“I do not know your reputation,” she said. Though it would not tax the imagination overmuch to guess.
“I was challenged to a duel yesterday,” he said, “for having, ah,relationswith a married lady. It was not the first duel I have engaged in. I am known as an unprincipled, dangerous man.”
“Spoken with pride?” She raised her eyebrows.
His lips twitched, but whether with amusement or anger it was impossible to tell.
“I do have some principles,” he said. “I have never ravished a servant. Or assaulted any woman beneath my own roof. Or bedded any who were unwilling. Does that reassure you?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Since I believe I qualify for sanctuary on all three counts.”
“But I would give a monkey,” he said softly, sounding as dangerous as he had just described himself, “to see you with your hair down.”
THELILLIPUTIANS WERE SWARMINGall over the Man Mountain, securing him with the greatest ingenuity—even his long hair—to the ground.
She was readingGulliver’s Travelsto him, a book to which he could hardly object since he had left the choice of reading material up to her. She had wandered about the library shelves for a half hour, looking and fingering and occasionally drawing out a book and opening it. She handled books with reverence, as if she loved them. She had turned to him finally and held up the volume from which she was now reading.
“This one?” she had asked. “Gulliver’s Travels? It is one of those books I have always promised myself I would read.”
“As you wish.” He had shrugged. He was perfectly capable of reading silently to himself, but he did not want to be alone. He had never particularly enjoyed his own company for any length of time—no, that was not true. But for the past ten years or so it had been.
He had been feeling considerable irritation as the true nature of his plight had become clearer to him during the course of the day. He was a restless, energetic man, who engaged in a dozen or more activities every day, most of them involving physical exercise like riding and boxing and fencing and—yes—even dancing, though never the waltz and never at that most insipid of all institutions, Almack’s. Making love was a favorite activity too, of course, and that could be the most energetic exercise of all.
Now for three weeks, if he could bear the torture that long, he was to be inactive, with only visiting friends and relatives for company. And the prim, shrewish Jane Ingleby, of course. And pain.
He had distracted himself by dismissing his nurse and spending the afternoon with Michael Quincy. The monthly reports from Acton Park, his country estate, had arrived that morning. He had always been conscientious about them, but he had never before pored over them with quite such determined attention to detail.
But the evening threatened to be endless. The nights were the time when he did most of his living and socializing, first at the theater or opera or whatever fashionable ball or soiree was likely to draw the greatest crowd, and then at one of his clubs or in bed if the sport offered there seemed worth the sacrifice of a night with his male friends.
“Do you wish me to continue?” Jane Ingleby had paused and looked up from the book.
“Yes, yes.” He waved one hand in her direction, and she looked down and resumed her reading.
Her spine, he noticed, did not touch the back of her chair. And yet she looked both comfortable and graceful. She read well, neither too fast nor too slowly, neither in a monotone nor with theatrically exaggerated expression. She had a lovely soft, cultured speaking voice. Her long lashes fanned her cheeks as she looked down at the book she held with both hands close to her lap. Her neck was long and swanlike in its elegance.
Her hair was pure spun gold. She had done an admirable job of making it look severe and insignificant, but the only way she could hope for success in that endeavor was to shave her head. He had noticed the beauty of her face and the loveliness of her eyes during the morning. It was only when she had removed her cap that he had discovered how far reality surpassed his growing suspicion that she was an extraordinarily handsome woman.
He watched her read as he rubbed the heel of his right hand hard over his thigh as if to ease the pain in his calf. She was a servant, a dependent beneath his roof, and without any doubt a virtuous woman. As she had observed in her usual pert manner during the morning, she was thrice protected from him. But he would dearly like to see that hair with all the pins and coils and braids removed.
He would not be totally averse, either, to seeing her person without the dreary, cheap, ill-fitting dress and anything else she might be wearing beneath it.
He sighed, and she stopped reading again and looked up.
“Would you like to go to bed now?” she asked him.
She could always be relied upon to return her own particular brand of sanity to a situation, he thought. Her expression was without the slightest hint of suggestiveness despite her choice of words.
He glanced at the clock on the mantel. Good Lord, it was not even ten o’clock. The evening had scarcely begun.
“Since neither you nor Gulliver is a particularly scintillating companion, Miss Ingleby,” he said brutally, “I suppose that is my best option. I wonder if you appreciate how low I have been brought.”
ANIGHT OF SLEEPwithout either liquor or laudanum to induce slumber had not improved the Duke of Tresham’s temper, Jane discovered early the next morning. The physician had arrived and she was summoned from her breakfast in the kitchen to the duke’s bedchamber.
“You have taken your time,” he said by way of greeting when she entered the room after tapping on his door less than a minute after the summons. “I suppose you were busy eating me out of house and home.”
“I had finished my breakfast, thank you, your grace,” she said. “Good morning, Dr. Raikes.”
“Good morning, ma’am.” The physician inclined his head politely to her.
