Her gaze sought the duke.
Her heart beat a bit faster to find him watching her, too, his look deep and assessing. Almost rueful. Apologetic. It gave her a start. Why should he look at her as though he was sorry for his friend’s crass behavior? He’d practically invited her to an orgy within five minutes of meeting her. He was every bit as incorrigible as Hunt.
Lips thinning, she turned and fled, doing her best to walk in a dignified fashion, and not the mad dash she craved.
Rounding the corridor, well free of the room, she leaned against the wall. Closing her eyes in one long blink, she sought to rid her mind of the image of the son of the man who had killed her father. More or less. Altogether not that difficult when another man crowded in, larger than life, his image pushing Hunt out.
Hunt faded, evaporating like smoke to the shadows of her mind. The handsome visage of the duke rose to take his place. Rot the scoundrel for invading her thoughts. Rot her for being so weak that her fascination for him grew, overriding the aversion she should feel.
Snapping her eyes open, she resumed her hasty pace down the corridor, her heart still beating a hard tempo in her chest as she fought to reclaim herself.
She stopped hard in the kitchen at the sight of two grimy-faced urchins wolfing down steaming bowls of stew. Each one of them likely bore more dirt than the soot-filled hearth. One of the lads eyed her belligerently as he stuffed a large hunk of bread into his mouth.
“Who are they?” she murmured to a passing footman.
He flicked the pair a glance. “Two street rats the duke brought home.” He shook his head as if the notion bewildered him. “He does that.”
“Brings home urchins?”
“Aye. Feeds them and then finds them a school. Or suitable work. All depends on their age and abilities.”
The demon duke?
The footman moved on. She remained where she was, staring at the boys’ wild, hunted eyes and thought she heard the sound of her heart crack.
Chapter 10
“G ot you!” Fallon dangled the stubborn weed before her, glaring in satisfaction at the thick, gnarled root. Dropping it in the basket, she crouched back in the dirt and attacked another weed.
When Mr. Adams had requested a volunteer to help in the garden, she tried not to appear delighted over the gardener’s recent fall off a ladder. Having spent most of her childhood playing beside her father whilst he worked in Lord Hunt’s garden, she relished digging her fingers in moist soil. Even the slow creep of dirt beneath her nails was a missed sensation. So much so she deliberately eschewed the use of gloves. Besides, dirt beneath the nails likely advanced her image as a man.
Despite the cool afternoon, the wig felt hot and itchy atop her head. Sunlight beat down on her and a trickle of sweat ran into her brow. She wiped it free with the back of her hand and squeezed her fingertips beneath the edge of the wig and scratched furiously, inching her way higher into her sticky hairline.
“Bloody wig,” she muttered.
“Take it off,” a deep voice suggested from behind her.
Fallon whirled around, moving so quickly she nearly toppled into the grass and weeds.
“Your Grace,” she said dumbly, hands sliding along her trouser-clad thighs, fingers burying tightly into the fabric of her trousers.
Arms crossed, he leaned in the conservatory’s threshold. Garbed only in dark trousers and shirt, he was the idyllic image of an indolent lord. Only in her mind, indolent lords never looked so virile, so handsome. Their chests did not fill quite so much of their shirt. Nor did they mark their bodies with provocative tattoos. The pulse at her neck skittered wildly. Nerves. Nothing more. She inhaled thinly through her nose. He did not affect her. It was merely the consequence of living a deception.
“If you don’t like the wig, take it off.”
Her hand flew to the wig, brushing it, relieved to feel it still secure and not askew from her scratching.
“Take it off?” she echoed, heart hammering. “Mr. Adams said—”
He waved a broad hand. “You’re gardening. I’ve never seen the gardener wear a wig while working.”
“But Mr. Adams—”
“Permit me to share a secret.” He leaned forward slightly, darting a quick glance over his shoulder. “Mr. Adams answers to me.”
She smiled shakily, feeling foolish. “Of course.”
His gray eyes glinted almost silver in the afternoon light. Silver eyes? Who ever heard of such a thing? Perhaps he was part demon in truth. “If you wish to take the bloody thing off, then I say you may do so.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.” Her fingers played along the edges of the wig, skimming over the coarse hair, panicked at the thought of removing it before him. It served as a barrier of sorts. A shield she was reluctant to relinquish. He did not recall seeing her before, but if he saw her without the wig, he might.
“Thank you,” she repeated, “but I feel more comfortable wearing it.”
He arched a dark brow, clearly dubious. “You do?”
“I do.”
He shrugged as if to say it mattered naught to him. “Very well.”
After a long moment, she bent back over her patch of grass and pulled up several more weeds, her mind racing. Clearly he appeared content to stand in the threshold and watch her. She felt his stare as she worked, tugging a stubborn weed from the earth, her pulse a skippy jump at her neck. Dear Heavens, did he know? Knowing, did he toy with her now? Sweat trickled down her spine.
Why was he here? Watching her? She resisted sneaking another look at him, unwilling to let him know how much his presence flustered her.
“You don’t like me, do you?”
She froze, fingers locked around a rough, grimy weed. Slowly, she lifted her gaze, never releasing the weed, clinging to it as though it were a desperately needed handhold.
The duke still stood in the threshold, one booted foot crossed over the other. Unsmiling. His face carved granite.
She could scarcely form a reply, scarcely move her lips. “Your Grace?” she breathed.
“Don’t feign ignorance.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come, Frank. I can see it in your face. In the rigid way you hold yourself when I am near.”
She tensed. He noticed her body? Her heart quivered, then squeezed. The very notion made her grow more rigid, more unyielding, no matter how she commanded herself to relax. Her palms began to perspire, and she released the weed to rub them firmly and quickly against her thighs.
“You’re not in trouble,” he continued, lips still unbending. “I’m simply curious. I don’t think I’ve recalled anyone to take such an instant dislike to me.”
The incredible claim caught her off guard. He was the bloody demon duke. “No one?”
He smiled a sudden grin that made her heart flip, made her want to smile back. “That shocks you, does it? By all means, speak freely.”
Heat fired her cheeks. She moistened her lips. “Forgive me if I’ve given offense. Why should you think I don’t like you, Your Grace.” And why would it matter? She did not believe herself any less important than he. Merely, she knew the way the world functioned. And where she ranked within it happened to be several rungs lower than the Duke of Damon. Demon duke or not.
“I saw your face when you entered the study yesterday.”
“During Lord Hunt’s call?”
He nodded in confirmation, his gaze intense, and she wondered how she would fool this man if he continued to look at her in such a manner. If he deciphered her antipathy for him, how long before he uncovered her secret?
And yet she could not refrain from spilling forth with the truth. “I did not care for your friend,” she confessed with the usual frankness that brought her trouble. A truth, she hoped, to distract him from the other truth. The more alarming truth. That she did like him. Far too much. The duke intrigued her—this man who took urchins off the streets and saw to their needs. And…she wanted to touch his tattoo, trace i
t with her fingers.
Perhaps it was Mr. Adams’s words—his command for loyalty. She tried to think the duke the worst possible man. Neither good nor honorable. Certainly not the sort to inquire after a footman. And yet it didn’t work. Here he was, with no ulterior motive, inquiring about her feelings. As if he cared.
“Hunt?” he asked. “And why is that?”
“Naturally, my opinion of your friend is not relevant, Your Grace.”
“Relevant or not, I am curious. What is so offensive about the man?”
“Beyond his comments?”
Damon nodded.
She opened her mouth, prepared to offer forth some vague remark. Instead, she heard herself say, “He’s unconscionable. Thoughtless, vain, vulgar.” The fire in her cheeks grew to a scalding degree, and in the back of her mind whispered a question: Am I judging Lord Hunt for the sins of his father?
“My,” he drawled. “All that?”
She averted her gaze, scanning the garden, troubled. She fidgeted with the basket handle, unable to explain without revealing the history that led to her conclusions.
“And I have somehow escaped your condemnation?” His lip curled faintly. Smile or sneer, she could not be certain. With him, she imagined little difference existed between the two.
“You’re not like Lord Hunt,” she was quick to reply.
“No?” He uncrossed her arms and lifted his shoulder off the threshold.
“No. You’re better than that. Better than he.”
“Better.” His gray eyes glittered, cold as winter on the moors of Penwich. “Hardly. We are old friends. Grew up together. Hunt and I are practically the same. Trust me.”
That confirmed the duke had been her neighbor, then. She released a shaky breath, glad, for some reason, that she had not known him then. She did not have memories of him to draw on that were less than flattering. Why that mattered, she could not say. Strangely enough, she needed to be right in liking him. She claimed he was better than Lord Hunt…and she needed him to be.
“No. You’re not. You have a conscience. You’re not”—she floundered for a moment, before finally arriving at the word she sought—“lost.”
In an instant, his gaze hardened, the gray icing over. The cold of that stare reached her heart and she shivered. “You could not be more wrong.”
At his dark expression, her fingers stilled upon the basket. One would think she had insulted him.
“I am the very definition of lost. Empty. Soulless.” His eyes narrowed on her, and for a moment she feared he would step toward her. She held her ground. “Ask anyone.”
She shook her head. “Mr. Adams and the rest of the staff possess a great deal of loyalty—”
“Loyalty, yes,” he cut in, his voice rapier sharp. “Affection? No. Faith in me? No. Never. They know what I am.”
She nodded slowly, recalling the wicked man in the carriage with burning clarity, and the half-naked man standing on the landing, parleying with a woman of dubious morals before his entire household. During both outrageous episodes, he had never blinked an eye.
“If you wish to keep your position, you would do well to remember that.” He turned from her and strode back inside the conservatory, the click of his boots a jarring tap on the floor. Nearly as jarring as his words.
He would sack her if she liked him? If she thought him good and respectable? She shook her head. Absurd. She glanced down at the weeds and began attacking them with renewed vigor, ripping them from the earth with the same hostility she had seen in the duke’s gaze. A sweeping certainty swept over her. Not only did the greatest reprobate among the ton employ her…but the man was stark mad.
Chapter 11
A shrill scream pierced the early morning air. Fallon froze amid her chore of lowering an enormous framed portrait depicting one of the duke’s long-dead ancestors. The maid dusting the bared wall behind it shot her a startled look.
The heavy pounding of feet down a distant corridor shook the air. Arms quivering, Fallon eased the heavy portrait back on the wall just as Mrs. Davies’s voice vibrated over the morning. “Dear God in heaven!”
The maid cast her one more look, then, lifting her skirts, darted off, clearly intent on discovering what latest debacle plagued the duke’s household.
Fallon watched as other servants, forgetting their duties, emerged from various rooms and followed in the maid’s wake. Grunting, she returned the portrait to the wall and fell in with the others, locating Mrs. Davies at the top of the winding staircase.
Hands on her generous hips, the woman glared down into the foyer. “Jack! Jack, where are you?”
The brawny footman appeared below.
“Yes’m?” he called, looking up at the housekeeper.
“Fetch the watch! Before it’s too late!”
“Yes’m!” Jack darted away.
Mr. Adams arrived in the foyer, calling up at Mrs. Davies for an explanation.
She looked down at him as though he were a pesky child. “He’s gone and done it! Just like I always said he would.”
“Woman!” Mr. Adams snapped, his gaze skimming the gawking staff with annoyance. “I would appreciate a more specific—”
Another shriek punctuated the air. Fallon glanced over her shoulder, this time convinced the cries came from the duke’s bedchamber.
Mrs. Davies whirled around and flew down the hall with surprising speed for a woman of her size. The clumsy herd of servants followed, Mr. Adams pushing to the head.
“Never dull, is it?” Nancy asked from Fallon’s side, nudging her in the ribs. Fallon marveled at how the girl always materialized near her. “You never know what’s going to happen in this house from one day to the next.”
Fallon forced a smile, unable to feel the same enthusiasm. She wanted stability. Constancy in her life. Even boring would be acceptable. Ever since arriving at 15 Pottingham Place, her life had been upheaval. And yet curiosity drove her on to the duke’s bedchamber with the rest of them. Mrs. Davies was almost to the duke’s bedchamber when the doors burst open.
Diddlesworth barged out, shoving past servants. “Out of my way!”
“Mr. Diddlesworth! Where are you going? You can’t leave!” Mrs. Davies commanded.
“I’ve had enough. I’m done with this madhouse and that—that—” Diddlesworth jabbed a finger toward the bedchamber, “Caligula!”
Mrs. Davies and Mr. Adams entered the bedchamber together. Even from the corridor, Fallon heard their gasps.
Heart hammering in a way she could not explain, she stumbled ahead, pushing among the other servants, peering over their heads, her only thought of the duke, praying that he was not ill or harmed. His last female guest made off with the silver, after all. Perhaps the woman he selected for the previous evening’s pleasure possessed even lower scruples. Perhaps she had harmed him while he slept.
Sick at the thought, she didn’t even think to mind when Nancy grasped her arm, a clinging vine at her side while Fallon peered inside the room. Like the butler and housekeeper before her, Fallon gasped.
“Is that a pistol?” Nancy whispered.
Fallon nodded grimly, eyeing the squat, rotund man wearing an unfortunate checked jacket. He brandished a pistol, pointing it at the duke and his bedmate.
“Harold, darling, please. Put down the pistol!” The female’s hands clutched the sheet to her ample bosom. Ashy-blond hair surrounded her in a wild cloud, reminding Fallon of the fog perpetually cloaking the city.
Propped up on a pillow, his bare chest a far too tempting sight—dark, coiling serpent tattoo and all—the duke lounged in the bed as if he didn’t care one whit that a pistol waved in his general direction. “Word is you’re far from a crack shot, Lord Foley. Maybe you should step closer for a more accurate aim?”
“So you can grab the pistol out of my hands?” Harold sneered. “I don’t think so.”
The duke shrugged as if the idea had not occurred to him.
“Must you provoke him?” The female hissed before
returning her gaze to her husband. Eyes glowing with entreaty, she scooted farther from the duke, as if distance from him would save her. “Harold, darling. Please. He means nothing to me. You’re my husband…the man I love.”
Some of the tightness about Harold’s lips loosened. He lowered his arm, eyes gleaming moistly as he gazed adoringly at his wife. Fallon released a pent-up breath. Thank goodness the cuckold loved his wife to the point of blindness. The duke might yet survive the morning.
“I’m so glad you found me. The wretch tricked me and was on the verge of taking horrible advantage of me.”
“On the verge?” the duke queried with a drollness, shocking given the circumstances. “Two times and we were just on the verge? I can’t wait to see what you have in store for me next, Gracie.”
Fire lit Gracie’s cheeks. “You’re no gentleman!”
His lips curved wickedly. “And I thought that’s what you liked about me.”
“Bastard!”
“That’s not what you were calling me earlier.”
Some of the servants chuckled. Fallon simply shook her head. Was he trying to get himself killed?
Harold sputtered. “You’ve dallied the last with another man’s wife, Damon.”
The duke rolled his eyes and waved his hand in a small circle. “I feel as though I’m watching a Drury Lane performance. Surely if I’m to die, that clichéd remark won’t be what I take with me into the hereafter?”
The irate husband’s cheeks grew ruddier.
“Truly.” The duke’s voice changed pitch as he mimicked, “You’ve dallied the last?” He shook his head. “Not entirely original, is it?”
Harold shook with outrage. Straightening, he snapped his arm up again, pointing the pistol in the duke’s direction. “I’m not overly concerned with originality.”
Fallon’s chest grew tight as steel-cold conviction swept over her—she was about to witness murder. And no one seemed inclined to stop it.
The duke’s jaw tightened, revealing that he was not unaffected. Not as he would like everyone to think. Not as a man deserving death might duly accept his fate. Suddenly, she knew she could not stand idle. Could not watch him die…especially when she could stop it.
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