‘Please don’t worry,’ she panted, for he was walking so fast now he’d clearly made up his mind to beard the dragon in her den that she was having to trot to keep up with him. ‘Whatever is worrying you, I know you can deal with it. You can deal with anything.’
‘I hope to God you’re right,’ he muttered.
He took a deep breath, like a man about to dive from a high cliff into murky water, then strode up the front steps and rapped on the door.
‘Prudence,’ he said, turning to her, a tortured expression on his face. ‘Perhaps I should have warned you before we got here that—’ He broke off at the distinct sound of footsteps approaching from the other side of the door. ‘Too late,’ he said, shutting his mouth with a snap on whatever it was he’d wanted to warn her of.
Never mind. Whatever it was, she could weather it. If she’d managed to survive this past two nightmarish days, she could weather anything.
But then, as the door swung open, something very strange happened to Gregory. He sort of...closed up. It was as though he had deliberately wiped all expression from his face, turning into a hard, distant, cold man she couldn’t imagine ever climbing trees with a grin. He looked just like the man she’d first seen in The Bull—the man from whom everyone had kept their distance. And, even though she was still holding his hand, she got the feeling he’d gone somewhere very far away inside.
A soberly dressed man opened the door and goggled at the sight of them. Which was hardly surprising. Not many people looking as scruffy as they did would have the effrontery to knock on the front door of a house like this. But Gregory didn’t bat an eyelid.
‘Good morning, Perkins,’ he said. ‘Something amiss?’
‘No, Your Grace,’ said the flabbergasted butler.
Your Grace? Why was the butler addressing Gregory as ‘Your Grace’?
‘Of course not, Your Grace. It is just—’ The butler pulled himself together, opened the door wider and stepped aside. ‘We were not expecting you for another day or so.’
Gregory raised one eyebrow in a way that had the butler shrinking in stature.
‘Your rooms are in readiness, of course,’ he said.
‘And for my guest?’
The butler’s eyes slid briefly across Prudence. ‘I am sure it will take Mrs Hoskins but a moment to have something suitable prepared for the young person.’
Gregory inclined his head in an almost regal manner. Then walked into the house in a way she’d never seen him walk before. As though he owned the place. Well, he’d told her he did. It was just that until this very second she hadn’t really, truly believed it.
And there was something else she was finding hard to believe as well.
‘Why,’ she whispered as he tugged her into the spacious hall, ‘is the butler calling you Your Grace?’
‘Because, Miss Carstairs,’ he said, in what sounded to her like an apologetic manner. ‘I am afraid that I am a duke.’
Chapter Twelve
‘A duke?’
No. It would be easier to believe he was a highwayman and that this house was a den filled to bursting with his criminal associates than that.
But then why else would the butler have addressed him as ‘Your Grace’?
‘This is Miss Carstairs, Perkins,’ said Gregory—or whoever he was—to the butler, handing him his valise. ‘My fiancée.’
‘Your—?’ The butler’s face paled. His lips moved soundlessly, his jaw wagging up and down as though words failed him.
She knew how he felt, having just sustained as great a shock herself. Which made her realise her own mouth had sagged open on her hearing Gregory claim to be a duke.
She shut it with a snap.
‘Fiancée,’ Gregory repeated slowly, as though addressing an imbecile.
‘If you say so, Your Grace,’ said the butler, looking distinctly unimpressed. ‘I mean...’ he added swiftly, when Gregory raised one eyebrow in that way he had—a way, she now saw, that was due to his being a duke. A duke who wasn’t used to having butlers, let alone stray females, dare to express a view that ran counter to his own. ‘Congratulations, Your Grace,’ said the butler, inclining his head in the slightest of bows whilst refraining from looking in her direction.
‘Miss Carstairs and I fell among thieves on the road,’ said Gregory. Or whatever she was now supposed to call him.
‘Hence our rather dishevelled appearance.’ He waved his hand in a vague gesture encompassing them both.
‘I shall send for Dr Crabbe at once, Your Grace,’ said the butler, his eyes fixed on the cuts and bruises on his employer’s face.