He knew a moment of shame. “You have always been free to go. I did not force you here.”
She sniffed. “Coerced.”
His brows shot up. By God, she was a forthright article, and it delighted and vexed him in equal measure. “I beg your pardon?”
But Miss Turnbow would not be intimidated. “You coerced me. I plainly exhibited to you a wish to find my chambers and retire. You intimated that if I did not join you, I would be in danger of losing my position. I need this position, and therefore, here I am, Your Grace. But that does not mean I need imbibe with you.”
He lost his patience with her. With himself. “Let us be clear, then. You need not be present in this room. You need not accept this snifter of brandy, though it is of an exceptional quality and I highly recommend its bracing effects. You may retreat to your chamber and God knows what manner of book you read until the early hours of the morn. I shall not dismiss you or send you forth without reference. I am not so desperate or depraved yet that I will force a woman to spend time in my company. Therefore, if you do not wish to be in this library, be gone with you, and make haste so that you need not suffer my presence a moment more.”
But Miss Turnbow surprised him yet again by refusing to move. She stared at him, her expressive eyes darkening. “How would you know that I am reading until the early hours of the morning?”
Blast.Now she would think he skulked about her door in the night, looking for an excuse to barge in and ravish her. Not that the prospect wasn’t a fantasy of his… only in the fantasy, he did not ravish but rather plundered what she so willingly offered.
He swallowed and bit his inner cheek to stave off any unwanted surges of hunger. Seduction had not been his intention in inviting her here. His motivation was far more disconcerting. He had simply wanted her company.
“I have received reports on the inordinate expense of candles being supplied to you,” he lied.
In truth, he roamed the halls at night when slumber could not even be achieved by drinking himself to oblivion. Pacing for hours was sometimes a means by which he might sufficiently weary himself enough to pitch into his bed for a scant few hours without being plagued by nightmares. When he closed his eyes, the day in the farmhouse returned to him, all the scents and sounds and fears. Inevitably, he lay in bed at night as a band of fear tightened around his chest until he could not breathe. Only exertion or drink could dull his mind enough to grant him rest.
If he saw a light beneath her door, it was because of the peripatetic journeys his ravaged mind forced him to make.
Thankfully, she did not see through his ruse. “The cost of the candles ought to be deducted from my wages, of course. I should have exercised more care than to so greedily burn them in the pursuit of my own distraction.”
He had committed far greater sins than wearing candles down to nubs in his pursuit of distraction. “I do not mind the expense,” he said curtly.
Her lips tightened for a moment’s hesitation. “You only wish for my company and not for anything more?”
Of course he wished for something more than her mere presence. He wished foreverything, but that did not mean he would not take up what she would give him like a beggar boy being thrown a scrap of meat.
He cleared his throat. “I wish for your presence, freely given. If you are offering it, Miss Governess, I accept. If not, run along and read your books all night long.”
“I will remain.” She was solemn as she plucked the snifter from his hand. “But you must promise me to maintain propriety.”
There it was again, the thorn upon a rose.Bloody hell, if there was any word he was beginning to detest, it was surely that one.Propriety.He could not speak it aloud without the urge to spit. A viler epithet he could not countenance.
“Your virtue is safe this night.” He gestured to the chairs flanking a fire that crackled merrily in the grate. “Please do sit, Miss Turnbow. It has been a long day, and I have a pressing urge to settle my bones.”
She eyed him as warily as one might an enemy soldier who had just surrendered. Her distrust of him was apparent in her rigid bearing. Fair enough. He did not trust himself with her either.
“I expect my fichu to be returned to me,” she surprised him by demanding.
In her haste to escape his evil clutches, Miss Governess had left behind her delicate, altogether too large, lace fichu. The very one that obstructed his view of her delectable bosom. Because he had a history with the cursed thing, he had stuffed it inside his coat pocket. And later, slipped it beneath his pillow for reasons he did not wish to explore.
The bloody atrocity smelled of her, and while he could not approve of its use, he was wholeheartedly in favor of having something that smelled of her close at hand.
“No.” The answer left him of its own volition. For the same reasons he had stowed the adornment beneath his pillow, he was also unwilling to part with it.
His response made her brows snap together. “No?”
“It cannot be returned to you, as I have burned the thing.” A prevarication he would gladly make as a mark upon what remained of his soul, for he would not admit to keeping her fichu so he could smell jasmine and stroke his cock when the need arose. Which had been once already that day, as it happened.
Sparks flared in her sherry eyes. “You had no right to destroy one of my garments. That lace was quite dear in price, I will have you know.”
With his snifter, he gestured to the replacement fichu she wore now. “You seem to have managed in its absence with another abomination.”
Delightful pink color kissed her cheeks. “For the purpose of washing, and in case any fichu requires mending, I own three.”
He made a chastising sound with his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “Two now, I am afraid. None at all if I had my way.”
