“How, Your Grace?” she asked, her soft voice a Siren’s lure in itself.
Like the rest of her, that husky contralto was far too lovely not to be a temptation.
He swallowed hard, willing his erection to abate. “By doing what I’ve required of you. Remove the decorations you have so willfully hung all over my home.”
“Do you find fault with my decorating?” she had the temerity to ask.
“The mice, madam,” he reminded her. “I allowed you to stay because you promised to take care of the mouse infestation. Yesterday, you claimed the footmen were otherwise occupied with setting traps and laying poison bait belowstairs. And yettoday, rather than removing the decorations from the drawing room, you have added additional greenery and trees to my library. That tells me that you are a liar. How am I to keep you in my employ when you have deceived me? What is next, I wonder? Will you be filching the family silver?”
She went pale at his question. “I am not a thief, Your Grace. I am merely a servant in your household, attempting to perform the duties Her Grace the dowager duchess expects of me.”
He hated himself for his weakness where Mrs. Yorke was concerned. Hated himself for desiring a woman at all, let alone a servant. It was wrong. And yet, she was as intoxicating as an elixir. He wanted her.
Desperately.
He couldn’t have her.
Quint gripped the candle in an iron fist, so tightly that it was a miracle the wax didn’t snap in two. “And as I have already informed you, Her Grace is not the master of Blackwell Abbey. I am, and you have lied to me repeatedly over the few short days you have been here. You have run roughshod over my house and my wishes. You have hired servants I do not want and filled my rooms with Christmas bric-a-brac. I ought to turn you out at once without a character and make you walk to the train station on foot.”
Yes, he ought to do that. But he didn’t have it in him. And he wanted her here. Beneath his roof. Even if it meant enduring more holly boughs and fir trees. The realization had him rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. He had been one man before the fire and a new man after. But now, standing in perilous proximity to his gorgeous housekeeper, Quint was a third man.
Someone he didn’t recognize.
“Please don’t send me away,” she begged him, those vibrant green eyes of hers searing him to his soul.
He was the beast he saw in the mirror.
“Then obey me,” he snarled, before stalking from the library.
It wasn’t until he had reached the dining room and his cooling breakfast that Quint realized he was still holding the bloody candle from the Christmas tree.
Joceline inwardly chastisedherself that afternoon as she left the kitchens after making the latest preparations with Cook. In the absence of a lady of the house, she had begun presiding over the menu decisions and other matters. But it wasn’t the stoning of plums for Christmas plum pudding that was the reason for her self-castigation. Rather, it was her embarrassing reaction to the Duke of Sedgewick. In itself, the way he made her feel was not just maddening, it was perplexing.
He was fractious, he was cold, and on so many occasions, he was also rude. His handsomeness could not offset his frigid personality. He was rigid and unfeeling. He had called her a liar and threatened to have her removed from his home. He had accused her of wanting to steal his silver next. At every turn, he met her attempts at cheer with grim disapproval. He snarled and growled and glowered. All the domestics in his employ feared incurring his wrath.
And more than that, he was not just her employer, but a duke. She should know better than to long for that which was beyond her reach. What had she been thinking, standing so near to Sedgewick in the library, wondering what his mouth would feel like on hers, daring to ask him questions she knew that she had no right to ask?
She sighed heavily as she neared the housekeeper’s room, a joyless, dismal chamber which was dank and cold despitethe plentiful fire burning in the hearth. By now, Joceline was accustomed to life in service. Any dreams she had once harbored for her future had died some time ago, along with her father.
She had set them aside in favor of helping her mother and siblings. It had not always been the way of it, of course. When she had been quite young, there had been the ever-elusive hope that she might have a London Season with her aunt, Mama’s sister, one day. As the eldest child, with lovely looks, as Mama had said, Joceline had been sent away to stay with her aunt for much of her girlhood. Mama had been filled with catching sanguinity the day she had seen Joceline off to London.
That hopefulness had transformed into bleak acceptance over time. For although she had been permitted to share her cousins’ governess for several years, there had been a distinct line between Joceline and her cousins. She was the poor relation being given alms through the good grace of her aunt, the baroness. Emily and Catherine, however, were the daughters of a baron. When Joceline reached the age for her debut, she had been sent back to her parents, where her father was an invalid and a growing brood of children had rendered their family quite destitute. She had gone to service shortly thereafter, having no other option but to work and send what meager funds she could save home.
She had been fortunate in her placement, working her way up from chambermaid to housekeeper within several years, thanks to her education, her polite elocution, and her dedication to her craft. At five-and-twenty, she knew that the gravest mistake anyone in service could ever make was to grow too fond of an employer or to overstep her bounds. The lines between them were invisible—and yet, as immovable as a castle wall.
This dreadful malaise, or whatever it was, that had affected her since her arrival at Blackwell Abbey, was a terrible aberration. Joceline had never been attracted to her employerbefore. She had never longed for him to kiss her. She had never wanted anything more than her salary, her position, and a letter of character if she moved on to another household.
And yet that morning, she had inexplicably found herself yearning for the Duke of Sedgewick. Wanting to know his secrets. Wanting his arms around her, his mouth on hers. Wanting even more.
“Foolish, foolish woman,” she scolded herself beneath her breath as she crossed the threshold into her private room, closing the door at her back. “What were you thinking?”
With another sigh, she began untying her apron.
And that was when she saw him. Tall, decadently handsome, and forbiddingly austere.
Sitting on her chair as if it were the most natural place in the world for him to rest. As if he belonged there.
She gasped instinctively, startled, pressing a hand to her madly beating heart. “Your Grace.”
