Laurie Benson - His Three-Day Duchess

‘These curtains were quite expensive and complement this room perfectly. The colour speaks of past battles and is a testament to the men who fought them. Your ancestors, I might add.’

‘I should have known the design of this room was your idea,’ he said, glancing around the room before striding towards her with his open banyan billowing out behind him, revealing an impressive chest, which was covered up by his blue waistcoat.

Once more that bare neck of his caught her eye and his commanding presence made the large room feel smaller. Lizzy shifted in her stance before she unconsciously tightened her grip on the handle of the sword and steadied her hand.

He walked right up to the tip of the blade so it was pointing at his heart, all the while looking into her eyes as if to challenge her. ‘This room is a bit too theatrical for my taste.’

She narrowed her gaze on him. ‘Are you insinuating I’m theatrical?’

‘I have seen curtains just like those in the opera houses in Italy,’ he replied offhandedly.

He had ignored her question. She hated it when people ignored her. She was the Duchess of Skeffington. ‘You didn’t answer my question. Are you calling me theatrical?’

‘That might be one word to describe you. I suppose dramatic is a more accurate word.’ With the tip of his finger he slowly guided the blade of the sword away from his chest.

‘And the other words you think describe me?’ she asked, lowering the small sword to her side, annoyed that he had the ability to fluster her so much that she had forgotten she had been aiming a weapon at him.

‘I don’t think you really want me to say what the other words are.’

‘If I didn’t want you to tell me, I wouldn’t have asked.’

He walked to the wall between the windows and selected a sword, testing the grip in his very masculine-looking hand. Without gloves, she could see he did not have the hands of a man who led a pampered life. They weren’t smooth and pale like many of the men of the ton whose hands resembled a larger version of those of a child. His hands were tanned, like the colour of the gardeners’ skins when they worked outside in the summer. The pronounced veins on the top of his hand seemed to pump while he adjusted his grip—and she took note of a narrow scar about two inches in length near his wrist. Lizzy didn’t think she had ever paid this much attention to a man’s hand before now.

He waved the blade in the air towards the window and the setting sun glinted off the metal. With his eye, he appeared to check the straightness of the blade. ‘I suppose another word I would use to describe you is wilful .’

Lizzy pushed her shoulders back and raised her chin. ‘That doesn’t sound like a compliment.’

‘It wasn’t meant to be,’ he replied with his back to her as he selected another sword.

‘Are you ever civil, Mr Alexander?’

Calling him Skeffington just felt wrong. He was not her late husband—far from it. She could have referred to him as Duke, but at this moment she had no wish to remind him they shared their elevated status. At this moment, she wanted to remind him that she was a duchess and had been given the title long before he ever stepped foot into Mr Nesbit’s law office.

‘Mr Alexander, is it?’ A small smile tugged at his lips, as if he found her amusing.

Kittens were amusing. Small children were amusing. She was a duchess. She was not amusing!

‘That was the name you were given, is it not?’ she replied sharply.

‘It is and I had gone by that name for thirty-five years until people began to call me by my new one. It has been a while since anyone has called me Mr Alexander.’

If she thought it would have pleased him in some odd way to refer to him by his original name, she would have called him Skeffington instead. ‘Why do you consider me wilful?’

He turned back to her with a different sword in his hand. ‘You truly are asking me that question? You? The woman who wanted to switch houses with me and, when I refused, came to the house she wanted anyway and proceeded to enter—uninvited, I might add—and order my servants around.’ He brought the handle of the sword to his eye and looked down the length of the blade, once more appearing to see how straight it was. Then his eyes met hers. ‘I would say that was wilful. What would you call it?’

A warm rush was rising up her neck and into her cheeks. ‘I don’t know what I would call it. Resourceful , maybe.’

‘ Rude ...you could also call it rude.’

‘I have never been called rude in my life.’

‘Maybe not openly, but I suspect it has been whispered about you behind your back.’

‘Of all the nerve!’ Lizzy tightened her grip on the sword’s handle that she was holding down by her side.

He lowered his sword and cocked his head, looking her in the eye. ‘Why are you still here? I was very generous to allow you and your aunt to take tea before continuing on your journey to harass another homeowner somewhere in the country. I agreed to allow you to stay with the understanding that when you were finished, you would go on your merry way and leave this house. Imagine my surprise when I showed Mr Finley to the door and was asked by my butler if he should have my housekeeper arrange for rooms for you and Mrs Sommersby to stay the night.’

She felt a small weight lift from her chest at the idea she might have another day to walk the halls of this house she had long thought of as her home. ‘And what did you tell him?’

‘That it wasn’t necessary to have rooms arranged for the both of you since I would make sure you left shortly. I did, however, tell him to make certain your servants were fed so they had something warm in their bellies for the journey ahead. Your servants should not have to suffer because their mistress had made a foolish decision.’

‘I don’t make foolish decisions.’ Not any that she would admit to him at least.

He arched his brow and did not appear convinced. ‘You arrived on my doorstep in the middle of winter, from who knows how far away, assuming I would not be here and you and your aunt would be granted use of my house by my staff. That sounds foolish to me.’

‘It was a risk worth taking. My aunt resides in Bath. It is not too far a journey from here. If we had been unable to stay, we would simply have continued on to her home. Haven’t you ever tried something just to see if it was possible?’

‘More times than I’d care to admit. Is that what you were doing in coming here today? You were just trying to see if you could indeed stay here for a while. What is it about this house that makes you want it so badly?’

She couldn’t confess the complete truth to him. It would make her sound pathetic and needy. Let him believe whatever he wanted. Maybe there was still a way to convince him that he would be happier in the dark and sombre designs of Clivemoore House. Its dark colours would suit his grumpy disposition.

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