The Duchess War

She didn’t look at him, putting papers and a pencil into a slim satchel. “If it suits you, Your Grace.”

“We could decide it now.”

“If that is your wish, Your Grace.”

She was pointedly giving him her profile—the side with the scar again. Objectively, he knew that the scar was the kind of failure in perfect symmetry that would have most men looking away from her, unwilling to even glance at the mark. But it didn’t bother him. She wore it like a mask at a ball, as if she could use it to push him away.

“I am going to be out of town for the next few days,” he told her. “I’ve agreed to accompany my cousin…well, never mind.”

Miss Pursling ducked her head. “As you require, Your Grace. The corrected handbills won’t be printed for a few days in any event.”

“Shall we say Thursday, then?”

“Whatever is easiest for you.”

“Then let’s meet at two in the morning,” he suggested. “When the bears come out to play.”

She finally glanced up at that, a quick flashing look of anger that was just as quickly suppressed. Robert sighed. She did her best not to draw attention to herself—that quiet voice, that understated way of discussing her accomplishments. He wondered if there was any connection between that mark on her cheek and her reticence. Hers was not the quiet of the naturally shy, after all, but a silence of a different quality altogether.

“Come, Miss Pursling,” he said. “You can do better than all of this. I didn’t think you were the sort to make idle threats.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” She turned away from him slightly. And was that a lift to her nose?

It was. She’d actually turned her nose up at him.

Robert suppressed a grin.

“We had a deal,” he said. He spoke low—so quietly that Doctor Grantham, now standing at the door and adjusting his coat, would not hear. “I flirt with you, and you try to destroy my reputation. You’re not upholding your end of the bargain. You haven’t done anything to me at all. I never took you for a welcher.”

She tilted her head to look at him sidelong. “A thousand pardons, Your Grace.” She sounded anything but sorry. “Were you actually expecting me to give you progress reports?” As she spoke she did up the buckles on her satchel.

“I figured you’d get a few preliminary jabs in, yes.”

She gave him a frosty look. “Clearly you hold yourself to low standards. Whatever your faults may be, I do not jab prematurely.”

He choked on a sputtering, outraged laugh and looked about. But there was no longer anyone around to hear that little remark.

She folded up the sample handbill that she’d brought with her, now marked up with the Commission’s notes, and put it in her skirt pocket. “I surely don’t parade my strategy before my enemies. That would be idiotic.”

“What you mean is that you’ve not yet discovered any kind of proof.”

She gave him a level look and a shake of her head. “What I mean is that I’m not so foolishly prideful that I’ll disclose everything I’ve learned just because of a little inept needling on your part.”

“Ouch,” he said ruefully. “You accuse me first of jabbing prematurely, and then of inept needling. Take pity on a man’s pride.”

She smiled a little at that and leaned over and patted his hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said sweetly. “I had no notion that you would be so susceptible to the wilting of your…pride.” Said in a low, certain tone, that much innuendo sent a flash of heat through him. Wilting was the opposite of what he was doing. She hefted the satchel on her shoulder and headed for the door. She’d taken two steps before she turned around and gave him a low smile, one that seemed to stab straight through his gut. “I’m sure your prick is as massive as your head is thick.”

There was no way he was going to let her walk out on that condescending, sexually-charged note, leaving him stewing in lust.

He took three steps after her, setting his hand on her sleeve. “Wait.”

But she didn’t, and so he found himself following after her, keeping silent as they made their way through the hostelry out onto the street. When they came out into the daylight, when they’d walked far enough that nobody was close enough to hear them, Robert spoke again.

“What I meant to say was—I know you’ve discovered nothing. Under the guise of obtaining bids for that little handbill of yours, you’ve been to every printer in town, looking for evidence that they’re working with me. And you haven’t found a thing.”

She paused at that, her head cocking, and turned to him. “You’ve been watching me,” she finally said.

“Not as such. That would be rather sordid, having you followed about. But I have asked a few business acquaintances to let me know what you ask about.” He smiled at her. “As I didn’t precisely expect you to give me progress reports.”

She shrugged. “It would be sordid if you had a lover followed about in a fit of jealous suspicion. But we’re enemies, recall. Keeping me under watch is merely prudent. I applaud it.”

She started walking away again. Robert stared after her in bemusement.

He tried to be honest with himself. He had to be, as so few others were. His friend, Sebastian, could charm the bloomers off even the most upright dragons of the ton—and had, on occasion. His brother had a razor-sharp wit on the one hand, and a way of making others comfortable on the other. Oliver could make ladies laugh.

For himself… He could rarely think of how to respond when immersed in that heady back-and-forth. Sometimes he thought of clever things to say…hours later. Usually, he committed the worst sin possible: He said what he was really thinking. That was why he came out with gems like, I like your tits. Not one of his finest moments, that.

“No,” he said, with a shake of his head, falling in step beside her. “Why do we have to be enemies? We could be…allies.”

She squinted at him suspiciously. “Why? Because you need more half-blind near-spinsters on your side?”

He winced.

Her lips twitched. “Never mind. I saw you at the Finneys’. Clearly, you do.”

He ignored this. “Because when you set out to prove that I was the author of the handbills, you first made a list of every printer in town, and then systematically visited them. You have a sense of…tactics. I appreciate that.”