“My dear Miss Bellamy, you’ve gone quite pale. Should I ring for some tea?”
“No, of course not. I…” she did not know what to say.
“Robert, I am so relieved that you are here. It is just not done to be conducting business at this time. Miss Bellamy, please allow me to introduce you to His Grace, the Duke of Bainbridge.”
“Your Grace, please meet your daughters’ new governess, Miss Sarah Bellamy.”
There was a pause, and the wretched man said, “Sarah. An interesting name.”
The room spun as she recalled the second time he had taken her against the fountain in the garden, and he had buried his face in the crook of her neck and groaned her name. Sarah was not an interesting name. Many ladies were called Sarah. Could he be thinking of his lover from the masquerade ball?
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Your Grace.” Sarah heard her own words ring out as if a stranger had spoken them. She kept her eyes lowered demurely, as a lady of her position should do in the presence of a man as eminent and influential as the duke.
“You are not meeting my boots, Miss Bellamy,” he said with polite civility.
Panic overwhelmed Sarah, and she turned around and fled down the winding staircase along the long hallway. The butler graciously opened the door for her, and she dashed outside, taking huge gulping breaths. Sarah hastened across the lawns, walking aimlessly until she found herself by the lake.
“How could this happen?” she whispered, pressing her hand above her mouth. She recalled before they parted how he lifted her face to the light and teased at the mask. Then he had told her how beautiful her eyes were. She slammed her eyes shut. “Oh, don’t be silly, Sarah. He was perhaps still flirting.” How could she for years have been in the background of everyone’s awareness, and the duke now recalled her eyes.
The tension lifted from her shoulders, and she realized she panicked for naught. “Oh, God, what explanation can I offer for my behavior.” Sarah supposed she could say she had feared casting up her accounts and ran outside for some bracing fresh air. She took a deep breath and gathered her courage to return after what must seem quite bizarre to the duke and his family.
“Miss Bellamy?” a voice called. “Are you unwell?”
A startled glance behind showed the duke walking toward her in long-limbed and graceful strides. He was very tall with a lean and powerful build. The duke moved with the lithe precision of a man confident of his place in the world. A flash of heat seared her as the memory of his tongue delicately licking firmly over the aching flesh between her legs, and Sarah whipped forward and squeezed her eyes closed.
Stop acting so silly, she silently cried, hating that tears pricked behind her eyes.
She could not stay here, nor could she work for this man. Sorrow clutched at her, for she needed this job. Sodesperately. Sarah had not anticipated she would ever meet her midnight lover again.Ever. It had been a secret fantasy born from desperate loneliness. She would have hoarded it deep inside her heart, and in the nights whenever she was lonely, she would gently open the doors to her memories and allow them to wrap their snug arms around her. The loneliness would flee. The sweet and wanton remembrance would fill all those empty places, and she had hoped they would for a lifetime.
That secret should not have come to life in the form of her employer. Not when she so needed this job and the independence it gave her away from being a burden in her cousin’s home.
“Miss Bellamy, will you face me?”
The duke’s voice rasped over her, and she took a deep breath, pressing her hand to her belly to still the frightened flutter. Sarah turned around. He stared at her. Then he stared some more.Oh God. Surely he did not recognize her. Never in her life had Sarah been a spark for anyone, and if the duke recalled her even when she had been disguised, that would be…well, simplyastonishing.
“You are a sweet spark in the darkness of life, aren’t you, my dear.”
The last thing he had said before she had walked away smiling. Hehadbeen flirting and would have said that to any woman, she reminded herself.
When he still did not speak, it pushed her into nervous speech. Dipping into a clumsy curtsy, she said, “Forgive me, Your Grace. I had a slight distemper of stomach and…, and I needed some fresh air.”
“And you ran all the way to the lake for that air?” he finally asked, his tone icily polite, his expression arrogant and ducal.
“I…yes.”
The wicked, wretched man kept staring at her. “Your Grace—”
His lean, darkly handsome features tensed. “Or did you run because you thought I would not recognize you…or that I might, which is it?”
Chapter 6
Do not faint, or fidget or move.
Sarah repeated that refrain thrice, a similar rebuke she had given herself staring down a snake once, before she met the duke’s eyes and calmy said, “I do beg your pardon, Your Grace; I believe you might have mistaken me for someone else. How astonishing that I might remind you of someone else. We do not socialize in the same circle and are highly unlikely to.”
There, that should throw him off guard and let him reassess his suspicions. How dare he think his masquerade lover and his children’s governess are one and the same. The small quirk of his mouth as it curved into a smile was unexpected. “Have I amused you, Your Grace,” she asked stiffly.
“Yes, you have.”