“So the older brother was the one who married well,” Gemma said slowly, as though trying to get the timeline clear in her mind.“But the younger brother is as yet unwed.I wonder when he plans to return.”
Warning bells clanged in Hal’s ears.“I couldn’t say for certain, but I do know that the current duke has no plans to marry anytime soon.”
Smiling faintly, Gemma wandered deeper into the house.“That is true for most men, and yet, they must marry eventually if they want to carry on their family line.Surely this duke doesn’t want to be the last of the Montroses.”
Hal barked a laugh before he could choke it back.Answering Gemma’s questioning glance, he shrugged and thrust his restless hands into his pockets.“My apologies.It’s just, that’s exactly what the previous duke liked to call himself.Once it became known that his wife could not bear children, he took great pleasure in melodramatically and publicly proclaiming himself the Last of the Montroses.”
Gemma frowned.“But…he had a younger brother.”
Forcing another laugh, Hal agreed.“To be fair to the previous duke, no one in that family ever cared overmuch what became of the younger brother.Once his mother died, he roamed the woods and fields as feral as an abandoned dog, and he wasn’t much better behaved at Oxford.”
His mother.God.What was he talking about?Why had he mentioned Mother?The memories swirled, a black pool threatening to drag him under and drown him, but he gritted his teeth and shoved them away.
“Oxford.Where you met him,” Gemma supplied, and Hal tensed.
They had strayed into dangerous territory and he was far too close to accidentally revealing his deception.He wondered how it was possible he hadn’t anticipated this as a logical result of showing Gemma around his childhood home.
“If the duke was badly behaved at school, what were you like, then?”she pursued with a teasing glint in her eyes.
“A model of moral rectitude,” he said drily.
She scoffed, pinning him with a knowing look.“Oh, certainly.Every model of moral rectitude knows how to make a woman expire of pleasure with a single touch.”
Hal felt as though he were on fire.“I’ve never met a woman like you.The things you say…”
“I’m merely describing a thing youdid,” she pointed out, a touch exasperated.“Why should I be more embarrassed to say it than you were to do it?”
“You shouldn’t, but most people would be.”
She shrugged her smooth shoulders, making that precarious bodice tighten in interesting ways that drew Hal’s gaze inexorably down.
“I’ve never understood why people allow their lives to be ruled by the fear of embarrassment.For the most part, I find that those whom we suspect of observing and judging us harshly are, in fact, concerned with the exact same thing we are: themselves.But you were telling me about your time at school.”
“I was no saint,” Hal acknowledged shortly, not eager to follow this line of questioning much further.“I nearly lost myself.But I was lucky.My friends were the making of me.”
“The Duke of Havilocke,” she supplied.
“Among others.”
Knowing his best hope lay in distracting her too-quick, too-clever mind, Hal strode into the formal receiving room and started pulling white sheets off the furniture.Clouds of dust kicked up, making Gemma cough and squint even as she said with some alarm, “Are you allowed to do that?”
“There’s no one here to care,” Hal countered, tossing a bundle of sheets into the corner and turning to face her.
A look of calculation had entered Gemma’s lovely, refined face.She tapped one finger against the kissable dent in her chin and Hal had to hold back a groan.He shifted his stance, the erection that had begun to subside while they talked around his family’s shameful history suddenly pressing at the tightness of his trousers.
“You truly don’t believe he’s coming back anytime soon,” Gemma confirmed, her assessing gaze sweeping the lines of elegant, unused chairs and settees and sofas arranged in conversational groupings around the drawing room.
Impatient with the unsated hunger still raging in his blood, Hal made a sharp gesture.“I promise you, there’s no need to worry about the duke.He couldn’t care less what happens to this old pile.”
A lie.Hal cared, but he couldn’t afford to do anything about it yet.The people who lived and worked on the estate’s lands had to come first.
Gemma’s eyes gleamed with an excited sparkle that should have given him pause.“Excellent,” she purred.“In that case, the duke won’t mind if we borrow a few of these lovely pieces.That chaise longue will do nicely, ooh, and that writing desk.Is that Thomas Sheraton?”
Hal blinked in astonishment.“Are you...furniture shopping?”
In my house?
She really was the most brazen person Hal had ever met.She didn’t even blush as she cocked her head and said, “Not for myself.Oh, I wouldn’t mind refurbishing my family’s rooms at the inn, but that can wait until we’ve established the Five Mile asthefashionable place to stop on the journey from London to Bath.And for that, we desperately need higher quality furnishings.”
