Jack offered her a bow worthy of a court presentation. “Elsa and I were beginning to wonder where you were this morning.”
She frowned at him, which was difficult indeed when Jack was grinning at her with his handsome face and there was a duck standing alongside him. A duck which he had named Elsa.
Nell drew nearer, and Elsa quacked with greater insistence, spreading her wings as if to menace a predator. That was the other thing about the blasted duck. Even Elsa had been won over by Jack’s indomitable charm. And the female duck did not particularly like Nell getting too close to her beloved.
“Settle down, you wretch,” Nell told the duck. “This will never end well for you, you know. He is a man, and you are a fowl. Why do you not go find one of your own kind?”
Elsa quacked and fluttered her wings again.
Jack laughed.
He had been doing that more recently, laughing. She loved the warmth and the depth of that sound. It was infectious, and she had missed it every bit as much as she had missed him. That was another bitter realization she had made in the last few days: she was enjoying his campaign ofwooing the hell out of her, as he had so impolitely phrased it.
“Elsa knows my heart only beats for one woman, do you not, Elsa?” he asked the duck before offering her a handful of corn.
She ate out of his palm.
Nell knew the feeling.
Eight days, she told herself inwardly. Eight more days until she was free to go. Surely she could withstand his charm and her body’s insatiable need for him and all the signs of the world around her which pointed to the indisputable fact thateveryoneloved Jack—including her. Including a cursed duck.
“I would not be surprised if I were to find that duck roosting in the library next,” she said curtly, vexed equally with both man and duck.
She had been feeding those dratted fowls whenever she was in residence these last three years. He had been exploring Paris and Egypt and Greece. He had been learning how to cure his sunburn with aloe and finding herbal tinctures to ease the aches of his blistered feet.
Yes, she had finished reading all of his books.
Each one had been dedicated toher.
And reading them had only heightened her inner misery.
His books were insightful and interesting and witty. He had been away, conquering the world and learning about himself whilst she had been precisely where he had left her: drinking too much, hosting wicked parties, and wishing she could have her old life back, the one before her husband had betrayed her.
She resented him for the disparity in their situations. Resented him for leaving her, for allowing Lady Billingsley into his bed, for winning over the servants and the duck, for picking her flowers, for making her body a slave to her desire for him…
For everything. She resented him for everything.
Elsa finished her snack, looked at Nell, and quacked as if in reproach.
But Nell refused to believe a duck could read minds.
“Elsa is telling you that she has no wish to roost in the library,” Jack said, cutting through Nell’s whirling thoughts. “She said she could never bear to leave the lake.”
She rolled her lips inward to keep from smiling at his foolishness. “You speak duck now?”
His levity fled. “It would seem the only language at which I excel.”
She held his stare, refusing to accept all the blame for their impasse. “I would not be so certain the problem is the language you speak. Your English and your flattery and charm are all more than proficient.”
“But not my groveling, it would seem,” he said, cocking his head at her. “How else can I say it, Nellie? How many other ways can I prove to you how bloody sorry I am and how much I love you?”
The dratted duck quacked. Twice.
“Go to the devil, you little featherbrain,” she told Elsa.
“Are you arguing with my duck?” he asked, the laughter back in his voice.
“I am arguing with that feathered menace who thinks she cannot leave your side,” she corrected, glaring at Elsa.
