“I’ll give you the first very small step toward a functioning dukedom?” she tried.
He laughed and rolled to his feet.
Isobel unearthed a stool from beneath cast-off clothing and dragged it beside the desk. The duke collapsed into the leather wingback and ran a hand through his hair.
“Lovely,” she said with forced brightness. The inside-out burning had gone from a sizzle to licking, jumping flames. She was jittery and twitchy. The shimmers inside her chest flew about like his paperwork.
Through sheer force of will, she blocked out his gaze, his smell,his leg, which touched her skirts. She bit off her gloves. With trembling fingers, she held up the first piece of paper.
She read the title at the top of the page. “ ‘Tenant-Lodging Repairs before Winter.’ Very good. Now, we shall make stacks. You’ll want files for each of these. I’ll keep a tally here of divisions we’ll need. Make a space, that’s it. Down it goes. My God, Northumberland, there’s cat hair everywhere. Alright, on to the next.”
She picked up the next sheet. She read the title. He mumbled some explanation about what it might mean and she created a new stack.
She took up the next recovered paper, and the next. As interactions went, it was strange, a bit mechanical, but not difficult. It was nothing like she’d imagined, but perhaps it was what he needed.
One small step toward solvency. Progress by force.
Because she loved him. She loved him more than she loved her own need to be with him.
She loved him too much to allow him to fail.
She would set him to rights, help him hire stewards and foremen and overseers, and then she would go.
That was how much she loved him.
After ten minutes, Jason began to wager with himself.
Could he continue in this manner for an hour? For two? How long would he slouch beside her, not a foot away, and not touch her?
How long would she resist touching so that instead she couldorganize his files?
Would she do more than march him around? He’d never minded her bossing, for all that. It was arousing in a way. He was aroused now.
He wet his lips and glanced at her profile. “Isobel?” he said lowly.
“You’re right,” she said, leaning to drop a paper into one of her many neat stacks, “best file it with the taxes and ask a solicitor to look it over. There may be an exemption.”
“Isobel,” he repeated his voice a growl.
“No,” she said, a senseless answer. She dabbed a pen in the inkwell, refusing to look at him.
He called her name a third time. “Isobel.” A whisper.
She paused, her fingers frozen over a stack of papers; she looked to him. Her face was tight. If he wasn’t mistaken, she held her breath.
“North?” she asked.
“Yes?”
“Are you...?” She studied him with narrowed, searching eyes.
He scratched his beard. He began slowly shaking his head.
Whatever she meant to accuse, it wasn’t—he wasn’t.
Hehadn’t.
She’d not come to him as she said she would.
