“And if you are in need of shoes,” the duchess shuddered as her gaze went to Helen’s boots, “I’ll have my butler give you the name of his cobbler.”
In less than a minute, Helen was out the door, clutching a scrap of paper with a shoemaker’s address written on it, walking away from the house of the Duchess of Dunmore. Tears held back but head down and eyes on her boots, worn and scratched by the stones of Kinmarloch, now moving quickly over the cobblestones of London.
She had been barking mad to think she could ever be a duchess. Why hadn’t Jack told her there were women in the world who looked like that? Why hadn’t he been honest and laughed in her face when she had crept into his bedchamber and told him her hopes of a duke?
He had pitied her. That’s what everything had been. Pity. He had made himself her consolation, knowing she would fail.
She went back to the rooms.
“We’re going back home tomorrow,” she said to Mags and Duncan. “I know there’s nae much to pack, but pack what ye have. And nae a word to Jack Pike. I’ll tell him myself.”
Jack had spenthis morning reading the same line over and over again in the report on clearances he had abandoned the afternoon Helen had come to his door. Finally, he threw the pamphlet down. All his thoughts were of her, constantly. What she might be doing right now. What he might say to her, what he might do to her the next time he saw her. And, yes, what she, in turn, would say about this report which laid out the hard facts about letting farms stay in the barren Highlands.
He was disturbed by the mood that met him when he went to the rooms in the early afternoon.
Does Helen know I’m the duke? Is that why she won’t look at me?
But the young people also seemed melancholic and apprehensive.
“Duncan, take Mags out. Here’s some money, buy some sweets.” Helen put coins in Duncan’s hand. “Stay close.”
“Oh, my lady, may I use my part of the money for something else?” Mags asked. She glanced at Duncan. “There is a hair ribbon I saw in a shop window. With pictures of flowers in the weave. Little ones, like yer dress. I dinnae know the cost—”
Duncan grunted. “Ye will have my part of the money, too.”
Jack went into his purse and took out some coins and gave them to Duncan. “Payment for saving my back yesterday. Get the sweets, as well. Or get two hair ribbons.” He looked at Helen, expecting a glare at his indulgence, but she was looking away.
She knows.
He prepared himself for a drubbing. An excoriation. A tempest. But when the door shut behind Mags and Duncan, he heard “Mo luran,” and she was next to him.
Her hands came to his face and she ran the tips of her fingers over his cheeks, his jaw, his lips. “So beautiful. My sunrise. My stars.”
He felt the blood rise to his face, not only because of her words but also out of relief. She wouldn’t be whispering sweet things to him and touching his face this way if she knew he was Dunmore. Something else must be wrong. Something that had nothing to do with him.
“Does it still hurt here,” he put his hand on her breastbone, “when you look at me, Helen?”
“Aye, worse than ever. Does it still make ye hard when I tell ye that?” She brushed the back of her hand against his groin, fleetingly.
“I should stay away every morning if that’s what it takes to get you to appreciate me.” He caught her other hand and kissed her palm, her calluses. “Did you send Mags and Duncan away so I could ravish you, Helen?”
“I sent them away so I could look at ye.”
“They could have stayed if all you wanted to do was look.”
“They couldnae have stayed for what looking at ye leads me to do.” Her hand grasped him through his trousers. “To look at ye and touch ye at the same time, Jack Pike. There cannae be any greater delight for me on this earth.”
He felt himself engorge under her strong, rubbing hand. He pushed a tendril of hair behind her ear. “There could be, Helen, there could be.”
“How is that,mo luran?”
“I could be without clothes. And you could be, too.”
“Aye.”
A graze of his lips against hers. “And I could kiss you.”
“Aye.”
