Chapter 15
Since the injury he’d sustained had resulted in doctors coming in to assess his condition, William had been humiliated.
He’d been outraged.
He’d been annoyed.
In fact, he’d thought he’d felt everything there was to feel about his injury.
Until this morning.
Until Elsie Allenby.
More precisely, until Elsie had placed her delicate fingertips upon his face and gently traced the contours. And this time, there had been no pain accompanying the human touch. Rather, her touch. She’d glided her hands over his face in a caress that had been fleeting.
Standing at the window overlooking the gardens below, William stared out at Elsie as she worked. Her hands flew quickly, tugging weeds free and tossing them into a sizable pile alongside the faithful dog who was never far from her side.
Those hands held him riveted.
Hers were capable and determined hands, and they were not like the satiny-soft ones of the late wife he’d buried or of the whores who’d filled his bed in the long, lonely year after her passing.
Elsie had callused palms and slightly rough fingertips that marked her real in ways that no other woman before had been.
She was one who reveled in all the work she carried out, and God help him, there was a sensuality to that self-assuredness and strength that was far more entrancing than the overt sexuality of the women he’d bedded this past year.
Just then, Elsie sat back on her heels. The fabric of her faded violet dress stretched, highlighting the graceful expanse of her back.
William swallowed hard. His pulse kicked up a beat. What in hell had become of him? The women he desired were blonde, statuesque beauties, as his late wife had been. He wasn’t a man enthralled by a small slip of a woman such as Elsie. Or he hadn’t been.
But then, you’ve never known a woman such as her.
This fascination came not from what she looked like, or a mere physical hungering, but from something that ran far deeper.
His palms went moist, and he dusted them against the sides of his trousers.
It was madness. Madness that came from the state of isolation he’d embraced. For… he enjoyed her company. He enjoyed the banter he’d not known he’d missed. A banter that wasn’t at all deferential and didn’t take into consideration his title. She spoke to him as though… he was a man.
Not a duke.
Not the Sovereign.
But a man.
That was an unfamiliar state he’d never known, even as a child. The world saw in him his title, and that had resulted in a boundary going up between him and the rest of the world. As such, he’d never known what it was to be challenged, and at every turn, as Elsie did. There was a brutal honestly to every word that left her lips, and that only added to this dangerous fascination with the lady.
Don’t be a bloody fool. She speaks to you as though you are nothing more than her patient.
William flexed his fingers at the taunting reminder at the back of his head. Insecurity in his own worth, once foreign but now all too familiar, dwelled within him, and this time, he thrust it aside.
He might have become a recluse. He might have forgotten how to be and function and exist among polite company… or any company, really, but he well knew the faintest inhalation of a woman’s desire, the heated glimmer that lit her eyes.
Nay, theirs was a shared passion. That was a certainty. It was a sentiment that she fought. It had sent her racing from the breakfast room. And that flight… also set her apart.
Elsie shifted, and he leaned forward on the balls of his feet, as drawn to her as those blooms she’d recently allowed their desperately craved sunlight.
Except…
She jammed the hideous ancient bonnet back atop her head, grabbed her scissors, and set to work pruning the next bush.
The crystal pane reflected his scowling visage, and William fell back on his heels. Yanking out his watch fob, he checked the time.
It had been nearly two hours since she’d taken her leave and advised they should meet in his chambers, a delicious prospect made all the more enticing by her crimson blush and breathlessness as she’d fled his company. And when he’d sought out his chambers after his morning meal, it had not been an eagerness to be alone that had fueled his quickened strides, but rather, the prospect of again being alone with her, of listening to the singsong quality of her voice that was a balm upon his blackened soul as she spoke with skill and confidence of the human body and pain.
She was an enigma, this woman.
Nothing short of a siren who stirred a potent desire within him, not only because of the curve of her hips and the taste of her lips, but because of the words of wisdom she breathed at their every meeting.
Elsie shifted, and William’s muscles went on alert once more as she stood. His heart knocked around in anticipation as she gathered up her things and carried them—
His brow dipped.
—over to a row of once expertly sculpted English boxwoods?
Dropping the items onto the thick grass, Elsie retained her hold on a gingham blanket. She snapped the fabric open, and a light gust of wind caught the edges, toying with them before they settled onto the earth. She spoke, her voice muffled by the distance and glass between them, but still light and entrancing.
Elsie snapped her fingers, calling Bear over.
Dutifully, that loyal creature came to his feet and joined her on the blanket. It was a pull William himself well understood, an inexplicable draw that she possessed. She favored the dog with a loving caress that William would gladly sell the rest of his dark soul for.
And with that, Elsie began clipping the tree closest to her.
Bloody hell.
Why, she was settling in once more. It was as though she’d forgotten their agreed-upon meeting. He gnashed his teeth before he realized what he was doing. An involuntary groan ripped from his chest, and he squinted, all his muscles tightening to ward off the pain.
Tension in your body will cause strain and discomfort… Each movement elicits a like response…
The sage advice she’d given, pinged around his memory.
Spinning on his heel, William stormed from his room and marched through the corridors. With every step that brought him closer to the minx, William fumed.
How dare she? They’d had an appointment, one that she’d requested and he’d agreed to.
And then she’d simply not shown? Instead, she’d remained in the gardens, with that wistful smile and the company of her dog?
A trio of chambermaids caught sight of his approach and went wide-eyed, hurriedly stepping out of his path. Whispers followed in his wake.
His neck went hot.
Of course, the world had grown accustomed to the man who’d shut himself away in his chambers and wandered the halls only when the world slept, who otherwise didn’t leave this self-imposed prison.
It was just more evidence of the stranger he’d become, a man he didn’t recognize, and he hated Elsie Allenby for opening his eyes to that truth.
He reached the door that led out to the gardens and stopped.
No, he didn’t hate her. William swallowed hard. He despised what she’d made him see—that he hated himself. For that was a good deal worse. One could shut away strangers and staff and even family, but one could not alter the visage of the man reflected back in the mirror each day.
A man who’d so failed the world around him.
With jerky movements, William tossed the door open.
A bright blast of sunlight streamed inside.
Where days before his eyes had strained under that imposition, now he barely squinted. This time, William easily found her. Her hands flew quickly as she cut the overgrown tree. She did not, however, make any move to turn, to stand, or even acknowledge him.
Bear, however, sprang to his feet. With a happy yelp, the too-stupid-for-his-own-good mutt abandoned his mistress’ side and sprinted over to William as fast as his old, graying legs would allow.
Elsie’s complete absorption in her task only set his fury ratcheting up a notch.
“You,” he barked, stalking forward.
The late spring wind gusted, filling his nostrils with the crisp scent of warm air that had shed its winter chill. The subtle hints of flowers and greenery wafted, the pure scents of his youth, back when he’d innocently raced through the grounds with his siblings.
Misery stole through him, as unexpected and debilitatingly acute as all the other losses he’d suffered this year, and he jerked to a halt.
William stood immobile, his hands curled at his sides, frozen under the weight of all he… missed.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
Uncle William, you may be fast, but you shan’t catch me…
The echo of his nephew’s laughter, forgotten until now, flooded his mind, as clear as when the boy had last visited William’s country estate. Back when Adeline had been alive, and William blissfully untouched by the ugliness that had visited so many of the men and women under his command.
“Hullo, William.”
His eyes shot open. That casual, lyrical greeting was a stark juxtaposition to the bleakness that gripped him.
He stalked forward. “Where were you?” he snapped. He was a bastard. Even as he knew it was the height of wrongness to take his frustrations and furies out on this woman, he could not suppress the irrational sentiments. William came to a stop over her, with Bear dropping onto his back legs alongside him.
Elsie paused in midclip of a branch and, with her spare hand, doffed her bonnet.
The sun’s rays toyed with those dark strands. She wiped the back of her hand along her damp brow. “I trust it is clear what I’m doing.” Elsie snapped another too-long branch, and it landed on a rapidly growing pile.
He growled. “You know what I meant, Elsie.” How could she be so infuriatingly calm? So immune to him that she should not care whether or not they met, while he was consumed by the need to be with her? To see her. To talk with her.
My God, what is happening to me?