“Your Grace.”
He took a step toward her. She did not step back.
“My father,” he said quietly, “has been dead less than a fortnight. My sister is barely one-and-twenty. If you have managed in two weeks to drag her out of this house at night in a cloak into a public lane, then you have done my family damage I will not forgive. Where were you taking her?”
For a moment, just a moment, he thought he saw something move behind her green eyes. Then her chin lifted.
“I was taking her to see the moon over the river. She has been weeping for two weeks straight, Your Grace, and I thought she might breathe better in the open air. That is all.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I do not particularly care what you believe.”
The little hellion.
“Joanna, go inside. Now.”
His sister fled past him without a word.
Lady Alice stayed.
He should have walked away. He did not. He stood in the lane in his shirtsleeves and looked at her, and she looked back. She came up to about his collarbone. She had a freckle just below the curve of her right cheekbone, and her hair smelled faintly of lemon.
“You will not come here again,” he ordered.
“That is not your decision to make.”
“It is entirely my decision to make. This is my house. Joanna is my sister.”
“And she is also a person, Your Grace.”
“I am aware.”
“Are you?”
He stepped closer. He did not know why. He was close enough now to count her lashes. She did not move.
“You will not come here again,” he repeated, quieter.
“I will come where I am invited.”
“You will not be invited.”
“By you, perhaps.”
He breathed out slowly and stepped back. “Get off my land, Lady Alice.”
“With pleasure, Your Grace.” She curtsied again, just as offensively as before, then turned away and walked up the lane without looking back.
He watched her go until she rounded the bend.
He bolted the gate behind him. Then he climbed to his sister’s room where he found her sitting on the edge of her bed in her cloak, red-eyed and defiant.
“Lady Alice Lockwood,” he said, very calmly, “is not to enter this house again. She is not to be received. She is not to be written to. She is not to be acknowledged.”
She cried. He did not soften.
He returned to his study and sat at his father’s desk. He poured the brandy he had not touched before, drank it in two long gulps, and then set the glass down. He stared at the dark beyondthe window, where a green-eyed woman had been standing not twenty minutes ago, and made himself a vow.
