She gave an abrupt nod.
“I am sorry too,” she whispered. “I should not have spoken to you as I did.” Her jaw clenched, and she looked close to tears again.
“Tell me what you were doing in that place, Dimity?”
Chapter Two
He’d kissed her.
Dimity battled down the wash of wonderful heat being in Lord Raine’s arms had made her feel and let back in the terrifying fear that she’d lost the only job she’d been able to secure out of a list of many. Now how would she survive?
When she’d seen Gabriel Deville, the Earl of Raine, in that tavern, she’d been mortified. She’d once worked as a piano teacher for his sister, and now he’d seen her reduced to dancing on a bar showing off her breasts. Her cheeks burned with humiliation.
Just thinking of Abby made her want to cry. They’d grown to be friends in such short time. Sweet, kind, and everything Dimity rarely was. Her time with Abby would always remain etched in her memory as a wonderful period of her life before it turned to hell.
“Dimity, why were you in that bar?”
“I work there, and as I don’t work for you anymore, I am no concern of yours.” She gathered the tattered remnants of her pride around her and went on the attack. It was the only way she could cope with him seeing her as he had. “I have nothing further to say to you, Lord Raine. You just cost me my job!”
“You cannot tell me you seriously want to work in that place?”
“I am not discussing this further with you.”
Beautiful Gabriel Deville. Tall and handsome, the man carried himself as if he were a bloody king. No stooping or slumping was allowed for the Earl of Raine. His hair was cropped short and the brown locks threaded with silver. “Handsome” was too tame a word for this man; she preferred “disturbing.”
“You will talk to me about it,” he demanded.
He had dark eyes that bored into a person and saw more than they should. If she stayed in his company too long, he would see what she was hiding.
“Stop the carriage!” Dimity hammered on the roof, and it slowed. Grabbing the door handle, she got it open before large hands stopped her and slammed it shut again.
“Don’t stop unless you hear my voice, Toddy!” He roared the words at his driver as he pushed her back into the seat.
“You,” he pointed a finger at her, “stay!”
“Don’t roar at me.”
“I won’t have to if you behave.”
“I’m not a dog, nor one of your poor hapless staff!”
“My staff are well paid and have no complaints,” he gritted out between his teeth.
“You don’t even know their names. You know nothing about them,” Dimity muttered. But he was right; for all he was a hard man, his staff loved and respected him and his brothers. Not that she’d tell him that.
“I have maids named Tilly, Sarah, and Bobbi, which I’m guessing is short for Roberta or some such thing. I have footmen called David, Daniel, and Hogan. Do you wish me to continue?”
She wouldn’t show him she was surprised. But she was.
“You only just learned those because I accused you of being a pompous ass who knows nothing beyond the end of his nose when I worked in your household.”
His smile now held humor. “Flattering though that description was, it did not have me rushing to learn the names of my staff.”
His face really shouldn’t be as handsome as it was, made up of sharp ridges on his cheekbones and a long arrogant nose. But he was handsome, and she’d always found him so. She’d felt the attraction to him as soon as she’d met him that day in his office, when he’d interviewed her. He’d not wanted to hire her, but Abby, who had been there also, had insisted.
Those days seemed so long ago now. Days where she’d enjoyed her life. She’d still experienced hard times due to the fact her father had sent money to her wastrel brother, leaving them short. But she’d been happy. The thought just made the lump in her throat grow. She pushed it to the back of her head with all the others she’d locked away in there.
Everything had changed with the death of her father. The agency had no more work for her, and she’d been thrown from her home by her horrid brother. Blood ties and a promise to their father mattered little to him, it seemed.
