He stepped around the chair and sat in it, keeping his eyes on her. “Stay.”
“What?”
“Are you on your way somewhere?”
“I’m trying to live. Same as always.”
He bent forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees, his gaze boring into her. She felt as if she were exposed on a mountain cloaked in foreboding clouds. He appeared to be fighting some kind of battle in his head, tightening his jaw, thinning his lips. “I won’t have you starving on the streets of Colchester. Stay here. Serve me.”
For a fleeting instant, her blood ran scalding through her veins. Serve him? What exactly would that entail? Would she still sleep in his bed? “Thank you, Your Grace, but I’m not a servant.”
“Then you must enjoy striving to live,” he concluded, rising from his chair.
“Must I serve you to stay?”
He nodded and scoffed. “You want everything for nothing at all? Even a wife wouldn’t ask that of me.”
A wife? It was all she could think while she watched him leave the room. With his long, straight legs and breeches that hugged his backside perfectly, along with the beguiling flare of his shoulders, the back of him clouded her thoughts as much asthe front of him did. So then, he wasn’t married. How in the world had women let him slip by? Was his personality really that bad? Was she just as foolish to let an opportunity slip by her?
“Your Grace?” she called out as the door was closing.
He popped his head back inside the room and set his gaze on her.
“I’ll stay.”
“And serve me?”
She rolled her eyes heavenward as if she were sparing him her last shred of patience. “Fine.”
Chapter Three
Fine.
Ben huffed out a breath as he left the guest bedchamber and entered the small sitting parlor. He looked back at the door as he closed it. When his parents were alive, these rooms had been reserved for visiting guests. But Colchester House no longer received guests. Not until last night. Strange how she could breathe life into that stuffy old bedchamber. Her presence seemed to brighten every corner.
When he’d heard how ill she had become and what had caused her malady, he went to her. Instead of her wide heaven-colored eyes staring back at him, she was barely awake, weak from expelling the contents of her belly, which, according to Edith, was much. He still didn’t know what had come over him when he bent to her small cot and lifted her limp body in his arms. All he could think about on the way up the stairs to the room she now occupied, had been that she was obviously a streeturchin who probably begged or stole for money, and he didn’t care. She piqued his interest. Who was she running from, and why? He intended to find out. She amused him. What made her a fierce enemy to have when a heavy gust could sweep her away? She was quick witted and had honestly told him how much she’d eaten. And what had she meant by him trying to push her buttons? Edith had changed her odd clothes to a gown. There were no threaded buttons attached. She spoke in an odd manner–like the rest of her. Her hot temper made him want to dominate her, but it was an instinct. Nothing more.
Because he was alone, he let himself give out a short, quiet laugh as he fell onto a quilted crimson settee. He opened his book and held it up. She didn’t want to be his servant but she hadn’t asked what her duties entailed.
“What shall I have you do for me first, Miss Ramsey?” he mused into the book.
Suddenly, the book was yanked from his fingers, the ship on the cover turned upright, then shoved back into his hands.
“You can start by asking me to have mercy on you.”
He looked up into those fathomless ocean-colored eyes he couldn’t seem to shake from his thoughts. “Or what?”
She snatched the book from him again and slapped his recovering arm with it, then dropped it on him and turned away.
For at least ten breaths, Ben couldn’t do anything but stare at her in quiet shock that she dared to strike him. It hurt his pride more than his arm, though he clutched the latter as if the opposite were true. This was a first. What should he do?
“Miss Ramsey.”
She stopped and turned to him.
“Do you want to be thrown into prison?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, YourMajesty, who doesn’t want to be thrown into prison?”
