Because inside, he was a maelstrom of contrasting emotions, all of which were dangerous.
“Of course, Your Grace.” Still smiling, she turned to her assemblage. “Return to your posts, if you please. I’ll fetch you when I’m ready for additional assistance.”
It was on the tip of Quint’s tongue to tell her that she wouldn’t require any more assistance, unless it meant tearing down the holly and trees and other festive nonsense that was cluttering up his library. But he remained quiet instead, venturing deeper into the room so the domestics could file out of the chamber past him.
She kept her emerald gaze carefully averted as the last of the servants retreated. Quint knew it because he couldn’t wrest his own stare from her. The chatelaine at her waist draped over the apron—the trappings of her trade so plainly on display. And yet, the bold reminders that she was a domestic in his employ and forbidden to him did nothing to quell the sudden, maddening ardor coursing through him.
He was wildly attracted to her, his body feeling as if it had been awakened from a two-year-long slumber. And yet he very much could not have her. She was a Mrs. Yorke, after all, and although many housekeepers assumed the title of missus for ease, he had not inquired if she had a husband elsewhere, pining after her.
The thought had him clenching his fists at his sides and clamping down his jaw. The door clicked discreetly closed, and at last, he was alone with her. Alone in a room filled with the evidence of her insolence. He didn’t know which he wanted more, to reprimand her or to take her in his arms.
But he couldn’t do what he truly wished. Not with her.
So he took a deep breath, settling upon musts rather than needs. “Mrs. Yorke, would you care to explain why you have desecrated my library?”
Her hands were clasped at her waist. Dainty hands for a housekeeper, though chapped and reddened by work. He found himself oddly fascinated by those hands, wondering what they would feel like on his ruined skin. It had been so long since a woman had touched him. The memory was distant and obscure, almost like a dream he’d once had but could no longer remember.
“I would hardly call holly and fir and a few ribbons a desecration, Your Grace,” she was saying with her customary cheer.
The woman could likely stand in the midst of a deluge, thunder and lightning cracking all around her, and still smile as if she were not being pelted with rains and facing imminent danger.
He itched to touch her, so he stalked to one of the twin Christmas trees that had been erected, plucking a candle from its boughs instead. “And I cannot help but to think there is no other way to view your deliberate rebelliousness. After I have given you a reprieve and deigned to allow you to stay, you decided to fill yet another room in my house with Christmastide rubbish. One can only think that you have no desire to keep your present situation.”
The candle was a small weight in his gloved hand, and he couldn’t say why, but he longed to touch it without the barrier of leather. To feel the pine needles on the tree, the sticky sap coating his fingertips. Tofeel, full stop.
“Or perhaps I am hoping to change your mind, Your Grace,” she said, her quiet yet throaty voice sending another rush of yearning through him.
Damn his unruly body. Since when had he been so incapable of controlling his base urges?
He gave her a tight smile laden with menace. “An impossible feat, madam. I have no intention of celebrating Christmas. No number of trees and trinkets will alter that.”
“One may decorate and yet still decline to celebrate,” she suggested. “The decorations are for your mother. I have been arranging the rooms as she asked of me when she hired me to be your housekeeper.”
“I’ve already told you that I neither want, nor need, a housekeeper and that, above all else, I have no wish for Blackwell Abbey to be trussed up like a Michaelmas goose. You have overstepped your bounds.”
“Do you find the decorations unpleasant?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Perhaps it does. Why are you so vehemently opposed to Christmas? Is it the same reason you wear gloves?”
Quint felt as if all the blood had drained from him. These were not subjects he wished to discuss. Not with her, not with anyone. He was as he was, and that was simply that. Heaven knew what it had cost him to get to where he was. To be alive when he had failed Amelia and she was forever lost to him, ever since that fateful morning three weeks before Christmas. Yuletide had been hateful without her, each day that passed a reminder of what he would never have.
“You ask questions you haven’t the right to ask, Mrs. Yorke,” he told her coolly. “Do not mistake my generosity for weakness.”
“Forgive me, Your Grace. I only seek to understand you.”
“Understanding me is not a part of your duties.”
Somehow, they had come together. He wasn’t sure which of them had moved first. Perhaps they both had. But now, they were standing dangerously near, the scent of holly and fir and something else that was distinctly her surrounding them. It wasfloral and light, like a spring garden filled with sweet-smelling blooms.
“Pleasing you is, however,” she countered softly. “And to please you, Your Grace, I must also understand you. The two are inextricably intertwined.”
When she spoke of pleasing him, God help him, he wasn’t thinking about the cleanliness of his floors, the organization of his domestics, or the absence of mice from his kitchens. He was thinking about something else entirely. Something that was sinful, shameful, and wrong. That involved lifting her onto the nearest table, hauling her skirts to her waist, and sliding deep inside her.
“There is only one way you can please me,” he bit out before he could stop himself, frustrated, furious, and vexed to the point of sheer madness.
Her dark eyebrows winged upward, her full lips parting. And to his everlasting shame, he was imagining those lips on him, gliding over his scarred skin, wrapping around his cock, which had suddenly roared to life and was straining against the placket of his trousers.
