Undone By The Billionaire Duke

“I think all three of us are perfectly aware who I’m speaking to.” Eleanor gazed down at Geraldine then, and this time her smile was genuine. “It won’t hurt my feelings if you’d like me to leave, Geraldine. And I don’t mind it if you say so to my face. But the Duke is very deliberately putting you in a position where you can act out his bad impulses, and that isn’t fair.”

“Life isn’t fair,” Hugo murmured, a bit too dark and smooth for Eleanor’s peace of mind.

Eleanor ignored that, wishing it was as easy to ignore him. “It’s also perfectly okay not to know,” she told the little girl. “We met all of five minutes ago. If you’d like to take a little bit longer to make up your mind, that’s fine.”

“You say that with such authority,” Hugo said. “Almost as if we stand in your house instead of mine.”

Then he looked around as if he’d never laid eyes on the hall before in his life, when Eleanor knew full well that he’d been born here. Apparently, the Duke liked a bit of theater. She filed that away.

“But no,” he continued, as if anyone had argued with him. “It’s the same hall I remember from the whole of my benighted childhood, when governesses far stricter than you failed entirely to make me into a decent man. Portraits of my dreary ancestors lining the walls. Pedigrees as far as the eye can see. Grovesmoors in every direction and back again. Which would suggest that the authority lies with me and not you, would it not?”

“Funny,” Eleanor said coolly, keeping her gaze fixed to his as if she wasn’t the least bit intimidated. Because she certainly shouldn’t have been, and why should it matter to her that his gaze felt as intoxicating as it looked? “The agency is under the impression that in this situation, Geraldine has the authority.”

“Do you think so?” Hugo asked with a dangerous sort of laziness in his voice, then.

She didn’t know what he might have said then. Something like temper stormed about in that gaze of his, making her breath feel heavy and tight in her chest.

But she knew, somehow, that it wasn’t temper. Not quite.

“I like her,” Geraldine chimed in then. “I want her to stay.”

The Duke didn’t shift his eyes from Eleanor’s.

“Your wish is my command, my favorite ward,” he said in that same careful tone, and maybe Eleanor was the only one who could hear all those undercurrents. Or feel them, anyway. Swishing around inside of her as if she’d had entirely too much to drink.

As if he was a new brand of spirit served in far more than the usual measures.

Everything felt hot. Entirely too sharp, as if there were some unseen hand clenched around them, gripping them tight. This close, Eleanor was sure that she could feel the heat of the Duke’s body, making that T-shirt of his seem sensible. Making her feel that much warmer and uncomfortable in her own skin.

It’s only the coat, she told herself desperately, but he was still so close. And much too tall. He towered over her the same way he had on that damned horse, and she assured herself there was no particular reason she should have the image of its flailing hooves, rearing up over her, when it was only a man standing in front of her in an entryway. Just a man. No dangerous animal in sight.

She was sure he almost said something, but he didn’t. Instead, he shifted. He pulled one hand out of his jeans pocket, and lifted it. That was all. If she’d seen a stranger do it on the street, she wouldn’t have thought of it as any kind of gesture. It seemed accidental.

But it wasn’t, she realized the next moment, because suddenly the hall was filled with people.

Geraldine was swept away in the care of two clucking nannies. Someone took Eleanor’s bags, another person took her coat, and then suddenly there was a very neatly dressed, efficient-looking older woman bearing down on her with a tight smile on her mouth and her steel gray hair tucked back in a bun that looked a great deal like Eleanor’s own.

“Mrs. Redding, I presume,” Eleanor said as the woman drew close.

“Miss Andrews.” The woman greeted her in the same briskly matter-of-fact tone Eleanor recognized from the telephone calls they’d had. “If you’ll come with me.”

As Eleanor followed her deeper into the depths of the great house, she realized that the Duke was nowhere to be seen. Then he’d disappeared in all the commotion.

She told herself she was relieved.

“I do apologize that there was no one waiting to collect you from the station,” the housekeeper said as she strode through the maze of halls, not pausing for an instant to give Eleanor a glimpse of the splendor closing in on all sides. Eleanor found she was grateful. She was afraid that if she stopped or stared for too long at any one thing, in any of the many beautiful rooms they hurried past, she’d be mesmerized for days. “It was an oversight.”

Eleanor doubted that, for some reason. Or she doubted that this woman made any oversights, perhaps. But this was her first day, and she had the distinct impression she’d already irritated her employer, so there was no reason to dig that ditch any deeper.

“I had a lovely walk,” she said instead. “It was a nice chance to take in the area. And quite atmospheric.”

“The moors are nothing if not filled with atmosphere,” the housekeeper said, an undercurrent in her voice that made Eleanor’s ears prick up. “You’ll want to be careful of the winds, however. They crop up out of nowhere and howl terribly wherever they go. They have a way of getting under your skin, you’ll find. Whether you’re aware of it or not.”

Eleanor didn’t think Mrs. Redding was talking about the Yorkshire wind. Or not only about the Yorkshire wind.

“I’ll be certain to dress appropriately for the elements, then,” Eleanor said after a moment, her tone even.

The woman led her down an endless hallway, then stopped at the far end.

“These are your rooms,” Mrs. Redding said, waving Eleanor into the waiting suite. “I hope it will be sufficient. I’m afraid it’s a bit less spacious than some of the previous governesses were hoping for.”

Eleanor wanted to tell the woman she had been expecting a closet, or perhaps a cot down in a basement. Wherever the servants were kept in a place like this.

But she couldn’t get the words out of her mouth, because she was too busy being overwhelmed. Again.

Mrs. Redding had said rooms not room, and she hadn’t misspoken.

The flat she shared with Vivi could easily have fit into one part of the large room she walked into first, and it took her long, stunned moments to realize that it was, in fact, her own sitting room. And Mrs. Redding was still going, straight into the next room, which it took Eleanor another long beat to realize was a great closet. For the grand wardrobe she didn’t possess.

The bedroom itself was on the far side of a huge bathroom that looked like a spa to Eleanor’s untutored eyes, and as she walked into it, trailing behind Mrs. Redding, Eleanor was certain that this was the biggest dwelling space she’d ever been in.

One side of the room was dominated by a massive four-poster bed with carved wood posts and more carved wood as a canopy over top, like some kind of queen’s bower. There was another fireplace, and more places to sit around it, as if the whole sitting room wasn’t enough.

Eleanor’s breathing had gone a bit shallow. But she pulled it together, and smiled serenely at Mrs. Redding.

“It will do,” she murmured, trying her best to sound dry and sophisticated and professional. Instead of like an overexcited child in a candy store.

After the older woman left her, with instructions about where and when Eleanor was to present herself later for a tour and a breakdown of her duties, Eleanor found herself standing in the middle of this bedroom she couldn’t imagine ever calling her own. If possible, she felt more out of place than she had downstairs, where somehow the Duke’s arrogance had made her forget herself and Geraldine’s fierce, obvious loneliness had caught at her.

But here in these sumptuous rooms, she had nothing to fight. No one to defend. Only elegant emptiness all around.

Nothing but herself.

Whoever the hell that was.

CHAPTER THREE (#u450f2e33-46fe-5210-85cf-59dbb060dec6)

HUGO HAD NO idea what had gotten into him.

He didn’t know what it was about starchy, overly puffy-coated Eleanor Andrews that scraped beneath his skin. But there was no denying the fact that he, Hugo Grovesmoor, who had never chased a woman in his entire life, had been lying in wait for this one.

It was extraordinary.

Hugo told himself he needed to see what on earth was hidden beneath that enormous coat of hers, that was all. That not knowing might keep him up at night. Was she a marshmallow creature like the monster in that old movie? Or had she hid her true, svelte form away in a billowy suit of armor?

And he knew when she didn’t back down in the foyer or unzip that great horror of a coat more than an inch or two that he needed to retreat back to his part of the house, carry on living the life of ease and leisure and loathing the whole of the world begrudged him these days, and forget all about his ward and the governess she’d decided to favor on sight. He knew it.

So he had no explanation for why he found himself lurking about in the wing he’d given over to Geraldine because he knew Mrs. Redding was giving Eleanor a tour and showing her where and how she’d be expected to do her work. The governess’s quarters were in this same wing, one floor above, right up the nearby stairs—a fact that there was absolutely no reason at all for Hugo to keep reciting to himself.