sacks asked.
“Not a word.” Harris took a drink. Grimaced. “And Mrs. Coombs said there’s been no orders given below stairs to prepare for visitors.”
Sacks looked at Millie. “He didn’t take an interest in the book at all?”
“No.” To his credit—his very small credit.
“Wouldn’t even take a quick peek?”
“Oh, certainly. He peeked. But it had no effect.” Not that Millie was completely sure how the effect might have manifested itself. Perhaps some sort of anguished crisis in which Winston declared that he was afflicted with a terrible desire and that something catastrophic would happen if he could not indulge himself with a woman immediately. “I told you, he wasn’t interested in ‘viewing pictures.’”
“I suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise,” Harris sighed. “He’s a man given to touching, not viewing. I only thought, with his being injured...”
“Well, he isn’t going to be viewing or touching, is he,” Sacks grumbled, shooting a look at Millie. “Not at this rate.”
A quick memory—Lord Winston’s fingers touching hers as he passed her the glass—ignited something physical inside her that she immediately tried to snuff out. “I can’t stop him from shutting a book,” she snapped. And it had certainly stayed open long enough to make the afternoon’s examination of his injuries very...uncomfortable.
She shoved that thought away and latched onto another idea. “Is there nobody here, no chambermaid whose favors he already...?”
Sacks was shaking his head. “He never touches the ’elp.”
Harris made a noise. “If I had an entire household at my disposal...”
“You do have an entire ’ousehold at your disposal,” Sacks grunted. “Don’t tell me Paris blinded you to Bethie’s charms.”
Harris grinned a little.
Sacks put his elbows on the table, rubbed the back of his neck. “He needs something he can’t shut. He needs that damned portrait of the princess returned to ’is bedchamber.”
“And company,” Harris insisted. “A good debauch. That’ll be the cure, seeing as how he’s missing all that he would have had in Athens.”
And she couldn’t believe she was saying this, but, “I agree,” she told them. “It was the company in Paris that did the most to lift his spirits.” It was the last thing she wanted, but if she’d managed there, she could manage here. If it worked, it would be worth it.
“Very well,” Harris said. “It’s settled. I’ll send out a dozen invitations first thing tomorrow morning.”
* * *
“I WANT YOU to prescribe me a regimen for healthful living,” Winston told her the next morning, startling her at the edge of the herb garden. She glanced up with a sprig of sage in her fingers and found him bathed in sunshine. It glowed richly over his black e
mbroidered jacket and breeches, glinted off the hilt of the smallsword peeking out at his hip. Except for the white sling cradling his arm, he looked impeccable. And exceedingly...aggravated.
“Down to the minute,” he went on. “Not a single second unaccounted for. I’m at a complete loss for how to proceed, but I have little doubt that you can help me.”
“Healthful living?” Millie straightened. Hopefully his definition included taking full advantage of company.
“Surely I don’t need to explain that to you,” he said irritably.
“Well, given Your Grace’s idea of healthful, I should think—”
“A medical idea of healthful.”
“Oh, I see,” she said slowly, twirling the sprig of sage between her fingers. “In that case, a warm climate is always excellent for one’s general health.” The look he gave her made her decide that line of reasoning would avail nothing.
“I want a healthful regimen that can be carried out here,” he said. “At my estate.” She could almost hear him adding, Not in Greece, Mr. Germain.
“Hmm.”
He narrowed his eyes. “In Paris, you were full of suggestions for how I might change my mode of living.” A dark brow lifted. “Has something changed, Mr. Germain?”
Indeed, and he knew damned well what it was. “Why do you want such a strict regimen?”
“I did not retain you to question why.”
“I ask strictly in the interest of Your Grace’s health. If I can understand what you hope to achieve, it will help me recommend the most suitable regimen.” And determine the best way to turn his interests back toward Greece.
He only looked at her.
“Very well,” she said. “It would probably benefit you to begin each day by walking. Nothing terribly vigorous, perhaps a thirty-minute turn about the gardens.”
“I need something distracting.”
“Distracting from what?”
“Something that will absorb my entire attention.”
“Such as lugworms?”
He glared at her.
She considered reminding him that he’d been very distracted by his company in Paris, but that was clearly not what he wanted to hear. So finally she said, “There must be some activity beside fornication that you’ve engaged in at some point in your life that you could now resume. How did you spend your time as a child?”
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