He wasn’t sure what had kept him from sleep—his consternation over her brazen plans to lure wealthy suitors to Five Mile House?Or the fire she’d stoked in his blood with the bold curl of her lips and the lavish curves of her mouthwatering little figure.
Finally, once he’d given in and taken care of his insistent, iron-hard cockstand, he’d been able to sleep.The particular tilt of her dimpled chin and her slow, sensual smile had flashed before his closed eyes at the moment of crisis, setting off an explosion that had racked his body with shudders of pleasure.At last able to relax, he’d fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.
This morning, in the cold light of day, the memory of that made Hal want to snarl.What the hell was he playing at?He needed to be strategizing ways to get rid of this woman, not fantasizing about her with his hand wrapped around his prick.
He was still scowling as he strode through the grand hall and flung open the huge front doors.
His friend and solicitor, Mr.Jonathan Reed, Esquire, blinked at him, fist still raised to pound on the door.
A tall Black man with tidy sideburns, a disarmingly bright smile, and a sardonic twist to his well-groomed brows, Jonathan made a show of peering around Hal as though searching for someone.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said blandly.“I was under the impression that I was calling upon the Duke of Havilocke.But surely a duke would have a butler to answer his door, rather than a farmer.”
Hal’s scowl deepened.“What are you doing here, Jon?”
The dark winged brows went up a bit.“That’s quite the greeting.Perhaps I really am at the wrong place.I would have thought a duke would have better manners.Not to mention better style.”
As usual, Jonathan was impeccably, if conservatively, dressed in pleated buff trousers and a dove gray wool coat, double-breasted and cropped at his trim waist.He removed his tall, brimmed hat and tucked it under his arm as he strolled past Hal and into the dim interior of the manor.
Hal followed, shutting the door behind him with a truculent bang and leaning against it with his arms crossed over his chest.
His friend took his time removing his gloves, and Hal noted the careful, shrewd cataloguing of details Jonathan effected while seeming to only glance negligently about the hall.
Hal knew what Jon was observing.The sconces hanging on the walls, devoid of candles.The thick layer of dust dulling the sheen of the painted crown mouldings.The Holland cloth-covered furnishings just visible through the open door to the front drawing room.
The echoing silence of a house filled with nothing but ghosts and bad memories.
“I suppose it would be folly to await a footman to come and take my things.”Jon laid his hat, upside down, on a small, ornately carved end table, and draped his kid gloves neatly over the brim.
“It would,” Hal acknowledged.
Jonathan slanted him a look.“Would it likewise be folly to expect a cup of tea?”
Fighting a smile, Hal pushed away from the door.“Tea, I can do.Come along, the kitchen is this way.”
“Hal.I did not read civil law at Oxford, while hauling you out of gambling hells and taverns and back to your land management courses, and then work five years as an unpaid apprentice to the best solicitor in London so that I could take tea in a kitchen.Even a duke’s kitchen.”
“The kitchen is where the tea is,” Hal pointed out, leading the way down the hall.“Or will be, once I put the kettle on.”
Jonathan sighed behind him.“You let the cook go as well.”
Hal shrugged, refusing to be embarrassed.“You were the one who advised me to retrench.I pensioned off all the servants who didn’t find better jobs to go to.”
“I thought you might lease some of your properties and use the income to take a small townhouse in Bath!Instead, you sold off everything that wasn’t entailed and poured all your money into Kissington—which somehow still wasn’t enough to allow you a proper staff to care for the place?”
“Leasing the Mayfair house and the other properties wouldn’t have brought in nearly enough to pay off my family’s debts,” Hal reminded his friend wearily.“I preferred to settle the debts at once.That consumed the lion’s share of the profits from selling the other properties, and yes, whatever was left over had to go to Kissington—the estate and the village, not this house.”
“As I told you at the time,” Jonathan reminded him testily, “no one truly expects a duke to pay his debts.I devised a very simple—and brilliant—plan for you that would have satisfied your creditors enough to leave you alone, on the promise of future payments and a continued association with your very old and grand title.But no.Instead you prefer to rattle around this empty shell of a house by yourself, living like a stray dog scrounging for scraps at your own table.”
“I don’t think my family title should mean the rules are different for me than they are for any other man.”
“You may not think it should be so,” Jonathan retorted, “but that does not alter the reality.”
Hal’s mouth twisted with bitter amusement.“Perhaps I am just enough of a duke to expect the world to bend to my whims.”
The kitchens were located at the back of the house, down a narrow flight of stairs normally only traversed by servants.It was a large, low-ceilinged space with a hearth large enough to roast an entire pig hollowed out of one wall.The stove was a cast-iron monstrosity that Hal tried to keep lit at all times, or else it took forever to heat up a simple kettle of water.Opening the fire door, he saw with satisfaction that the embers were still burning.It was the work of a moment to add kindling and stoke up the little fire.
Inspecting the tea kettle, Hal found it almost empty.“Make yourself at home.I have to fill the kettle, I’ll be back in a moment.”
