Leo was trained to observe. He trusted no one but his brother Clay and the woman he considered his true mother. Everyone else was suspect.
What could a pretty little governess like her have to hide? What did she fear?
He moved nearer to her, driven by suspicion. Driven by need. Driven by the darkness inside him. By desire. Today, he could not rein himself in. He stopped just short of her, crowding her with his considerable height. She scarcely reached his shoulder.
The deeper note of bergamot hit him. Her eyes widened. They were not pure blue. Flecks of gray adulterated them. Her brows were fine and dark, elegantly arched. A flush stole over her cheeks at his silent regard.
“Here we are, Your Grace,” she said softly. Her voice was husky, like a plume of fine cigar smoke, unfurling to envelop him. “The library, just as you requested.”
She remained so still and tense. A doe in the wood poised for flight.
Was he the hunter, his arrow nocked?
He was too intrigued to step away. Too intrigued even to search for more spirits. Surely Clay had whisky, and he would find it at his leisure. First, there was something about this blasted governess. Something he could not shake.
“Your name.” He meant to ask her in the form of a question, but he was not terribly adept at polite conversation. He led his agents. He hosted depraved fêtes at his townhouse. He did not speak to governesses, pay social calls, or whirl about at balls. He was a machine. And like any machine, he was beginning to show wear.
“Palliser, Your Grace.”
“Miss Palliser,” he repeated, thinking the name familiar. He searched the dusty corners of his mind before lighting upon it. “Glencora, by any chance?”
It was meant to be a sally, a reference to the Anthony Trollope character—an irregularity for him, as he had not much cause for levity in his life—but the governess paled, her lips parting. “Jane Palliser, Your Grace.”
Christ.
There was that hated name again. Surely, this was the Lord’s idea of a cruel jest. A means of retribution for the vast catalog of sins Leo had committed in the name of serving his queen. Why else would a governess with the face of an angel and the body of a courtesan be placed before him on this day of weakness, bearing the same name as the woman who had nearly been his ruin?
His lip curled. “Jane.” The name felt heavy on his tongue, acidic and bitter, the taste of disillusionment, and even though this was a different Jane before him, he could not separate the emotions from the moment. “You do not look like a Jane to me.”
Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “And yet, that is what my mother chose to name me, Your Grace. I am so sorry to disappoint you.”
He did not miss the undercurrent in her voice, a strange hint of something suggesting Miss Jane Palliser harbored secrets. Perhaps he would make it his mission to uncover them during his brief stay at Harlton Hall.
Leo raked his gaze over her in an assessing fashion, unable to resist the urge to discomfit her. “I doubt you could disappoint me, Miss Palliser.”
The Duke ofCarlisle had come to Harlton Hall. It was almost not to be believed, far too fortuitous a circumstance to be ascribed to anything other than fate. And he was not just here, within her presence, within her reach, standing near enough to touch in the barren library, but he wasflirting. With her, or at least with the woman he presumed her to be. Pretty London lass Jane Palliser. Nothing but a fiction.
The anxiety she had known upon his sudden proximity and odd queries—the dark, plumbing gaze of his that seemed to see far more than she wished, cutting straight to the heart of all her desperate prevarications—lifted. She was accustomed to men who thought they could have everything they wanted. She had spent her life in their shadows.
She gritted her teeth and forced herself not to allow her hatred to show. He wanted her, and if there was one thing she had learned in her life, it was the power a woman wielded over a man. One twitch of her skirts, the revelation of an ankle, the flit of her tongue over her lips, and he would be in the palm of her hand.
Precisely where she wished him.
For she may have arrived at Harlton Hall as Miss Jane Palliser, but in truth, she was Bridget O’Malley, and she had come to fight a war.
Sármhaith.She favored him with a slow smile and lowered her gaze to his mouth, which was—she reluctantly admitted—sculpted with a perfection that defied reality. “I am certain I could prove a source of great disappointment for you, Your Grace.”
One dark brow quirked. “Indeed, Miss Palliser? Do tell.”
Oh, she could tell him. But that was not part of her plan. Baiting him, however, was. “My position here is new, sir, and I do not dare jeopardize it. If it is female companionship you desire, I suggest you return to the place that stinks of cigar smoke and stale ale.”
His eyes were almost obsidian, his gaze probing, searing. For a moment, she fancied he could see all the bruises she hid beneath her skin, and then she shoved that nonsense into the ether where it belonged. If a trill of something unwanted went down her spine at his perusal, it was a mere natural reaction to him as a man and nothing more.
She could not deny he was handsome. Large and strong too, just as she preferred. His body radiated with an intensity she had never before seen in another man. But this man was her enemy. He was different from all the others.
This man, like the rest, she could not trust.
But this man, unlike those who had come before him and those who would come after, she was destined to defeat. She had no choice. Everything she did now was for Cullen’s sake.
