For a brief moment, his eyes dipped, following the sound, but then his stare was once more burning into hers. “I have been speaking with Dunreave this morning, Mrs. Yorke, and it would seem that some of your observations about Blackwell Abbey were indeed quite astute.”
He could have pushed her flat onto her bottom with nothing more than a feather, so complete was her astonishment. She had expected another firm harangue. Perhaps a renewed threat to have her sent to the nearest jail. Certainly, she had not anticipated an acknowledgment that she had been correct in her assessment of his estate.
“You have?” she squeaked, cursing herself for the surprise that made her voice unnaturally high.
He inclined his head in a regal manner. “I have.”
He wasn’t intending to sack her then, was he?
“I am relieved to hear it,” she managed politely. “Does this mean that you are no longer as reluctant to accept my presence?”
His lips twitched, but his visage remained unsmiling. “You may stay for now, madam.”
Relief swept over her. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
“Don’t thank me,” he clipped. “I do not like mice, Mrs. Yorke. You will remain long enough to set my household in order, and then you will return to London.”
Joceline couldn’t contain her smile. “Of course, Your Grace.”
He scowled. “Are you always so annoyingly full of cheer, madam?”
A hysterical laugh threatened to burst forth. She tamped it down with all the restraint she possessed. If only he knew how difficult her life had been thus far and how much struggle she had endured. He never would have asked such a question of her.
But the Duke of Sedgewick didn’t know her. It wasn’t his place to know her. She was but a servant in his household, just as she had been in others prior to his. Her past was immaterial to him, and lest she confuse his generosity for anything else, she must not forget that his sole reason for relenting and allowing her to remain was hisdislike of mice.
“I can assure Your Grace that it has never been my intention to annoy you,” she said, her smile fading. “Pleasing you is my sole desire.”
She hadn’t intended for her words to have such a carnal undertone, but the moment they were uttered, something in the room shifted. The duke’s blue-green gaze slid once more, this time to her lips rather than to her chatelaine. Deep within her, a yearning that she had long since learned to quell surged forth before she could stop it. She was not meant to be a woman of emotion, base or otherwise. She had been born to be a woman of duty and tasks, with work-roughened hands. Her sole occupation was in the smooth running of a household. Not passion. Not longing. Never such dangerous, decadent fancies.
“Is it?” he asked thoughtfully, moving toward her in a slow, measured saunter, away from the window.
He reached her, stopping to loom over Joceline, the scent of him filling her lungs, and she caught herself inhaling deeply to gather more of it. His gloved fingertips were on his jaw, stroking. And that was when she noticed the cut at this proximity, marring the sleek architecture of his beautiful face. The golden whiskers glinting in the sunlight only on one half of his face. A shaving injury, then.
Her cheeks went hot at the realization, so intimate. It wasn’t her place to think of him shaving. It wasn’t her place to think of him at all. Certainly not in the way a woman thinks about a man.
“It is, Your Grace,” she said, cursing herself for the breathlessness in her voice.
This was unlike her, to be affected by her employer. But then, she had never had an employer as dangerously mesmerizing as the Duke of Sedgewick.
He leaned down, shocking her. For one wild moment, she thought he might do something untoward. That he might set his sculpted, sullen lips to hers. But then he spoke with quiet warning into her ear.
“If you truly wish to please me, Mrs. Yorke, then you will remove the Christmas greenery and trees from my damned drawing room.”
She stepped back from him, jolted, frightened by her body’s reaction to his, by the ache that blossomed deep in her belly and sank lower to a more forbidden place. All from his scent and his nearness and the silken velvet of his voice giving her more churlish commands.
“Her Grace requested the decorations, if you will recall,” she reminded him firmly, refusing to allow him to see how badly he had discomfited her.
Likely, the duke would be pleased to know it. She had no wish to be the source of his amusement.
He clenched his jaw, once more unyielding. “And if you will recall, I am allowing you to remain because you have shown yourself to be a reasonably capable housekeeper. Do not make me rethink my leniency, madam.”
They stared at each other, awareness crackling between them like thunder in a summer storm. She did not think she mistook the raw, masculine interest in his gaze. It did not shock her that a duke would take carnal interest in his housekeeper; aristocrats often dallied with their domestics. It was frowned upon, but all too commonly done. What astonished her, however, was that this rigid, icy, forbidding man was attracted to anyone at all, let aloneher.
She would not allow him to know just how vulnerable she was to his interest. A respectable housekeeper who wished to remain respectable must, at all times, forget that she was a woman of flesh and bone. Forget that she had needs and wants. Her lot was to be as emotionless and useful as a piece of furniture adorning a room. Serviceable. Sturdy. Necessary. But an object incapable of thought or feeling.
“Very well, Your Grace,” she relented. “I will see to it that the Christmas greenery and trees are removed from the drawing room. Joseph and Peter are laying out mouse poison and traps for the rodent problem at this moment, but I will divert them forthwith to the task of removing all the decorations. I should think it will take them the remainder of the day to have it all taken away, and then they will need to find a place where they can take the trees and garlands, along with a proper cart to do so. The cart they used previously has a broken axle. I am sure it will take no more than two days at the most to have all the decorations removed before they can return to the effort of curbing the mice.”
The consternation on his arrogant face might have been amusing were her circumstances not so very dire. She wasexaggerating, of course. Only Joseph was setting mouse traps at the moment. And the removal of the decorations wouldn’t take nearly as long as she had estimated. However, the Duke of Sedgewick didn’t need to know that.
