hovering tone. If he weakened now, he wouldn’t be free of him until midnight, if then. “Let me alone,” he yelled. “I’ll call you when I wish to hear your important news. If you hired two new parlor maids, it’s all right. Swell our rolls. Let us employ every able-bodied person in the county.” He turned slightly and waved a dismissing hand toward the old man, who had been at Chesleigh Castle since before the duke was born. “Keep everyone out of the library. If you really care about me, that’s what you can do to make me bloody happy.” “But, your grace—”
The duke felt a sudden stab of apprehension. “Is Lord Edmund all right?”
“Certainly, your grace. His lordship spent his afternoon on his pony. He is now enjoying his dinner with Ellen, in the nursery.”
“Excellent. Then say no more. If Mrs. Dent is beating the scullery maid, tend to it yourself.”
The duke turned on his heel, his tan greatcoat swirling about his ankles, and strode the length of the entrance hall, past the medieval tapestries that hung like thick curtains over the ancient stone walls. He left Bassick with his mouth unbecomingly open, half-formed words still on his tongue, a look of perturbation in those rheumy blue eyes of his.
Enough was enough, the duke thought. He’d not only spent two hours with a friend of his father’s, Baron Wisslex, who was dying bravely, with his son hanging about, just waiting for his turn at the title, but then he’d come home to hear the damnable news from Drew Halsey, Lord Pettigrew. He pulled up short, feeling a stab of pain in his foot.
He had a rock inside his boot, of all things. He sat down on a heavy Tudor chair set beneath the portrait of a bewigged ancestor, a great-great-uncle of the last century, and pulled off his Hessian. He flicked out the small pebble, rubbed the sole of his foot, then rose again, not bothering to pull his boot back on. He ignored the footman who was standing not ten feet from him, magically appearing from one instant to the next to see if there was anything required.
He tucked the boot under his arm and opened the library door.
The Chesleigh library was the present duke’s favorite room. It was a dark chamber, somber and rich, its shadows deep and full, and it smelled always of lemon wax and old books. He looked briefly at the walls with all the inset bookshelves that soared up to twenty-five feet, the long, narrow windows covered with rich maroon velvet curtains, hung there by his father not two years before. There was a good-sized fire built up in the cavernous grate, and a single branch of candles had been lit against the coming night. Bassick, as was his way, had known he would be home soon, and had the room prepared for his comfort.
It was a masculine, very comforting room to the duke, and he felt himself begin to relax, felt the black rage, the sense of helplessness that he felt to the depths of him, begin to recede. He stripped off his gloves and greatcoat and tossed them over the back of a dark blue brocade chair, then sat down and tugged on his boot. Since this was a chore that he rarely performed by himself, he found himself cursing at his own ineptness.
A low, musical laugh came out of the gloom. He jerked around to see a woman standing at the side of the fireplace in the shadows, swathed from head to foot in a dark cloak.
“A nobleman and his boots,” she said, shaking her head. “I wonder how poor mortal men manage. I suppose I could offer to help you.” Her voice was amused.
However, she didn’t move.
Chapter 4
The duke rose swiftly to his feet, his boot, thankfully, snug where it belonged. He nearly stumbled over his feet in his haste and surprise.
“I could have killed you,” he said. “Hiding in here was a stupid thing to do.”
“Oh? How would you have dispatched me? Perhaps you would have hurled your boot at me?”
“If I’d had a gun with me, you could be lying on the carpet with a bullet in your gullet. Sometimes I do have a gun with me. Today I don’t. However, I do have my hands, and they would, doubtless, fit nicely around your neck.”
“Oh, I don’t think you’d kill me. Your very nice butler wouldn’t allow murder to be committed beneath his nose.”
“Don’t wager your dinner on that.” “He’s fascinating. If he wore a white robe, he would look like a biblical prophet.”
“He isn’t a prophet. However, he is supposed to guard the portals to my kingdom. Now, who the devil are you? How did you get in here?”
She didn’t answer, just stood there like a specter in a black cloak. Anger began to replace surprise. He’d wanted to be alone, and now this female had forced her way into his house and into his library.
Actually, he was beginning to feel ripe for murder. Then he understood. “Bassick’s head will roll for this. Damnation, the servants’ entrance is in the north wing. If you want to keep your position here at Chesleigh, you will use it in the future, not come into this part of the castle. Tell Bassick that I don’t need to interview you. Go away. Now. I want to be alone.”
“You said a great deal there and I did hear all of it, but still, I don’t quite understand. Could you please speak again? Only this time perhaps you could just reduce all your thoughts to one that is the most pertinent?” The woman had the gall to sound both amused and offended. But there was more amusement, all of it at his expense. His fingers itched to lace themselves about her neck.
He drew himself up even taller, his head cocked a certain way, his shoulders drawn back—the medieval seignior at his most intimidating—something he’d seen his grandfather do, something his father did better than any other human being, and said, all black hauteur, “I am tired of this, my girl. You will remove yourself now. I have no wish to be bothered, no matter what a wench offers. Send my butler in. The fellow has a lot to answer for.”
“This is the first time I’ve been called a wench. Are you normally so very rude, your grace? Or is it just that it’s Wednesday, and this mid-week day offends you? Or perhaps it’s the weather? I myself was delighted when the rain stopped. I was beginning to grow mold.” “Shut up, damn you.”
She shut up, contenting herself with staring at him and praying she hadn’t misjudged him.
A discordant note finally tolled in his mind. He’d been locked inside his own black soul. Damnation, the female wasn’t a serving girl, here in his library for the lord and master to interview. She was well spoken. And wasn’t there just a hint of a French accent popping up every once in a while? But it didn’t matter. She was here and she shouldn’t be here. She was in his private lair, the last place she should be. He was smoldering with impotent anger, and now, with her here, he saw a fresh goat standing right in front of him, ripe for sacrifice, so to speak, and so he let out his anger.
He advanced on her. She didn’t move, didn’t even shrink back an inch. Of course, if she had, she just might have tipped herself into the fireplace.
“You call me rude?” He was close to her shadowed face now. “Rude? You have the audacity to call me rude? How would you like me, wench, to take a birch rod to your buttocks?”