“Grant what, sir?”
“My pardon.” He dipped his head lower, drawn to her warmth. Though he could see only faint outlines of her as his eyes adjusted to the dim light—a cloud of dark hair, a small, retroussé nose, a stubborn chin—he was nevertheless intrigued. “Have you done something requiring it?”
She made a sound of irritation. “Release me, if you please. I have neither the time nor the inclination to play games with a stranger who arrives in the midst of the night, smelling of spirits.”
“Allow me to introduce myself.” He stepped back, offering her an exaggerated bow. “The Duke of Carlisle, m’lady. And you are?”
She moved forward, into the soft light of the hall. With the gas lamps illuminating her fully at last, he felt as if he had received a fist to the gut. She was striking, from her almost midnight hair, to her arresting blue gaze, to the full pout of her pink lips. And she was proportioned just as he preferred: short of stature, yet shapely. Her bosom jutted forward in her plain dove-gray bodice.
Damn him if the woman wasn’t giving him a cockstand here and now, at midnight in the midst of the hall with the hushed sound of servants seeing to his cases fluttering around them. They were not alone, yet they might have been the only two souls in the world.
Her eyes sparkled with intelligence, and he could not shake the feeling she was assessing him somehow. “I serve as governess to the young duke.”
Governess.
That explained the godawful gray gown.
It did not, however, explain his inconvenient and thoroughly unwanted attraction to her. He did not dally with servants.
More’s the pity.
Leo frowned. “What is the governess doing flitting about in the midst of the night, trading barbs with a stranger who smells of spirits?”
He could not resist goading her, it was true.
Her brows snapped together. “You waylaid me, Your Grace.”
He would love to waylay her. All bloody night long.
But such mischief was decidedly not on the menu for this evening. Or ever. He had far too many matters weighing on his mind, and the last thing he needed to do was ruin a governess. He had come to celebrate his brother’s nuptials,damn it, not to cast the last shred of his honor into the wind.
“Whilst you are being waylaid, perhaps you can direct me to the library,” he said then. “I am in need of diversion. My mind does not do well with travel.”
The truth was that his mind was not well in general, and it hadn’t a thing to do with trains and coaches. But that was his private concern, yet another weakness he would admit to no one.
He expected the woman to inform him which chamber he sought and how he might arrive there. He did not expect her frown to deepen, or for her to turn on her heel and stride away down the hall in the opposite direction.
“Follow me, if you please,” she called over her shoulder. “I shall take you there.”
Leo followed, admiring the delectable sway of her hips as they went.
The governess intrigued him far too much, and he hoped to hell it wasn’t going to become a problem. As it stood, he would only be at Harlton Hall for a few days’ time. What could possibly go wrong?
A whole bloody lot, answered a voice inside him.
He ignored it. A faint hint of lemon taunted him. Nor could he wrest his gaze from her. She was exquisitely formed.
And a governess, he reminded himself.
When had he last been intrigued by a female?
It had been years. It had been Jane, to be precise. Her name still curdled his gut, even after all the summers and winters since she had married Ashelford, back when Leo had been a callow youth still foolish enough to believe a woman’s heart could be steadfast. Good of her to rectify his ignorance. His allegiance belonged to the League now and forever, just as it always should have done. Crown and country. The safety of England.
Not the tempting swell of the governess’s lower lip. So full and bewitching, that succulent pink flesh. He longed to sink his teeth into it. The spirits he had consumed were making him maudlin and randy in equal measures, he decided as they entered a long, narrow chamber with shelf-lined walls. A bloody terrible, dreadful coupling. He required more liquor at once, for nothing blunted the furious grip of lust like the obliteration to be found at the bottom of a bottle.
The gas lamps were low, bathing the room in a soft sensibility which did nothing to alleviate the inappropriate bent of his meandering thoughts. His brother had yet to fill the shelves. The books were scarce, though the carpet was new, and a banked fire crackled in the hearth.
She stopped on the periphery of the chamber, spinning toward him, hands laced together at her waist. He noted the bones of her knuckles, white through her skin. Her shoulders were stiff, neck rigid, and her entire body appeared immobile, almost as though she stood on a slippery slope and didn’t wish to move lest she go tumbling down.
