He hated, bloody well hated, the way she spoke to him. As if he were no better than a servant. As if he were beneath her.
He swallowed. “Yes,Your Grace. As I just informed you, your son is safe and fast asleep within. I shall have him removed as it pleases you.”
“How did he come to be within your chamber, Mr. Ludlow?” Her voice was cold and scathing but it also held the note of command he had heard so many times before. The tone that said she spoke to an inferior who had no choice save to answer her query in the manner that pleased her.
“I cannot say, madam,” he gritted, detesting he must speak to her as if they were strangers. Detesting—worse still—the other troubling conclusion he had reached in his mind: that they had always been strangers. That he had never truly known her.
That everything between them had been feigned and false. Had she been rebelling against her strict papa? Had the notion of allowing a duke’s bastard to touch her appealed to some part of her?
He could not ask, and he would never know.
“Why would he be in your chamber, Mr. Ludlow?” she asked, poison lacing her voice. “And for how long has he been there?”
He suspected he knew what she was about, and he would be more than happy to return her volley with some of his own fire. “I have no inkling of why or how long your son has been within my chamber as he is fast asleep. Since my task here is ensuring your safety, I regret to say your son does not fall within my authority.”
“Your authority,” she repeated, her lip curling as if to suggest he had none.
“Indeed.My authority,” he echoed coldly. “Fenians murdered your husband in a park, madam, and that same faction of criminals has threatened you. My duty here is to keep you safe, not to maintain a reckoning of your ill-behaved offspring. That task falls to you and to the child’s nursemaids.”
She flinched as if he had struck her. “I am aware of your role here, Mr. Ludlow. But what I cannot comprehend is how my son was not in his bed tonight as he has been every night for the entirety of his life and somehow materialized within your chamber, of all the chambers in this house.”
His lips flattened. “I would never harm the lad, if that is what you suggest. My only sin is discovering him sleeping and curled up with my cat.”
An elegant burnished brow raised. “Your cat?”
He met her stare, unflinching. No amount of questions or raised brows would force him to love the creature any less. “I inherited it, you might say,” he offered vaguely, recalling his conversation with the lad in the garden.
The duchess frowned. “Its previous owner is dead and you have been forced to carry on with the thing?”
With the thing.
He smirked. “Indeed not. The cat’s previous owner gifted him to me. It was quite prescient of her now that I think upon it, for I had not realized just how endearing a feline can be until Her Grace gave me Sherman.”
Her eyes pinned his, holding him captive without a touch. “Her Grace?”
“The Duchess of Leeds,” he offered smoothly. “A treasured friend of mine.”
“I do not care how manytreasured friendsyou possess, Mr. Ludlow. What I do care about is how my son came to be within your apartments.” Her expression could not convey her disgust for him any more than if she had announced it, baldly. Which she may as well have done. “Furthermore, I require him to be removed at once.”
He stared at her, old furies clashing with the new. And for the first time in years, he overstepped his bounds. “If you require his removal, perhaps you can attend to it yourself, Your Grace. I am not your servant but your guard.”
Her chin tipped upward in defiance, her eyes flashing. “A guard who lost my son.”
“Youlost your son, madam,” he corrected, even as everything within him longed to rail. To touch her again. To—God forbid—kiss her. “I found him for you. You are most welcome for my unnecessary service.”
Those blue-violet orbs darkened. “How did he come to be here? I still do not understand.”
“I would venture to guess you do not understand a great deal where your son is concerned. I suspect, however, he came to see my cat.” He took pity on her then, softening in spite of himself and his decree she would have to move the boy herself. She had always been a small woman, but she seemed even frailer now, and he had no doubt she could not haul her lanky lad from here to his chamber on her own. “Would you have me carry him to the nursery, Your Grace?”
But the furrow between her brows only deepened. “How did he know you have a cat in your chambers?”
“I volunteered the information when the lad asked.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits of ice. “He adores animals. You must have known as much when youvolunteeredthe information.”
His patience withered. His presence in Burghly House had been forced by duty. He was not, however, duty-bound to allow her to insult him. “Precisely what are you implying, Your Grace?”
“I am not implying anything,” she snapped. “I am asking you. Why, of all the many chambers in this home, would he choose to hide himself in yours?”
