“One thing,” he said curtly to his secretary when that young man presented himself. “Not one word, Michael, about where I should be and what I should be doing there. Not even half a word if you value your position.”
He liked Michael Quincy, a gentleman two years his junior who had been in his employ for four years. Quiet, respectful, and efficient, the man was nevertheless not obsequious. He actually dared to smile now.
“The morning post is on your desk, your grace,” he said. “I’ll hand it to you.”
Jocelyn narrowed his gaze on him. “That woman,” he said. “Barnard was supposed to have sent her in by now. It is time she began to earn her keep. Have her come in, Michael. I am feeling just irritated enough to enjoy her company.”
His secretary was actually grinning as he left the room.
His head now felt about fifteen times larger than normal, Jocelyn thought.
When she came into the room, it was clear that she had decided to be the meek lamb of an employee this morning. Doubtless word had spread belowstairs that he was in one of his more prickly moods. She stood inside the library door, her hands folded in front of her, awaiting instructions. Jocelyn immediately felt even more irritated than he had already been feeling. He ignored her for a couple of minutes while he tried to decipher a lengthy, crossed letter written in his sister’s atrocious handwriting. She lived scarcely a ten-minute walk away, but she had written in the greatest agitation on hearing about the duel. It seemed she had suffered palpitations and vapors and other indecipherable maladies so serious that Heyward, her husband, had had to be fetched from the House of Lords.
Heyward would not have been amused.
Jocelyn looked up. She looked hideous. She wore yesterday’s gray dress, which covered her from neck to wrists to ankles. There was no ornament to make the cheap garment prettier. Today she wore a white bonnet cap. She stood straight and tall. It was altogether possible, he thought, mentally stripping her with experienced eyes, that she looked quite womanly beneath the garments, but one had to be dedicated to observe the signs. He seemed to recall through yesterday’s nightmare of pain that her hair was golden. It was invisible now.
Her stance was meek. But her eyes were not directed decently at the floor. She was gazing steadily at him.
“Come!” He beckoned impatiently.
She came with firm strides until she was three feet from his chair. She was still looking directly at him with eyes that were startlingly blue. Indeed, he realized in some surprise, she had a face that was classical in its beauty. There was not a fault to find there, except that he remembered yesterday’s thinned lips. In repose today they looked soft and exquisitely shaped.
“Well?” he said sharply. “What do you have to say for yourself? Are you ready to apologize to me?”
She took her time about answering.
“No,” she said at last. “Are you ready to apologize to me?”
He sat back in his chair and tried to ignore the rampaging pain in his leg. “Let us get one thing straight,” he said in the quiet, almost pleasant voice that he knew had every last member of his staff instantly quaking in his or her boots. “There is not even the smallest semblance of equality between us—” He paused and frowned. “What the devil is your name?”
“Jane Ingleby.”
“There is not the smallest semblance of equality between us, Jane,” he continued. “I am the master and you are the servant. The verylowlyservant. You are not required to cap everything I say with some witty impertinence. You will address me with the proper respect. You will tack ‘your grace’ onto everything you do say. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes,” she said. “And I believe, your grace, you should watch your language in my hearing. I do not approve of having the devil’s name and the Lord’s name bandied about as if they were in everyone’s nursery vocabulary.”
Good Lord!Jocelyn’s hands curved about the arms of the chair.
“Indeed?” He used his iciest voice. “And do you have any other instructions for me, Jane?”
“Yes, two things,” she said. “I would prefer to be called Miss Ingleby.”
His right hand found the handle of his quizzing glass. He half raised it to his eye. “And the other thing?”
“Why are you not in bed?”
3
ANE WATCHED THE DUKE OF TRESHAM RAISE HISglass all the way to his eye, grotesquely magnifying it, while his other hand came to rest on top of the pile of letters in his lap. He was being enormously toplofty, of course, trying to frighten her. And half succeeding. But it would be certain suicide to show it.
His servants, she had gathered at breakfast, were all terrified of him, especially when he was in one of his black moods, as he was this morning, according to his valet. And he looked rather formidable, even clad as he was now in dressing gown and slippers over a crisp white shirt and expertly tied neckcloth.
He was a powerful-looking, dark-haired man with black eyes, prominent nose, and thin lips in a narrow face, whose habitual expression appeared to be both harsh and cynical. And arrogant.
Of course, Jane conceded, this must not be one of his better days.
She had approached the room with Mr. Quincy, the duke’s pleasant, gentle-mannered secretary, and had decided to be what she was supposed to be—a quiet, meek nurse who was fortunate to have this position even if only for three weeks.
