The Golden Lord

“That would be most kind of you, Your Grace,” murmured Jenny. To the best of her knowledge, there hadn’t been any Corinthias gone missing last night, but Mrs. Lowe’s discreet inquiries would serve to let Rob know where she was, and that she was safe. For that matter, she wished she knew if and how he’d escaped the jealous grenadier, and as she thought of her brother, the sum of her family, she felt a single and quite genuine tear slide down her cheek to splat upon the sheet.

“There now, Your Grace, you’ve made her unhappy,” said Mrs. Lowe, reaching over to blot away the tear with Corinthia’s handkerchief. “The poor creature might not be able to recall her home or family, but she still can pine for them.”

Not that the duke cared.

“Tell me, Miss Corinthia,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

“You cannot, Your Grace!” sputtered Gristead indignantly before Jenny could answer. “Given this young woman’s perilous condition, it is not wise for her even to consider eating!”

“And I say it is unwise for her not to,” said the duke with the easy assurance of someone accustomed to always having his own way. “Especially when I’m so hungry myself. Mrs. Lowe, have a table brought, so I might dine in here with the lady. What would you like, Miss Corinthia?”

“Tea, if you please,” she said, realizing she was in fact very hungry, indeed. “And toast, with jam, if that is possible.”

“Anything is possible at Claremont Hall,” declared the duke. “You’ve only to ask. Isn’t that so, Mrs. Lowe?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” said the housekeeper, already backing from the room to begin fulfilling his orders.

“But, Your Grace,” protested the physician again, his chins quivering over the top of his neckcloth. “The young woman is my patient and—”

“Clearly she is out of danger, Gristead,” answered the duke, “and I’m sure you have other patients to see, as well. You can be sure we shall send for you if there is any change.”

After such an obvious dismissal, Gristead could only bow a red-faced farewell and follow the housekeeper from the room.

And leave Jenny alone with the duke.

“So,” he said, pulling a chair closer to the bed. “Here we are, Miss Corinthia.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” she said softly. “Here we are, indeed.”

Indeed, indeed, she thought glumly. It wasn’t just the setting, or the fact that they were alone together, for her unconventional life often tossed her in and out of riskier situations than this. No, what worried her now was how she’d become so acutely aware of the man beside her, of each gesture and word he made. Every detail of him fascinated her, from the way his light hair slipped across his forehead, to the small wavy scar along his jaw, to how his fingers rested lightly on the arm of the chair. He hadn’t so much as hinted at touching her, yet still her heart was racing and her palms were damp, merely from being here with him, and that—that was what put her at such risk and made her feel so uncharacteristically vulnerable.

“You are improved, aren’t you?” he asked with concern, misreading her silence. “I can call Gristead back if you need him.”

“Oh, no, Your Grace,” she said quickly. “I am much better, truly.”

“I’m glad.” He leaned back in the chair with his legs stretched comfortably before him, his elbows on the arms of the chair and his fingertips pressed lightly together in a little tent over the red waistcoat. “But you’re anxious about being here alone with me, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps.” She smiled, ordering herself to put aside her giddiness and concentrate, concentrate. If she didn’t, she could very well find herself in that county almshouse or even the gaol. “My position is not an enviable one, Your Grace. I’ve no sense of who I am, my head aches abominably, and I am undressed and lying in a strange bed, unchaperoned, with a strange man beside me. Isn’t that just cause for anxiety?”

He grinned, clearly pleased by her answer in ways she hadn’t intended. “Not if you trust me as a gentleman.”

“Which is exactly what I keep telling myself, Your Grace.” She slid her shoulders up higher against the pillows until she was almost sitting, being sure to keep the sheets tucked modestly under her arms. “You are a gentleman, a great lord, a man of honor and integrity, and therefore worthy of my trust. Besides, if you’d wished to take advantage of my position, you would have done so already.”

“Ha,” he said, still smiling. “That doesn’t sound like you trust me at all.”

“But I do,” she insisted, though there was something to his smile that warned her against trusting him at all. “I must. What other choice do I have, being that I’m a charitable obligation?”

“I thought we’d already agreed that you were my guest,” he said. He swept his arm through the air, encompassing the entire room. “A lowly charitable obligation would not be put into a bedchamber such as this. My guests, however, are.”

She seized on that. “Have you many guests, Your Grace?”

“Almost none,” he said with a careless shrug. “My brothers, their wives and children. That’s all.”

“All?” she asked, surprised. Most people with grand houses in the country entertained an unending stream of guests for their own amusement as well as for hospitality’s sake. “I should think a lord like you would have an enormous acquaintance!”

“Oh, I do,” he said easily. “But I prefer to see them in London, where they are more manageable and less demanding. I would rather keep Claremont Hall just for me, not them. Here I must please only myself.”

It was very hard for Jenny to imagine a gentleman as elegant as this one living alone among the Sussex fields as a veritable hermit. “Then you must be the prize of every squire’s daughter in the county.”

He grimaced. “Which is precisely why I avoid all contact with the local gentry. I’m certain my neighbors judge me the worst kind of inhospitable recluse and spoilsport. I don’t care. I have more than my fill of society when I am in London.”

Jenny’s smile widened, this time with unabashed relief. She couldn’t begin to guess how far Claremont Hall was from the inn she and Rob had fled in Bamfleigh, or from poor, abandoned Sir Wallace and his library, either. But if the duke didn’t believe in speaking to his country neighbors, then she should be safe enough here, hiding in plain—or rather, grand—sight.

“You are amused that I am a recluse?” he asked dryly.

“No, Your Grace,” she said, twisting the end of one of her braids through her fingers. “I simply do not believe it.”

She meant it as lighthearted teasing to relieve the tension between them, no more, but he didn’t laugh the way she’d expected. Far from it.

“No?” he asked, the edge to his voice a warning that made no sense. “Would you rather believe my interest in this estate is mere country playacting, like the French queen with her beribboned dairy cows before the Bastille fell?”

“No, no,” she answered quickly. She didn’t want to offend him, especially over something as foolish as this. “I only meant that no matter how much any of us pretends to be someone else, in the end we always are what we are.”

“Ah.” For whatever reason, he relaxed. “Then you are a fatalist? You believe that we can never change from what we’re born? That our destiny remains always the same, with no hope of growth or improvement?”

“No, no, no!” She shook her head, then winced and pressed her fingers to the bruise again. “It’s not so complicated as that, Your Grace. I only meant that no matter how many changes you may make for the world to see, you are still at heart, or in your soul, the same creature you were born. That’s all.”

He nodded solemnly. “Then you are a fatalist, if that’s what you believe.”

“That’s what I know,” she said with conviction. She did believe it, too. How could she not, when so much of her life was unabashed deception? If she didn’t believe in herself—Miss Jenny Dell!—independent of whatever new identity Rob had concocted for her, why, then, she’d have nothing at all. “But you don’t agree, do you?”

“On some days I would,” he said lightly, “and other days I wouldn’t. Look, here’s our dinner at last.”

Mrs. Lowe reappeared, leading a little parade of servants. Two footmen came first, carrying a narrow dining table already set with a pressed cloth, followed by more footmen and maidservants bearing cutlery, candlesticks, napkins, even a porcelain bowl full of pink and white flowers, as well as a silver tea service and several covered dishes, each fragrant with wisps of steam.

The table was placed between Jenny’s bed and the duke’s chair, and as one of the footmen lit additional candles, she was able to see more of the details of how well His Grace treated his infrequent guests. She made such appraisals automatically, almost without thinking, for her father had trained both her and Rob in how much such niceties could reveal about their owners’ personalities as well as the depth of their fortunes.

The bedchamber was large and square in the old-fashioned way of country houses, but the furnishings were in the latest London style, delicate and airy, fit for any fine lady. So was the table being set before her: costly new porcelain rimmed with gold, damask linens so spotless she doubted they’d ever been used, and double-weight sterling for the spoons and forks, also so new that the ducal crest engraved upon each one was still crisp and sharp.

In fact, to Jenny’s surprise, everything seemed new. In her experience, titled folk tended to surround themselves with ancient bric-a-brac and gewgaws that had been in their family since at least the days of the Conqueror, another way they separated themselves from jumped-up merchants and mill owners. She’d never expected to see so much that was fresh from the shops in the house of a peer.

But because of the quality of these belongings, new or old, Jenny could come to a most cheerful conclusion: that the handsome Duke of Strachen must be rich as Creoseus, and, even better, that he didn’t mind spending the fortune he so obviously had.

Yet at once she reached a second conclusion, less cheerful, more startling, and terribly disloyal to Rob. As pleasing as her brother would find the duke’s title and wealth, she herself would selfishly trade it all for the return of the smiling country gentleman and his two black dogs.

Clearly the bruise to her head must be more serious than it felt.

“Here you are, miss,” said Mrs. Lowe, plumping Jenny’s pillows herself. One maidservant poured her tea and handed her the cup, while another solemnly buttered triangles of toast and spread strawberry jam exactly to the crusts. The duke’s fare was considerably more substantial, and while Jenny’s toast and tea were just what she’d asked for, she still looked longingly at his dinner: a ragoo of oysters, veal Florentine, roasted artichokes and forced mushrooms, with the wines to go with it all.