Bringing Down the Duke
“Certainly, miss. Which one?”
More than one library? “Why, the prettiest one.”
Jeanne nodded as if that were a most reasonable request. “Follow me, miss.”
The library was tucked away behind an arched oak door that groaned as it swung open. Through a wide stained-glass window opposite, between the two rows of dark wooden shelves, light poured in as if divided from a prism. A path of oriental rugs led to a crackling fireplace near the window, where a wing chair was waiting like a ready embrace.
Annabelle took an unsteady step over the threshold. There was an eerie tug of recognition as she surveyed the room, as if someone had peeked into her mind to see how she imagined the perfect library and had put it into stone and timber.
“It’s pretty with the ceiling like this, isn’t it, miss?”
Annabelle tilted back her head. The vaulted ceiling was painted a rich midnight blue and glimmered faintly with all the stars of a moonless night.
“It’s beautiful.” In fact . . . she was looking at a painstaking portrayal of the real sky, the winter sky, if she wasn’t mistaken.
“’Tis real gold,” Jeanne said proudly. “Just ring if you need anything, miss.”
The door clicked softly shut behind her.
Quiet. It was so quiet here. If she held her breath, she’d hear the dust dance.
She wandered toward the fire, her fingertips trailing over leather-bound spines, the smooth curve of a globe, polished ebony wood. Textures of wealth and comfort.
The armchair was a solid, masculine thing. A padded footstool was positioned to accommodate long legs toward the grate, and a small table stood within convenient reach. The faintest hint of tobacco smoke lingered.
She hovered. It would be bold, using the chair of the master of the house.
But the master was not home.
She sank into the vast upholstery with a groan of delight.
She’d open the book in a minute. She hadn’t sat down and done nothing in . . . years.
The lovely warmth from the fire began seeping into her skin. Her half-lidded gaze traced the stained-glass vignettes in the window—mystical birds and flowers, intricately entwined. Beyond, snowflakes spiraled silently, endlessly. The fire popped, softly, softly . . .
She woke with a start. There was a presence, close and looming. Her eyes snapped open, and her heart slammed against her ribs. A man stood over her. She was staring at his chest. Her pulse thudded in her ears as she forced her eyes up, and up. A black, silken cravat, perfect knotting. A stiff white collar. The hard curve of a jaw.
She already knew who he was. Still. Her stomach plunged when she finally met the pale gaze of the Duke of Montgomery.
Chapter 7
His eyes widened a fraction, and then his pupils sharpened to pinpoints.
The fine hairs on her body stood like fur on a hissing cat.
Oh, he had not forgotten her for a moment—he was staring down at her, irritation pouring off him like fog from an ice chest.
“What. Are you doing. In my house.”
His voice was as compelling as she remembered, the cool precision of it slicing right into her racing thoughts. A perfectly unmanageable man.
Somehow, she came to her feet. “Your Grace. I thought you were in France.”
Why, why would she say such a thing?
The duke’s expression had changed from appalled to incredulous. “Miss Archer, is it not?” he said, almost kindly. And that was rather unnerving.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
He hadn’t stepped back. He stood too close, and at nearly a head taller than she. If he intended to intimidate her with his body, it was counterproductive, for intimidation roused a strong emotion in her: resistance.
He did not strike her as a man who tolerated resistance.
His fitted black coat encased remarkably straight, wide shoulders and a trim waist. His cropped, light hair looked almost white in a shaft of December sun. Austere and colorless like winter himself, the duke. And, potentially, just as capable of freezing her to death.
“You are my brother’s companion, I presume,” he said.
She did not like the ring he had given the word companion. “My Lord Devereux and I are acquainted, Your Grace.”
She swayed forward an inch, to see if he’d do the polite thing and give her space. He didn’t. She felt his gaze slide over her face, then down her throat. The disdain in his eyes said he noticed everything: the hungry hollows of her cheeks; that her earrings were not real pearls; that Lady Mabel’s old walking dress had been altered by her own hand and clashed with her coloring.
Inside, she crumbled a little.
“The gall of you, to set foot under my roof,” he said. “That is unusual, even for a woman such as yourself.”
She blinked. A woman such as herself? “We . . . are acquainted,” she repeated, her voice sounding strangely distant.
“Acquainted,” Montgomery said, “if that is what you wish to call it, madam. But you picked the wrong man to be acquainted with. I hold the purse strings. Understand that your efforts with Lord Devereux will lead you nowhere.”
Heat washed over her.
He wasn’t displeased about finding her sleeping in his chair; he thought she was his brother’s paramour.
Her and Peregrin Devereux? Ridiculous.
And yet one glance had convinced His Grace that she’d sell herself to noblemen for money.
The violent beat of her heart filled her ears. Her temper, checked for so long, uncoiled and rose like a prodded snake. It took possession, made her cock her hip and peruse him, from his angular face down to his polished shoes and up again, taking his measure as a man. She couldn’t stop the regretful smirk that said he had just been found wanting.
“Your Grace,” she murmured, “I’m sure your purse strings are . . . enormous. But I’m not in the market for you.”
He went still as stone. “Are you suggesting that I just propositioned you?”
“Why, isn’t that usually the reason why a gentleman mentions his purse strings to a woman such as I?”
A muscle in his cheek gave a twitch, and that worked like a cold shower on her hot head.
This was not good.
He was, after all, one of the most powerful men in England.
Unexpectedly, he leaned closer. “You will leave my estate as soon as the roads permit travel again,” he said softly. “You will leave and you will keep away from my brother. Have I made myself clear?”
No reply came to mind. He was so close, his scent began invading her lungs, a disturbingly masculine blend of starch and shaving soap.
She managed a nod.
He stepped back, and his eyes gave an infinitesimal flick toward the door.
He was throwing her out.
Her hand twitched with the mad impulse to slap him, to see the arrogance knocked right off his noble face. Ah, but that arrogance ran to the marrow.
She remembered to snatch the Thucydides and her notebook from the side table.
His gaze pressed cold and unyielding like the muzzle of a pistol between her shoulders all the way to the door.
* * *
The woman held her book before her like a shield as she left, every line of her slender body rigid. She closed the door very gently behind her, and somehow, that felt like a parting shot.
Sebastian flexed his fingers.
He had recognized her as soon as she had blinked up at him.
Green Eyes was in his house.
Green Eyes was his brother’s bit on the side.
She had slept like an innocent in his chair, with her knees pulled to her chest and a hand tucked under her cheek, the soft pulse in her neck exposed. Her profile had been marble still, she had looked like a pre-Raphaelite muse. It had stopped even him in his tracks. She had not looked like a woman who entrapped hapless noblemen, a testimony of her skills.
Her eyes gave her away, keenly intelligent and self-possessed, and hardly innocent. Any doubts, her reactions had settled: no gently bred woman would have reacted with impertinence to his displeasure. This one had wanted to slap him; he had sensed it in his bones. Madness.
He stalked toward the exit.
Being ordered back from Brittany by the queen at once for a crisis meeting was bothersome. Finding his house teeming with drunken lordlings after traveling for twenty hours was unacceptable. But to be sniped at in his own library by this baggage—beyond the pale.
A long, anxious face awaited him when he stepped into the hallway.
“Now, Bonville.”
“Your Grace.” The butler he would normally describe as unflappable had a wild look about him. “I take the fullest responsibility for this . . . situation.”
“I doubt there is a need for that,” Sebastian said, “but do give me an account.”
His housekeeper had become too flustered when he had walked through the front door without notice. She had managed to produce the guest list, and he had set off after the first name, the name of a woman he did not know.
“A dozen gentlemen arrived unannounced last night,” Bonville said, “and Lord Devereux, he clapped me on the back and said, ‘Bonville, be a good chap. You’re already preparing the big house party, there should be plenty of food and drink.’ A dozen, Your Grace! The kitchen staff . . .”
Ah, Peregrin, Peregrin. Briefly, Sebastian entertained the idea to hunt his brother down, to drag him to his study and give him a beating after all. Later. He would deal with his brother later, when anger wasn’t running through his veins like a live current. And he had to play host to his uninvited guests, for to do anything else would be to admit to the world that an eighteen-year-old had just run roughshod over the Duke of Montgomery. Iron self-control kept him from grinding his teeth in front of his butler.