“If you are planning to go out again tomorrow,” she said, “I beg leave to be given the morning free, your grace.”
“Why?” His frown returned.
Her clasped hands turned cold and clammy at the very thought of her reason, but she could no longer give in to the paralysis of terror. She must sooner or later venture beyond the sheltering doors of Dudley House.
“It is time I looked for other employment,” she said. “I have less than one week left here. Indeed, I am not really needed now. I never have been. You never needed a nurse.”
He stared at her. “You would leave me, would you then, Jane?”
She had been firmly repressing the pain she felt at the thought of doing just that. The pain just did not have either a rational or worthy cause. Though, of course, she had seen a startlingly different side to him in the music room last night.
“My employment here will soon be at an end, your grace,” she reminded him.
“Who says so?” He was staring at her broodingly. “What poppycock you speak when you have nothing else to which to go.”
Hope stirred. She had half thought of asking him—or of asking the housekeeper, who hired the servants—if she could stay on as a housemaid or scullery maid. But she did not believe she would do so. She would not be able to bear living on at Dudley House in a more menial capacity than the one she had held so far. Not that she could allow pride to dictate her actions, of course.
“It was agreed,” she said, “that I remain to nurse you while your injury forced you to remain inactive. For three weeks.”
“There is still almost a week left, then,” he said. “I will not hear of your searching for something else, Jane, until your time here has been served. I do not pay you to spend your mornings flitting all over London looking for an employer who will pay you more than I do. How muchdoI pay you?”
“More than I earn,” she said. “Money is not the issue, your grace.”
But he was being stubborn. “I will hear no more about it for at least another week, then,” he said. “But I have a job for you on Thursday evening, Jane. Tomorrow. And I will pay you well for it too. I will pay you what you deserve.”
She looked warily at him.
“Don’t stand by the damned door as if poised for flight,” he said irritably. “If I wished to pounce on you, I would do so no matter what the distance. Come closer. Sit down here.”
He pointed to the chair where she usually sat.
There was no point in arguing that at least. She did as she was told even though doing so brought her uncomfortably within the aura of his masculinity. She could smell his cologne and remembered how it had been very much a part of last night’s sensual experience.
“I am hosting a grand entertainment here tomorrow evening,” he said. “Quincy is just now writing out the invitations and having them delivered. There will be only a day’s notice for the invited guests, of course, but they will almost all come. Invitations to Dudley House are rare enough to be coveted, you see, despite my reputation. Perhaps because of it.”
She would remain for every moment of the evening behind the closed door of her room, Jane thought, clasping her hands very tightly in her lap.
“Tell me,” the duke said, “do you possess any garment more becoming than that atrocity you are wearing and the other one you alternate with it, Miss Ingleby?”
No. Oh, no. Definitely not. Absolutely, without question not.
“I will not need it,” she said firmly. “I am not going to be one of your guests. It would be unfitting.”
His eyebrows arched arrogantly upward.
“For once, Miss Ingleby,” he said, “we are in perfect accord. But you have not answered my question. Do take that mulish look off your face. It makes you look like a petulant child.”
“I have one muslin frock,” she admitted. “But I will not wear it, your grace. It is unsuited to my employment.”
“You will wear it tomorrow evening,” he informed her. “And you will do something prettier with your hair. I will find out from Barnard which of the maids is most adept at dressing hair. If there is none, I will hire one for the occasion.”
Jane was feeling somewhat sick to her stomach.
“But you have said,” she reminded him, “that I cannot be one of your guests. I will not need a muslin dress and an elaborate coiffure to sit in my room.”
“Do not be dense, Jane,” he said. “There will be dinner and cards and conversation and music—provided by a number of the ladies I am inviting. All ladies are accomplished, you know. It is a common fallacy among mothers, it seems, that the ability to tinkle away at a pianoforte keyboard while looking suitably decorative is the surest way to a man’s heart and fortune.”
“I wonder,” she said, “what has made you so cynical.”
