Bringing Down the Duke

It should have warned her.

“I will not come out in favor of the amendment,” he said.

She blinked as if he had flicked something at her face. “You won’t?”

Of all the scenarios she had anticipated, this one had not occurred to her.

He shook his head.

“But . . . whyever did you agree to meet us?”

The corners of his mouth lifted, and all at once she realized that she had stopped Your Gracing him, that she was questioning him, something a random petitioner would never dare. Oh, blast him.

“I won’t support it,” he said, “but I can give you the names of MPs you should focus on. And I can advise you on how to improve your campaign in general.”

She tried gathering her scattered wits. “You won’t vote in our favor, but you are willing to help?”

“I am not against your proposal on principle, Annabelle.”

A monstrous thought crossed her mind. “Is it . . . Is this personal?”

A small pause ensued. “You think I hold a grudge because you rejected my offer.”

She could only nod.

He scrubbed his hand over his face. “Do you genuinely think that? That would hardly be flattering to either of us.”

“I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“It is not in my interest to officially support the issue at this point in time,” he said, and she could feel that this was his final word on the matter.

A lump of bone-deep frustration blocked her throat. Why did this feel like a personal betrayal?

She came to her feet, making him stand also.

“This is regrettable,” she said, and, pettily, she added, “I thought you were a fair man.”

His face went blank. “I am,” he said coolly.

“Perhaps you can explain it to me, then,” she said, “how is it fair that my utterly inept cousin is in command of me, for no reason other than that he’s a man and I’m a woman? How is it fair that I master Latin and Greek as well as any man at Oxford, yet I am taught over a baker’s shop? How is it fair that a man can tell me my brain was wired wrong, when his main achievement in life seems to be his birth into a life of privilege? And why do I have to beg a man to please make it his interest that I, too, may vote on the laws that govern my life every day?”

Her voice had turned hectic and sharp, and she was clutching her pen in her fist like a dagger, but she had somehow become incensed beyond caution, her blood a dull roar in her ears. Montgomery was watching her blatantly unfazed, and that made her want to pick up his shiny paperweight and hurl it against the wall, just to hear something crash.

“Oh no, you won’t,” he said, and moved with surprising speed; before she blinked, he was in front of her, crowding her back against his desk.

She glared up at him. His nearness should have irritated her, but this close, she could smell him, his scent familiar and exhilarating, and she wavered. Anguish began creeping into the cracks of her anger.

Her hand with the pen fell useless to her side.

Montgomery made a soothing sound. “That is better,” he said.

“What is?” she said warily.

He took a small step back. “You speaking your mind,” he said, “instead of maintaining that pretense.”

“I assure you, it was not a pretense,” she said stiffly.

“Don’t try to manage me like a fool,” he shot back.

“I—” She closed her mouth again.

He was right. She had not been honest with him.

If only he knew that until today, she had felt more like herself in his presence, had been more true in her actions around him than with any other man.

She became aware of how close he still stood, how his chest rose and fell with every breath he took. How awfully right it felt to be close. How right it would feel to just bury her face against his competent shoulder and feel his arms around her.

“I believe we are finished here,” she said.

“You and I should talk,” he replied.

“Perhaps you would be so kind to set out your recommendations for us in a letter,” she said, and squeezed past him to reach her reticule.

“Annabelle.” His hand closed over hers, warm and certain.

She glanced up and met his eyes, clear and deep like a glacial lake, and God help her she wanted to fall in and sink to the bottom.

She swallowed. “There’s nothing to say about you and me, Your Grace.”

“That is what I thought,” he said, “but then you unexpectedly showed up in my office.”

Her heart began beating unpleasantly fast again. “I was sent here in an official capacity.”

“You could have declined.”

“I assure you, I tried.”

“Who would know if you hadn’t followed through with the meeting,” he challenged, “had you gone to a café instead of coming here?”

“Are you suggesting I should have lied to my friends?” she asked, incredulous, and damned if she hadn’t considered doing exactly that. Somehow, she had still ended up in his office. “Lies have a tendency of getting exposed,” she informed him.

Annoyance and amusement warred behind his eyes, and the fact that it showed so plainly meant that he wasn’t half as unmoved as his calm voice made him out to be.

She realized he was still holding her hand. His thumb had begun stroking back and forth over her palm, the friction creating a warm, tingling sensation that made her head swim.

And of course, he noticed. His eyes heated. “Annabelle,” he said softly. “How have you been?”

She pulled her hand away, grasping for the tattered remnants of her resolve to be indifferent.

“I’m well, thank you.” She began stowing her notebook and her pen in her reticule.

“Good,” she heard him say. “I admit, I am not. You are constantly on my mind.”

Her gaze flew to his face.

There was his sincerity again, etched in every feature.

She hadn’t expected him to speak about feelings. She hadn’t been sure he had any feelings.

Her throat tightened with an overwhelming emotion. Of course she’d known, somewhere deep down. She’d been lying to herself. It had been easier to ignore the whole sorry affair as long as she could pretend he cared nothing for her. Now he was taking even that away from her.

“Such sentiments pass,” she said tightly.

He tilted his head. “Perhaps. But unlikely. Once in place, my inclinations are rather persistent.”

Indeed, they would be. He did nothing half-measure, so the object of his inclination had better be prepared for a long and thorough stint of his attention.

Her shoulders sagged. “How could you,” she said. “How could you believe that I . . .” Her voice frayed. The scorching, frantic intimacy they had shared in his library flashed before her eyes and derailed anything she had ever learned about rhetoric.

“How could I believe what,” he coaxed gently.

“In the library. How could you think that I would negotiate terms,” she said, “and at such a moment.”

Understanding dawned in his eyes, surprisingly slowly for a man known as one of the country’s sharpest strategists.

“I see,” he said. “The timing did take me by surprise, but it was never a question that we would talk terms, Annabelle. A man takes care of the woman in his life.”

His life. Not his bed. She was trained to pay attention to the choice and nuances of words for her academic work, and this was a glaring, significant choice of one word over the other.

She felt hot and weak, too weak to move away when he raised his hand to her face. His fingertip stroked lightly over her bottom lip, and the tender contact unleashed a shower of sparks through her body.

Unthinking, she turned away and started toward the nearest window.

His study was on an upper floor, granting him an unobstructed view of Westminster Abbey. The steep spires and turrets were pointing like arrows toward the clear sky.

Footfalls approached and he halted next to her, his hands clasped behind his back, and so they stood side by side, wordlessly, acutely aware of the air pulsing heavily between them. On the street below, people carried on with their lives, a soundless teeming like ants across a forest floor.

“Were you married in the abbey?” she asked.

“No.” There was a sarcastic smile in his voice. “But they will bury me there.”

Her head jerked toward him. Lit by the pale winter sun, his strong profile looked vital, if not indestructible. The idea of him cold and white in a crypt, his perceptive eyes forever closed, squeezed her throat like a fist. For a beat, the world careened around her in complete silence, as if she’d gone deaf.

She wrapped her arms around herself.

He turned to her, forever sensing her shifts in mood. Surely he knew that she was still wholly in his thrall. Possibly for years to come.

“All right,” she said quietly. “How would it work? Us.”

His eyes narrowed. “How would you want it to work?” he finally said, his calm tone not fooling her for a moment. His body was tense as a panther’s coiling to pounce.

She gave a sullen shrug. “I wouldn’t know. I have no experiences with that sort of business.”

“Neither do I,” he said evenly. “Either way, the rules are for us to make.”