Miranda Jarrett - The Golden Lord

Had he forgiven her? she wondered warily. Heaven knew dukes could do whatever they pleased. Was this his way of showing that he was willing to overlook whatever unwitting misstep she’d made earlier?

“I trust my eyes to tell me the truth, Your Grace,” she said, hugging the coverlet around her shoulders. “I could scarce mistake a gentleman as imposing as yourself for some wandering specter.”

“Ah,” he said lightly, lowering his hand to the balustrade as his gaze never left her face. “So much for the magic spell cast by moonlight. Are you feeling better, then?”

“Thank you, quite.” She nodded, nervously smoothing her hair back behind one ear. How could she not be nervous, considering how carefully she’d have to tread with him? “Your Grace, please let me ask your forgiveness for…for whatever I said before that…that disturbed you so.”

He frowned. “Nothing disturbed me,” he said, “and so there’s no reason to apologize. Shouldn’t you return to your bed?”

“I’m not sleepy,” she said. “When I asked you what you wished me to be, Your Grace, I meant nothing wrongful by it. I only meant that because I could—can—recall nothing of my past, it seemed reasonable enough to look forward, to the present and the future where for now you are the only constant.”

“I can send for a sleeping draught from Dr. Gristead if you wish.” His looked down at his fingers resting on the moss-dappled stone, considering. “You are my guest. That is all. I have asked for no such grand gesture as to make me the center of your universe.”

“It’s fresh air that I sought, not sleep,” she said, “much the same as you did yourself. And I intend no grand gesturing, Your Grace. Rather, it’s the one practical thing I can seize for myself. If I have no other past, then I must make do with what I have in the present. And that, you see, is you.”

Oh, Jenny, Jenny, that was awkwardly phrased, and to what purpose? Think, lass, think! Think of what Rob would say, how many useful details he’d be learning of the duke and his circumstances in this precious time alone together, while all you can do is to babble on like some giddy green serving girl!

“I haven’t even tried to sleep yet,” the duke was saying, still looking away from her. “You see how I haven’t changed my clothes since supper. From habit I seldom see my bed before three or even four.”

“Fine gentleman often don’t, Your Grace.” She’d learned that from her father, who’d freely embraced gentlemanly habits—gaming, drinking and other such late-night amusements—without the income to support them. “I’d scarce expect you to keep farmer’s hours and rise with the cock’s crow.”

He smiled at her, something so unexpected that she felt a shiver of startled pleasure ripple down her spine.

“But I do keep farmer’s hours,” he admitted, “especially here in the country. I find I can accomplish all manner of things when the sun is down. Some nights I simply don’t sleep at all.”

“But that’s not good for you, Your Grace!” she protested, gliding over the nighttime accomplishments. Those were best left without inquiry, at least while she wore only a coverlet and a nightshift and most especially while she was feeling so giddy in his presence. “Perhaps you should be the one to ask for a sleeping draught.”

“I think not.” He shrugged carelessly, a simple gesture filled with potent charm. “I’ve been like that as long as I can recall, at least since I was boy at school. Besides, if I’d been snoring away yesterday morning, the way you’d have me do, then I wouldn’t have gone out with Jetty and Gus, and I—rather, they—wouldn’t have found you.”

She ducked her chin contritely. “I should thank you again, Your Grace, if you would but allow me.”

“Which I won’t, because it’s not necessary.” He tapped his palm on the balustrade and smiled again, the kind of smile meant to end their conversation as definitely as a period did a sentence. “Now whether either one of us plans to sleep or not, Miss Corinthia, perhaps it would be best if we each returned to our separate—”

“No—that is, not yet!” She gulped, wondering desperately what had become of all her well-practiced poise in such positions. She was supposed to be good at this. “That is, the evening is so fair, and I am not tired, and you aren’t, either, and…and—”

“And so we should remain here together awhile longer?”

She nodded vigorously, relieved he’d understood despite her dithering.

“Even if this must seem a, ah, compromising situation for a young lady like yourself?” he asked, more bemused than scandalized. “Swaddled only in bedclothes, your feet quite bare, alone in the moonlight with a wicked old rogue like me?”

She made a little puff of indignation. “I never said you were wicked, or old, or a rogue!”

He laughed, and roguishly, too. “I’ll admit I’m gratified by that, even though I shouldn’t be. You know there are others who would judge me with far less sympathy in these circumstances.”

“I wouldn’t. Besides, who else will ever know?” she asked, sweeping one arm, draped with a coverlet wing, to encompass the rest of the sleeping household. “Who is there to see us, Your Grace, or even to miss us when—oh, please, you are not married, are you?”

“I?” he asked, a question to her question and no answer at all. “Why?”

“Because I should like to know, Your Grace,” she explained. “Not because I have any designs upon you, but because while being your guest is one thing, being the guest of you and your lady wife would be quite another altogether.”

“Ah,” he said. “So you would expect her to have come inspected you by now?”

“Well, yes.” Jenny smiled wryly. “I don’t believe any wife worth her salt would lump me into the same category as a stray puppy.”

“And here we had a straw-filled basket and a dish of warm milk all ready for you in the stable, right beside Jetty and Gus!” He chuckled, but the smile didn’t last and even in the moonlight she could see the fresh wariness in his expression. “But tell me. Why does my being wed seem so damned inevitable?”

“Because of who you are, Your Grace,” she answered promptly, with another little curtsy for emphasis. “You’re not like common folk, free to marry or not as we please. Dukes must marry their duchesses, to produce the next generation of heirs to your lands and titles and goodness knows what else.”

“But I’m not married,” he protested. “Never have, nor likely ever shall.”

“No, Your Grace?” she asked curiously. “How…how remarkable.”

Of course Rob would judge it not only remarkable but remarkably lucky. It was always easier to win the confidence and trust of a lonely bachelor, to gull him without a wife to ask suspicious questions about where his money was going. That was the situation here, as Rob would see at once, and one he and Jenny had worked often before.

And yet for Jenny it wasn’t the same at all. How could she lump this duke into the same hamper with the other fusty old bachelors with bad teeth and ill-fitting wigs that she and Rob had known?

“‘Remarkable’?” he repeated, still guarded. “You consider it so remarkable that I have never inflicted myself upon some poor woman in matrimony?”

“No,” she said. “Rather I think it remarkable that no woman has inflicted herself upon you. Surely you must have a trail of broken hearts to your credit.”

“I can assure you there’s not a one,” he said, his wariness fading, as if she hadn’t said what he’d been dreading after all. “You flatter me to believe otherwise, miss, but if you knew me better, you’d realize that I’m hardly the great prize you seem to think.”