She cleared her throat. “Is that all you wanted?”
His gaze fell to the book she held against her. He exhaled, regaining mastery of his errant thoughts. “Has my aunt got you working for her already?”
She seemed reluctant to answer. Perhaps she had guessed he was only bargaining for time. He had not employed the most devious strategy in coming to her room.
“This is my book,” she said, her fingers curling around the spine. “It’s about a monster made up of dead body parts. He goes on a killing rage because the doctor who created him refuses to make him a wife.”
“Another woman drawn to the dark and macabre,” he mused. “Primrose would probably enjoy such a story. You should read it to her. No. You shouldn’t. It might give her ideas.”
She pushed her hand against the door. “Your aunt appears to be a dear lady devoted to her family. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for making fun of her all the time.”
He sighed, duly caught out. “That’s exactly what she keeps telling me. Just remember-she isn’t at all as sweet as she appears.”
Harriet smiled. “I know who I have to keep my eye on, thank you.”
Chapter Eleven
No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success.
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
Lady Powlis did indeed put Harriet to work early the next morning, in the breakfast room, before the duke had a proper chance to sit down in private and enjoy his meal. It was quiet in the house, she thought. The girls at the academy would be bickering over who had gotten the last scone as they hurried to class. Harriet spent half her day intervening and demanding they apologize to one another.
The peace of this noble household was a true sign that she had moved up in the world. There were no offended feelings to soothe. No tears to mop up. Lady Powlis sat dictating an itinerary of all the functions that had been planned for the next fortnight.
It was so simple, so quiet-until Lady Powlis murmured, “And make a note to have the duke’s tailor come tomorrow afternoon for his fitting.”
Griffin looked up suspiciously from his paper. “Fitting for what?”
Lady Powlis shook her head in fond exasperation. “The wedding, Griff.” He frowned. “What wedding?” Harriet put down her pen.
“The wedding,” Lady Powlis said, in the quavery voice that Harriet would soon realize disguised a will of iron, “that we have been planning for almost a year. The wedding that all of Society is dying to attend. The wedding that will release me of my obligation to Glenmorgan’s future.”
He snorted. “There has to be an engagement first, doesn’t there?”
“The morning papers suggest you have taken that step,” his aunt said, with a meaningful glance at the table.
“Good for the morning papers,” he said.
Harriet rose hastily. “I’ll leave you both alone to sort this out. If you need-”
“Sit down at your desk, Harriet,” Lady Powlis snapped.
Harriet swallowed. “But I-”
“Sit down, girl. You’ll be of no use to anyone if the duke and I cannot speak frankly to each other when you are in the room.”
Griffin’s eyes danced wickedly. “She’s right. You had better stay in case I need a witness to testify that she forced me to marry against my will.”
“Don’t be such an idiot,” his aunt said. “You are going to turn Harriet against me, and I will never forgive you.”
“Why don’t you join my side, Miss Gardner?” he said, grinning shamelessly.
She shook her head. “I have no idea what the pair of you are arguing about, and I’m sure it isn’t any of my business.” Which didn’t mean she wasn’t intently curious about the matter. Nor did it stop her from asking, after a long hesitation, “Has the duke proposed to this lady or not?”
Griffin’s face darkened. “No. Never.”
His aunt sputtered in denial. “His brother’s factors pursued a match between them, and when Griffin inherited the dukedom, he inherited the promises and duties that go with it.”
“I haven’t even met her properly,” Griffin said, folding his paper in half. “It is entirely possible that she will hate me on sight.”
Harriet doubted that with all her heart. The duke might have a nasty reputation and he might make a forbidding first impression. But if any lady bothered to look past his portentous façade, she would find herself in the most pleasant sort of trouble, if not half in love.
She glanced up guiltily as she realized Lady Powlis was talking to her again.
“My nephew is behaving like a spoiled… rogue,” her ladyship said with a deep sigh. “I can’t understand what has come over him. Last night he made the biggest fuss in creation over a waltz-”
“Reel,” Harriet murmured. “A Scotch reel.”
“You made the fuss,” Griffin pointed out, propping his legs up on the chair at the opposite side of the table. “You embarrassed Miss Gardner to no end. You didn’t have to make a case of her in front of everyone just because Edlyn disappeared for a few moments. I could have found her by myself.”
“Did I embarrass you, Miss Gardner?” Lady Powlis asked with pursed lips.
“Nothing embarrasses me, ma’am.”
“Just wait,” Griffin said.
His aunt frowned at him. “Look at the way he’s sitting. That isn’t embarrassing?”
Harriet blew out a quiet sigh and sank back into her chair. This was fun. When would the fireworks begin? Fortunately, the heated interlude gave her a little extra time to finish her itinerary. Handwriting had never come easily to Harriet. She labored twice as long as anyone else in the academy at the task.
“Make up a list of eligible brides while you’re at it,” Lady Powlis instructed her with a grim smile. “If the duke does not think he and the lady chosen for him will suit, then let him choose elsewhere.”
Harriet shook her head. “Madam, I wouldn’t have any notion of where to begin. I am a mere-well, until yesterday, I was an instructress. I haven’t-”
“There must be one or two academy graduates who are still unwed,” Lady Powlis said. “She doesn’t have to be perfect.”
Griffin glanced at Harriet. “But it wouldn’t hurt.”
She swallowed a laugh and reached for a fresh piece of paper. She wrote down the name of the butcher’s daughter, who had a beefy hand when it came to dealing with unwanted customers. Then there was the Yorkshire graduate at the academy. Surely her parents wouldn’t complain if their girl landed a duke instead of an earl. The third-she blinked, appalled to realize she’d started to write the name of her beloved fiend’s inventor, Frankenstein. She crossed it out, immediately applying her pen to the paper to turn the F into a lumpy oval shape. The next thing she knew, the oval had a forked tail and cloven-soled boots.
Her breath froze as Griffin suddenly leapt up from his seat and leaned over her. “Auntie Primrose,” he said with a low laugh, “your new companion is drawing something impolite.”
Harriet gasped. She almost slapped the white-cuffed hand that reached down to confiscate her paper from the desk.
“Stop pestering the poor young woman,” his aunt said sternly. “I can’t remember when I have seen you behaving in such an off-putting fashion.”
“Make her show it to you,” he insisted. “She’s drawn something with ears.”
Harriet narrowed her gaze. “Those are petals, your grace. Forgive my lack of skill, but it was supposed to be a flower.”
“A primrose?” Lady Powlis asked with a flattered smile.
The duke examined the sketch with a critical eye. “Only if primroses are grown with barbed lines through the stems.”
“That would be one of the roots,” Harriet said tightly.
Lady Powlis glanced up. “What kind of flower is it, Harriet?”
“A demonic variety by the look,” Griffin answered, squinting one eye.
Harriet smiled, using her el
bow to delicately dislodge the manly hand that had settled on the arm of her chair. The hand came right back. “It’s a new breed from China,” she said, adding tuberous roots to the rectangular forehead. “They’re grown in hothouses all over England.”
Griffin blinked. “That looks like me when I get up in the morning.”
His aunt shook her head in despair. “This is why you aren’t married.”
“Not because insanity runs in the family?”
Lady Powlis gave Harriet a distressed look. “Do you understand now what I must live with? Go and fetch our cloaks, dear. If we have time, we will see about your new wardrobe. Perhaps we can find something prettier to entice Edlyn. She can’t stay in mourning forever.”
She rose. “Yes, madam.”
“Oh, what I endure,” her ladyship said with a moan, closing her eyes.
The duke made a face. “And what you inflict.”
Harriet curtsied, slipping her scribbled paper into her pocket before she escaped the combative atmosphere. She had no intention of leaving behind evidence that would incriminate her. If the duke recognized himself in her drawing, he was more perceptive than she’d realized. And if he never found the perfect wife he deserved, she doubted it would be for lack of willing candidates.
Griffin stared at the closed door until his aunt’s voice intruded on his silence. What kind of fiend had Primrose employed? What anarchy had he sanctioned under his authority? It was bad enough that Harriet’s presence in the house virtually guaranteed he would never enjoy a good night’s sleep again. But that she felt at liberty to mock him with a ridiculous drawing-well, it appeared he would have to put down his foot before she became the devil’s apprentice.
“Do you find her attractive, Griff?”
He pivoted and gave her a blank stare.
“Attractive, Griff. I asked an ordinary enough question. Do you think my companion is appealing to the eye, with her vivid coloring and pretty face?”
“I do understand what attractive means, Aunt Encyclopedia of Unsolicited Knowledge.”
“Dear me. I’m beginning to think you are the one who should become a student in the academy. Your manners have lapsed appallingly since… well, since you’ve assumed responsibility for your own life.”
“Yes. Yes, I know. You remind me every chance you get, no matter where we are or who else might overhear.”
“You will not forget that at the end of the week we are taking your betrothed to the park? And that two nights later the marquess is hosting another ball in our honor? This is to be a more intimate affair.” He groaned.
“Or that Edlyn has been invited to a breakfast party, which naturally we shall chaperone?”
“Naturally.” He edged toward the door.
“With my attractive companion.”
“Am I too old to run away from home?” he asked under his breath.
“Dear Griff, I know I’m a bit of a bother, but please give London a chance.”
And life, she might as well have said.
Chapter Twelve
What is this world’s delight? Lightning, that mocks the night.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The Flower That Smiles Today
Harriet would later look back upon her first day in Lady Powlis’s employment as less of a trial period than as a sort of honeymoon. And a shorter-lived honeymoon no woman in English history had yet to endure, unless it had been her misfortune to marry Henry the Bride-Beheading King. For a few blissful hours, Harriet convinced herself that she had transcended this miserable world and gone directly to heaven. Was there a better position in London? Could anyone hope for a more benevolent employer?
Lady Powlis demanded so little of her that she felt guilty for accepting the generous wage she was given in advance. All the lonely old woman asked was that Harriet accompany her on a brisk drive in the duke’s curricle to the dressmaker’s and describe her experiences as a young actress. As her experiences treading the boards had been brief and marked with infamy, and her employer appeared in need of immediate entertainment, Harriet decided it would be a forgivable deceit to embellish what little of that time she could recall. Unfortunately, Lady Powlis sensed omissions in Harriet’s tale and begged for more.
Only a fool gave everything away at the first offer.
“I will never divulge your secrets, Harriet.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.”
“I will be patient, though.”
Patient Lady Powlis might be. Unfortunately, by the end of that first day, Harriet had learned that her employer was also manipulative, tyrannical, and easily bored. No wonder the duke had warned her that she wouldn’t last before he closed himself up in his library.
For the next four days, Harriet wore her feet off running up and down the stairs to answer the beldame’s every request. Tea, milk, biscuits, magazines. Being of sound body, Harriet might not have bemoaned the exercise had, in between those random demands, the duke not emerged from his lair to frown at her in his forbidding way.
As if it were her fault that his aunt expected a companion to provide services as a circus entertainer, confidante, and fashion consultant at the same time. Not that Harriet knew a thing about the latest in French costumes and whether her employer should purchase French knickers or not.
“Must you thump about the house at all hours?” he finally demanded, dark and moody again, his cravat rakishly askew and his gaze following her every move.
She curtsied at his shadow. If he intended to act as though he’d never kissed her, well, so would she. He wouldn’t know by her professional demeanor that she thought about it morning, noon, and especially at night, when she fell, bone-dead, into bed. He’d never guess by her impervious air that she yearned to feel that wicked mouth of his against hers again or that, even when he was in a mood, his melodious voice raised warm shivers on her skin. She knew what a man wanted from a woman in her position. Let him want. Let them both want. And let them pretend to completely ignore each other. It was much better this way. He stayed in his room. She stayed out of his way.
“Well?” he said, lifting his brow.
She bit her lip. “Your grace must forgive me. My mind was wandering. Did you ask me something?”
“Yes, I did,” he said with a vexed scowl. “Why is it that every time I sit down at my desk, I am distracted by your banging up and down the stairs? I cannot write a letter, open an account book, or close my eyes for a moment without hearing you.”
“Unless his grace knows of another way to placate her ladyship, I have no choice but to obey her.”
He pushed off the wall. Harriet held her breath. All her senses went on the alert. What was he going to do? He had that intense expression on his face again, as if he were about to… whisper a secret in her ear. Or something else. She stood, immobilized, trapped in a delicious tension. Touch me again. Wrap me in thunder.
And then, like the voice of an enraged goddess roaring down from Olympus when another god was threatening her favorite mortal, Lady Powlis shouted, “Hurry up, Harriet! It looks to be a rainy day all of a sudden. We’ll be soaked before we get in the carriage.”
“She’ll drive us both mad, I swear it,” the duke said, his eyes burning into hers. “No companion has ever stayed for long.”
Harriet sighed, her shoulders drooping. “I believe you.”
He stared at her. “Do you?”
“Yes, but I cannot help wondering-”
“Go on.”
She frowned, shaking off her fatigue. “No. It is not my place to wonder.”
“But it is my place to make you finish what you started to say. In fact, you may not go upstairs until you do. And then she’ll bellow at both of us.”
“Fine.” She lowered her voice, caught in his playful conspiracy. “I was just curious how you managed before. Was she this difficult in the castle?”
He leaned his head to hers. “She was worse.”
“Then how-”
“-did we stand it? The aunts live
in the east tower. We live in the west. The castle is quite large and has countless hiding places.”
“No wonder she’s in the habit of shouting.” She turned, resolving to escape before she asked anything else she ought not.
“Another fortnight, that’s all you will last. I would bet on it.”
And somehow Harriet suspected he wasn’t referring as much to the challenges of her position as a companion as he was to the temptation she felt whenever she looked into his eyes.
Chapter Thirteen
I entreat you to hear me, before you give vent to your hatred on my devoted head.
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
He wanted her gone. He wanted her here. If his aunt did not seem happier since his brother’s death, she was at least diverted. And, obviously, so was he, because he couldn’t remember for the life of him what he had promised to do that afternoon. He knew he had an appointment. His valet had brought him his new jacket and trousers from the tailor. He thought there was supposed to be a schedule of his activities on the desk. Or had Miss Gardner confiscated it along with her horned rendition of his head?
He was halfway back to the library when the butler intercepted him. “There is another lady visitor here to see you, your grace,” he said in an apologetic voice. He had been guarding his master’s door like a bulldog against the stream of guests whose calling cards had yet to be read, let alone acknowledged, this past week.
“If she isn’t family, ask her to leave her card and… leave.”
“I explained to the lady that one is not welcome without an express invitation.”
The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife Page 8
