by Evie Dunmore
The duke is not home.
Even if he were, it was highly unlikely that he’d remember a woman like her. Crossing paths with commoners must be a wholly unremarkable experience for him. Still. Was it truly just reading Thucydides that made her feel ill? The last time she had been inside a nobleman’s house, it had been a disaster . . .
She moved the carriage curtain and peered at the landscape slipping by. Snowflakes flitted past the window, leaving the hills and sweeping ridges of Wiltshire white beneath a cloudy morning sky.
“Will it be long now?” she asked.
“Less than an hour,” Hattie said. “Mind you, if it keeps snowing at this rate, we might become stranded.”
Hopefully, the roads to Kent would remain clear. Be back in Chorleywood on December twenty-second, Gilbert had written. A little over a week from now, she would be scrubbing floors, making pies, stacking firewood, all with a fussy child strapped to her back. Hopefully, three months of scholarly life hadn’t made her soft. Gilbert’s wife, like her or not, needed all the help she could get.
“Say, just what made you become interested in this?” Hattie was eyeing The History of the Peloponnesian War in Annabelle’s lap.
She studiously avoided glancing at the dancing letters. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think I had a choice in the matter. My father taught me ancient Greek as soon as I could read, and the wars in Messenia were his specialty.”
“Was he an Oxford man?”
“No, he went to Durham. He was a third son, so he became a clergyman. He mostly taught himself.”
“If only they had educated women sooner,” Hattie said, “there would be fewer books about carnage, and more about romance and beautiful things.”
“But there’s plenty of romance in these books. Take Helen of Troy—Menelaus launched a thousand ships to win her back.”
Hattie pursed her lips. “Personally, I always found a thousand ships a little excessive. And Menelaus and Paris fought over Helen like dogs over a bone; no one asked her what she wanted. Even her obsession with Paris was compelled by a poisoned arrow—what’s romantic about that?”
“Passion,” Annabelle said, “Eros’s arrows are infused with passion.”
“Oh, passion, poison,” Hattie said, “either makes people addle-brained.”
She had a point. The ancient Greeks had considered passion a form of madness that infected the blood, and these days, it still inspired elopements and illegal duels and lurid novels. It could even lead a perfectly sensible vicar’s daughter astray.
“Plato was romantic, though,” Hattie said. “Did he not say our soul was split in two before birth, and that we spend our life searching for our other half to feel whole again?”
“Yes, he did say that.”
And he had found the whole notion ridiculous, which was why his play about soulmates was a satire. Annabelle kept that to herself, for there was a dreamy glow on Hattie’s face that she did not have the heart to wipe away.
“How I look forward to meeting my lost half,” Hattie sighed. “Catriona, what does your soulmate look like? Catriona?”
Catriona surfaced from her book, blinking slowly like a startled owl. “My soulmate?”
“Your other half,” Hattie prompted. “Your ideal husband.”
Catriona blew out a breath. “Why, I’m not sure.”
“But a woman must know what she desires in a man!”
“I suppose he would have to be a scholar,” Catriona said, “so he would let me do my research.”
“Ah.” Hattie nodded. “A progressive gentleman, then.”
“Indeed. How about yours?” Catriona asked quickly.
“Young,” Hattie said. “He must be young, and titled, and he must be blond. That rich, dark-gold color of an old Roman coin.”
“That’s . . . quite specific,” Catriona said.
“He will sit for my paintings,” Hattie said, “and I can hardly have a grandfatherly Sir Galahad, can I? Think, have you ever seen a knight in shining armor who wasn’t young and fair?”
Annabelle bit back a snort. Small village girls talked about knights and princes. Then again, for a girl like Hattie, knights and princes weren’t just creatures from a fairy tale, they came to dine with her parents in St. James. And if one of them married Hattie, he would shelter and indulge her, because at the end of the day, he would have to answer to Julien Greenfield.
Even she might consider marriage under such circumstances—being well treated, with an army of staff at her command to look after the household. As it was, soulmate or not, marriage would mean an endless cycle of scrubbing, mending, and grafting for a whole family, with the added obligation of letting a man use her body for his pleasure . . . Her fingertips dug into the velvet of the coach seat. What would be worse? Sharing a bed with a man she didn’t care for, or with one who had the power to grind her heart into the dirt?
“Annabelle,” Hattie said, inevitably. “Tell us about your soulmate.”
“He seems occupied elsewhere, doesn’t he? It’s just as well that I mean to rely on my own half.”
She evaded Hattie’s disapproving eyes by glancing out the window again. A village was drifting past. Honey-colored stone cottages lined the street, looking edible with the snow icing roofs and chimney tops. A few fat pigs trundled along the pavement. The duke took care of his tenants, at least.
By the gods. “Is that Claremont?” She touched a finger to the cold windowpane.
Hattie leaned forward. “Why, it is. What a lovely house.”
House and lovely did not describe the structure that had moved into view in the far distance. Claremont rose from the soil like an enchanted rock, huge, intricately carved, and implacable. Sprawled against a gently rising slope, it oversaw the land for miles like a ruler on a throne. It was utterly, frighteningly magnificent.
* * *
The clop-clop-clop of the horses’ hooves seemed to die away unheard in the vastness of the cobblestoned courtyard. But a lone figure was waiting at the bottom of the gray limestone stairs leading to the main house. Peregrin Devereux. He was bleary-eyed and his cravat was rumpled, but he had a firm grip when he helped them out of the carriage.
“Utterly splendid to have you here, ladies,” he said, tucking a blushing Catriona’s hand into the crook of his one arm and Aunty Greenfield’s into the other as he led them up the stairs. “The gentlemen have eagerly awaited your arrival.”
The entrance hall of Claremont rose three dizzying stories high beneath a domed glass ceiling. Statues adorned the balustrades of the upper floors. The marble slabs on the floor were arranged in black and white squares like a giant chessboard. Apt, for a man known as one of the queen’s favorite strategists.
Annabelle took a deep breath and straightened her spine. All perfectly normal. She would make it through a weekend here. She knew how to pick up her knives and forks in the right order and how to curtsy to whom. She was proficient in French, Latin, and Greek; could sing and play the piano; and could converse about the history of Orient and Occident. Her antiquity-mad father and her maternal great-grandmother had seen to that; with Gallic determination, her petite grand-mère had passed on Bourbon etiquette to her descendants all the way to the vicarage. It had made Annabelle an oddity in Kent, awfully overeducated, as she had told Hattie. Who knew that it would now help her to avoid the worst pitfalls in a ducal palace?
Lord Devereux led them to a cluster of servants at the bottom of the grand staircase.
“We are about to be snowed in,” he said, “so I suggest we go for a ride around the gardens within the hour.”
Catriona and Hattie were enthusiastic about this plan, but then, they knew how to ride. Annabelle’s experience was limited to sitting astride the old plow horse, which hardly qualified her for thoroughbreds and sidesaddles.
“I will pass,” she said. “I’m of a mind to wor
k on my translation.”
“Of course,” Peregrin said blandly. “Jeanne here will show you your room. Don’t hesitate to ask if you need something; anything you fancy, desire, want, it will be given.”
“I shall be careful what I wish for around here, then,” she said.
He grinned a by-now-familiar grin.
“Devereuuuuux.”
The inebriated bellow reverberated off the walls, and the smile slid off Peregrin’s face quick smart. “Eh. Do excuse me, miss. Ladies. It seems the gents have found the brandy.”
* * *
The four-poster bed in her guest chamber was almost indecently lush: oversized, the emerald green velvet drapes thick as moss, with a heap of silk cushions in brilliant jewel colors. She could not wait to stretch out on the soft, clean mattress.
Two stories below the tall windows was the courtyard, at its center a dry fountain circled by rigorously pruned yew trees. A vast snowy parkland that Peregrin called the garden rolled into the distance.
“Anything else, miss?”
Jeanne the maid stood waiting, her hands neatly folded in her apron.
It seemed all the splendor was going fast to her head. Why work at her translation here, when there were another two hundred rooms?
She reached for Thucydides and a notebook. “Could you please show me the library?”
“Certainly, miss. Which one?”
More than one library? “Why, the prettiest one.”
Jeanne nodded as if that were a most reasonable request. “Follow me, miss.”
The library was tucked away behind an arched oak door that groaned as it swung open. Through a wide stained-glass window opposite, between the two rows of dark wooden shelves, light poured in as if divided from a prism. A path of oriental rugs led to a crackling fireplace near the window, where a wing chair was waiting like a ready embrace.
Annabelle took an unsteady step over the threshold. There was an eerie tug of recognition as she surveyed the room, as if someone had peeked into her mind to see how she imagined the perfect library and had put it into stone and timber.
“It’s pretty with the ceiling like this, isn’t it, miss?”
Annabelle tilted back her head. The vaulted ceiling was painted a rich midnight blue and glimmered faintly with all the stars of a moonless night.
“It’s beautiful.” In fact . . . she was looking at a painstaking portrayal of the real sky, the winter sky, if she wasn’t mistaken.
“’Tis real gold,” Jeanne said proudly. “Just ring if you need anything, miss.”
The door clicked softly shut behind her.
Quiet. It was so quiet here. If she held her breath, she’d hear the dust dance.
She wandered toward the fire, her fingertips trailing over leather-bound spines, the smooth curve of a globe, polished ebony wood. Textures of wealth and comfort.
The armchair was a solid, masculine thing. A padded footstool was positioned to accommodate long legs toward the grate, and a small table stood within convenient reach. The faintest hint of tobacco smoke lingered.
She hovered. It would be bold, using the chair of the master of the house.
But the master was not home.
She sank into the vast upholstery with a groan of delight.
She’d open the book in a minute. She hadn’t sat down and done nothing in . . . years.
The lovely warmth from the fire began seeping into her skin. Her half-lidded gaze traced the stained-glass vignettes in the window—mystical birds and flowers, intricately entwined. Beyond, snowflakes spiraled silently, endlessly. The fire popped, softly, softly . . .
She woke with a start. There was a presence, close and looming. Her eyes snapped open, and her heart slammed against her ribs. A man stood over her. She was staring at his chest. Her pulse thudded in her ears as she forced her eyes up, and up. A black, silken cravat, perfect knotting. A stiff white collar. The hard curve of a jaw.
She already knew who he was. Still. Her stomach plunged when she finally met the pale gaze of the Duke of Montgomery.
Chapter 7
His eyes widened a fraction, and then his pupils sharpened to pinpoints.
The fine hairs on her body stood like fur on a hissing cat.
Oh, he had not forgotten her for a moment—he was staring down at her, irritation pouring off him like fog from an ice chest.
“What. Are you doing. In my house.”
His voice was as compelling as she remembered, the cool precision of it slicing right into her racing thoughts. A perfectly unmanageable man.
Somehow, she came to her feet. “Your Grace. I thought you were in France.”
Why, why would she say such a thing?
The duke’s expression had changed from appalled to incredulous. “Miss Archer, is it not?” he said, almost kindly. And that was rather unnerving.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
He hadn’t stepped back. He stood too close, and at nearly a head taller than she. If he intended to intimidate her with his body, it was counterproductive, for intimidation roused a strong emotion in her: resistance.
He did not strike her as a man who tolerated resistance.
His fitted black coat encased remarkably straight, wide shoulders and a trim waist. His cropped, light hair looked almost white in a shaft of December sun. Austere and colorless like winter himself, the duke. And, potentially, just as capable of freezing her to death.
“You are my brother’s companion, I presume,” he said.
She did not like the ring he had given the word companion. “My Lord Devereux and I are acquainted, Your Grace.”
She swayed forward an inch, to see if he’d do the polite thing and give her space. He didn’t. She felt his gaze slide over her face, then down her throat. The disdain in his eyes said he noticed everything: the hungry hollows of her cheeks; that her earrings were not real pearls; that Lady Mabel’s old walking dress had been altered by her own hand and clashed with her coloring.
Inside, she crumbled a little.
“The gall of you, to set foot under my roof,” he said. “That is unusual, even for a woman such as yourself.”
She blinked. A woman such as herself? “We . . . are acquainted,” she repeated, her voice sounding strangely distant.
“Acquainted,” Montgomery said, “if that is what you wish to call it, madam. But you picked the wrong man to be acquainted with. I hold the purse strings. Understand that your efforts with Lord Devereux will lead you nowhere.”
Heat washed over her.
He wasn’t displeased about finding her sleeping in his chair; he thought she was his brother’s paramour.
Her and Peregrin Devereux? Ridiculous.
And yet one glance had convinced His Grace that she’d sell herself to noblemen for money.
The violent beat of her heart filled her ears. Her temper, checked for so long, uncoiled and rose like a prodded snake. It took possession, made her cock her hip and peruse him, from his angular face down to his polished shoes and up again, taking his measure as a man. She couldn’t stop the regretful smirk that said he had just been found wanting.
“Your Grace,” she murmured, “I’m sure your purse strings are . . . enormous. But I’m not in the market for you.”
He went still as stone. “Are you suggesting that I just propositioned you?”
“Why, isn’t that usually the reason why a gentleman mentions his purse strings to a woman such as I?”
A muscle in his cheek gave a twitch, and that worked like a cold shower on her hot head.
This was not good.
He was, after all, one of the most powerful men in England.
Unexpectedly, he leaned closer. “You will leave my estate as soon as the roads permit travel again,” he said softly. “You will leave and you will keep away from my brother. Have I made myself clea
r?”
No reply came to mind. He was so close, his scent began invading her lungs, a disturbingly masculine blend of starch and shaving soap.
She managed a nod.
He stepped back, and his eyes gave an infinitesimal flick toward the door.
He was throwing her out.
Her hand twitched with the mad impulse to slap him, to see the arrogance knocked right off his noble face. Ah, but that arrogance ran to the marrow.
She remembered to snatch the Thucydides and her notebook from the side table.
His gaze pressed cold and unyielding like the muzzle of a pistol between her shoulders all the way to the door.
* * *
The woman held her book before her like a shield as she left, every line of her slender body rigid. She closed the door very gently behind her, and somehow, that felt like a parting shot.
Sebastian flexed his fingers.
He had recognized her as soon as she had blinked up at him.
Green Eyes was in his house.
Green Eyes was his brother’s bit on the side.
She had slept like an innocent in his chair, with her knees pulled to her chest and a hand tucked under her cheek, the soft pulse in her neck exposed. Her profile had been marble still, she had looked like a pre-Raphaelite muse. It had stopped even him in his tracks. She had not looked like a woman who entrapped hapless noblemen, a testimony of her skills.
Her eyes gave her away, keenly intelligent and self-possessed, and hardly innocent. Any doubts, her reactions had settled: no gently bred woman would have reacted with impertinence to his displeasure. This one had wanted to slap him; he had sensed it in his bones. Madness.
He stalked toward the exit.
Being ordered back from Brittany by the queen at once for a crisis meeting was bothersome. Finding his house teeming with drunken lordlings after traveling for twenty hours was unacceptable. But to be sniped at in his own library by this baggage—beyond the pale.
