“Please, sir,” she persisted, making her voice small. “It would be my honor.”
Carlisle’s dark gaze, as sharp as a knife, homed in upon her. “How very agreeable for a lady who could not wait to be free of my presence yesterday. Tell me, Miss Palliser, what is the difference between last night and this morning?”
Responsibility. Duty. Her mind overruling her…everything.
She swallowed. “I am sorry, Your Grace. This position is new to me, and I cannot afford to lose it.”
Something in him softened then. She could see it as well as sense it. Could it be a man who would so vociferously fight against her native land to keep it from having its own rule, possessed an inner sense of fairness?
It seemed improbable indeed.
“Forgive me, Miss Palliser.” His fingers were at work on the buttons of his waistcoat, flicking them from their moorings.
She could not wrest her gaze from his long, patrician fingers nor his broad, strong shoulders shrugging. To her amazement, he divested himself of the garment and held it out to her, an olive branch of sorts.
Bridget took it, her fingers brushing his. A fresh spark of awareness jolted through her, singeing down her spine and landing between her thighs in a blossom of heat she could not deny no matter how much she tried.
If only they had not touched. If only she had never kissed him.
For all she could think now, in this moment, was the delirious luxury of his lips upon hers. That mouth—all sin, all seduction—had worked over hers with skillful precision.
“I shall see to it that your waistcoat is properly cleaned,” she forced herself to say.
“I don’t give a bloody damn if it is.”
She stared at him, struggling to understand. “Your Grace?”
“I can purchase another hundred to take its place. The loss of one is no loss at all. But since you are so determined, take the waistcoat, Miss Palliser, and go,” he ordered coolly.
And once again, everything in her attempted to overrule all the rest. She wanted to tell him what he could do with the scrap of soiled fabric in her grip. She wanted to rail against him. To remind him her nation deserved to be represented by its own people rather than drowned out by English MPs, by people who lived within its beautiful shores, who knew the struggles and the land.
Clutching his waistcoat firmly in her grasp, she curtseyed and did as he bid. Her heart hammered at the idea of uncovering his hidden correspondence. But as she turned her back on him and left the library, the scent of him, stronger and more delicious than any spirit, dogged her.
Gripping his drenched waistcoat, she hastened back to her own chamber. Her walk could wait. The promise of information proved too potent a lure. She had at least an hour before her charge, the young duke, would arise. Moreover, far too much depended upon the information she could glean. She would not disappoint those relying upon her.
John awaited her. Cullen had no one, save her.
Cullen’s life, more than hers, was her motivating force. For he alone was her responsibility. He alone was where her allegiance lay, more than herself, more than Ireland, more than Home Rule.
She had been born without a choice. After all, she was but a woman in the world. A woman in a society fashioned to drown out all females, to overrule and silence them.
A woman who had never had a chance.
Bridget sat by the light of the windows, turned up an oil lamp, and examined the Duke of Carlisle’s whisky-soaked waistcoat. It was of excellent construction, crafted from expensive fabric. At first glance, it looked like any other garment a wealthy gentleman would wear. But upon closer inspection, she spotted evidence of stitches that were less refined, made in a slightly different shade of black—darker, more pure.
She took up the blade she always kept sheathed in her boot and carefully attacked the seam in question. With tender precision, she sliced the stitches holding the lining of the waistcoat in place, taking care not to damage the fine fabric itself. She inserted her finger, wiggling it about until she found what she was looking for.
A folded scrap of paper.
She withdrew and cut again, creating an opening large enough for the paper to emerge. Bridget extracted it, heart fluttering wildly. Here perhaps was something of value, something she could offer John to ensure Cullen’s liberation in addition to the task originally assigned her.
She unfolded the paper to find a neat, masculine scrawl blurred by the whisky it had absorbed, rendering it almost illegible. What she could discern appeared to be a series of letters and numbers.
A cipher key, she realized. Perhaps a means for him to recognize correspondence he received. She consulted the mantle clock in her chamber—half an hour until she was on duty for the day. Plenty of time to copy everything legible to a fresh sheet of paper. The more she could bring back to John, the greater the chance of Cullen obtaining his freedom.
And that, she reminded herself, was all she could afford to care about.
Even as her lips still burned with the Duke of Carlisle’s kiss.
