Quint glared at his reflection in the mirror as Dunreave smoothed a razor over his jaw. He had spent the previous evening stewing over his confrontation with Mrs. Yorke, her observations about his household taunting him, along with the reminder of how comely she was. How ripe her lips had been, stretched into a polite smile that no amount of surliness on his part had shaken. She possessed a mouth that was infinitely kissable, and he resented his own weakness for noticing.
He hadn’t been aware of a woman in a physical sense in some time. Not since Amelia’s death. First, he had been too badly injured by grief and the burns he had suffered in the fire to give a damn. Later, he had healed physically—his ravaged skin no longer blistering and oozing, but hideously scarred—and yet, the grief had remained.
So, too, the guilt, the nightmares, the pain of knowing he might have saved her, had he only been a few minutes sooner. He had buried himself alongside her in the graveyard at Sedgewick Hall, and then he had traveled north, to one of his lesser holdings here at Blackwell Abbey, bringing only a small contingent of domestics with him, remaining far from everyreminder of Amelia and the terrible fire that had claimed her and their unborn babe that hated December.
Why now, of all times, should he be reminded that he was indeed a flesh-and-blood male, that his disfigured body still had needs? He hated himself for the unwanted yearning that had begun to boil in his blood from the moment he had first seen his raven-haired housekeeper. And he despised her for being so lovely, so filled with a surfeit of cheer, for intruding upon the place where he had walled himself away in his misery, for knowing more about Blackwell Abbey in a handful of days than he did.
For making him want her.
He had to distract himself.
“Dunreave?”
The razor sliced into his flesh.
He hissed in pain, watching in the mirror as the shaving soap’s foam turned red.
“Forgive me, Your Grace!” Dunreave cried. “I can be so clumsy sometimes.”
The fault was Quint’s. Not just for talking whilst the sometimes butler, sometimes valet shaved him. But for requiring Dunreave to play so many roles in his household.
Mrs. Yorke’s tart words came back to him.
Poor Mr. Dunreave is already burdened with far too many tasks.
He cleared his throat, reaching for a handkerchief and pressing it to the shallow wound. “You needn’t apologize, Dunreave. The fault is mine for speaking when I know you need a steady hand.”
“I am so sorry, Your Grace,” Dunreave fretted. “I hope my carelessness won’t cause a scar.”
Quint chuckled grimly. “One more scar won’t cause a bit of a difference. Don’t fret.”
His manservant went ashen. “Forgive me, sir. I didn’t mean to suggest?—”
Quint held up a hand as he interrupted. “I know you didn’t, Dunreave.”
No one else had seen the extent of Quint’s scars except for the physician who had attended him. Dunreave had nursed Quint through his many weeks of recuperation, barring Quint’s mother from the sickroom at his request. By the time he had healed sufficiently to receive his mother, he had been able to don a shirt and coat and the gloves that shielded the evidence of his failure from the prying eyes of the world.
He intended to keep it that way.
He dabbed at the small nick in his jaw some more. The blood had already slowed.
“Allow me, Your Grace,” Dunreave said. “I’ll finish my task so that you can carry on with your day.”
But suddenly, Quint was no longer interested in completing his shave. Instead, the questions that had begun festering within him ever since his clash with Mrs. Yorke bubbled up to the surface like water roiling in a pot.
“Leave it,” he said. “My whiskers scarcely show anyhow. I have a question for you, Dunreave.”
“Yes, Your Grace?” The manservant was grim, almost as if he expected to be sacked.
Was Quint that much of a tyrant? Strange how he hadn’t noticed the fear in Dunreave’s bearing before.
“Are you overburdened with tasks?” he asked and then almost winced at how much he sounded like that blasted woman.
Mrs. Yorke.
That stubborn, capable, determined, beautiful housekeeper who had invaded his home and filled his drawing room with holly and dared to defy him.
“I am happy to serve Your Grace in whatever capacity I may,” Dunreave said with politic care.
