“Are the spectacles not meant to aid your vision, Mrs. Johnson?”
When it was his opponent’s turn, he tried to distract her with idle remarks.
“It is bad etiquette to taunt one’s opponent,” she said tightly. “This is not, as you have noted, a game of poker.”
“Good etiquette rarely makes good strategy.”
She cast him a severe look. “Au contraire. Good etiquette is the key to civility, and civility is always good strategy.”
“Goodness,” he said mildly. “Could it be that you fancy yourself mannerly?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I couldn’t imagine how you would disagree.”
He gave an easy shrug. “How shall I say it . . . In future positions, I recommend that you cultivate a somewhat more reticent demeanor than you’ve shown me.”
They were speaking now as if she’d already left her post. Perhaps that accounted for his casual manner. He was no longer troubled by the need to maintain a proper distance between them. Not that it had troubled him in his study.
Butterflies emerged in her stomach. She promptly willed them dead.
As she craned over the board again, she thought of the bedroom behind her, and the chest she must search before her replacement was found. It would take time to arrange interviews, of course. But sometimes, if a sterling recommendation came from a family friend, none was conducted.
“Yes, precisely,” said Marwick. “This silence is very becoming of a servant. A very nice show of meekness, Mrs. Johnson.”
She pulled a face at him. “Now you’re having fun.”
He grinned. “Indeed I am,” he said—and then looked fleetingly startled. He turned his gaze out the window, his smile fading.
She could sense the downward pitch of his mood. He had recalled that his role was a recluse, to whom laughter and company were denied. And in a moment, he would cast her out, thereby avoiding his own defeat. For the perfect series of moves had finally revealed itself on the chessboard.
“To answer your question,” she said, “I do fancy myself a great admirer of etiquette. But I allow it has its particular place and time. Occasionally, to do a kindness, one must bend the rules.” She made a pointed pause. “Were it not for my temerity, these rooms would not smell nearly so nice. And you would not be reading about chess matches in the newspaper.”
He looked at her narrowly, as though he was marshaling his thoughts back from a faraway place. And then he gave her a half smile. “Quite right,” he said softly, and reached out very suddenly to clasp her wrist.
She froze, her fingertips hovering a fraction away from her queen, her pulse suddenly in her mouth.
He lifted her hand to his lips. “A breach of etiquette,” he murmured against her knuckles. “But a kindness. You do not wish to move your queen.”
Let go of me: her tongue felt like clay, unable to speak the words.
“Lovely hand,” he said, and turned her hand over to press a kiss into her palm.
She pulled free. A breath shuddered out of her. Her palm seemed to burn where he had kissed it. “This—this is not—”
“Your move,” he said mildly.
She fisted her hand in her lap. “Why do you do this?”
He gave her a meditative smile. “Better to ask, why do I seem to be the first? Were the men blind as well, where you were raised?”
The chessboard had turned into a riddle. She stared at it, her heart pounding.
“Where were you raised?” he asked.
“Stop.” She rose. “I will—”
“Very well. Sit down; I will behave.” His voice was low, calming, as though he knew what he had done to her. That gooseflesh still prickled over her skin. “And I will stop the imaginary clock, too, so you do not feel baited. Take your time with your move.”
Why did she sit back down? Curiosity, she supposed. She had never before been flirted with.
But new mountaineers did not begin their careers on the Matterhorn. To indulge her curiosity was tremendously stupid. She knew it, but she sat there, breathless, looking at the board, baffled by the pieces, her hand still tingling.
“I will confess that I remain curious,” he said. “You do look over your glasses when you require a clear view. You’re doing so right now.”
She shoved her glasses up her nose and glared through the lenses. “I see you very clearly, Your Grace.” And then, because he lifted a brow as though in skepticism: “I see a man who lacks faith in his own game, and so resorts to underhanded measures to distract the superior player.”
He gave a strange, edgy laugh. “Is that a challenge, Miss Johnson?”
Miss again, was she? “I think a challenge would be redundant, given we are playing against each other.” Her voice sounded too high for her comfort.
But really, who was this man? He had taken, over the last few days, to dressing formally again: his dark jacket opened over a striped waistcoat, which clung to his flat belly. Kitchen gossip suggested that he was taking five meals a day, and he looked far better for it. The shadows had cleared beneath his eyes, and the hollows beneath his cheekbones were filling in. The stark shape of his jaw had not softened, though. That was simply the architecture of his bones, which a woman would probably call flawless, if she felt inclined to admire him.
She was not admiring him. She simply observed the way he lounged, his long legs extended and crossed at the ankles, in a posture that seemed almost like a dare. Notice me, it said.
It was a dare. For whatever reason, he was animally attracted to her. He wanted her attention.
A flush bloomed over her skin—all of her skin; even the backs of her knees felt suddenly too hot. How intoxicating, how appallingly thrilling, to find oneself in an attraction—even if utterly, wildly, abominably inappropriate.
You idiot, she told herself. You are going to steal from him.
“Now who is baiting whom?” he asked mildly.
She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“I can only assume your intention is to discompose me.” He cocked a brow. “Certainly such a fixed stare cannot be considered encouraging. Or am I mistaken?”
“F-forgive me,” she stammered. “I didn’t . . .” She shook her head and turned back to the board. There was no hope; she could not figure out his plan for the game. Casting caution to the wind, she moved her knight forward.
Instantly, he sent out his queen to menace it.
The rapidity of his move boded ill. She moved her forward pawn to protect her knight, then scowled at the board. What was he planning?
“There,” he said. “You’ve done it again, Mrs. Johnson.”
She looked up. And then wanted to kick herself, for she knew exactly what he meant. Quickly, she nudged her glasses back to their proper place.
“I do wonder . . .” He tilted his head, his eyes narrowing so that crow’s-feet fanned into visibility at the corners. She found herself riveted by them, these small, secret signs that he had once been a man given to more serious pastimes than lounging. “Have you worn the glasses very long?”
She struggled to maintain her calm façade. “I cannot imagine how it interests you, Your Grace.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised. Curiosity is a great entertainment.”
“I am sorry to hear that you’re in need of entertainment. Perhaps your boredom might be cured by leaving the house.”
“And thereby deprive myself of your sharp tongue?” He gave her a threatening smile. “How might we blunt it? I can think of several possibilities.”
She pretended not to have heard this. “Curiosity, of course, is the most dangerous solution for tedium.”
“Why, Mrs. Johnson!” He propped his chin atop his fist. “Did you just imply that you were dangerous? Lady Ripton failed to mention that, I fear.”
“No need for worry,” she said sweetly. “I have just given notice; you may hire someone very staid to replace me.”
His laugh offered her a view of his straight white teeth, and the cleft in his
chin, normally disguised. “Touché.”
She felt herself on the verge of a smile, and instead folded her lips together. They should not be amusing each other. Anyone looking in at this scene, anyone who did not know them, would mistake them for pleasantly bickering lovers.
What a strange thought. She understood now how lovers might be said to quarrel without animosity. It rather took her breath away.
“Ah!” He lifted his brows. And she realized she had reached to adjust her glasses again.
“They have a smudge.” She removed them to polish with a handkerchief—and he promptly reached over and plucked them from her hand.
She lunged to her feet. “Give those back!”
Too late: he had held up the lenses to squint through them. Then he looked up at her, his expression amazed.
She sat down rigidly, her heart beating very fast. To wait for his inevitable remark was agonizing. He knew now that she did not require spectacles in order to see; that the lenses, while thick, were in no way corrective.
Silently he held them out to her. Their fingers brushed, and she flinched, for the contact sent a shocking spark along her skin—as though his kiss to her palm had sensitized her, and now she had no defenses.
How humiliating. She set the glasses back onto her nose, feeling sick. He would ask now about them, and there was no explanation she could offer that would not sound ridiculous.
He cleared his throat. She braced herself. But instead of questioning her, he bent over the chessboard, making an intent study of the pieces.
He was giving her a chance to compose herself.
No. She wanted to believe she misunderstood him. But a lump was forming in her throat. Kindness was a very underrated quality. She had vowed once that she would never neglect to appreciate it. Only she had never expected to find it in him . . .
She hid her confusion in a study of her handkerchief, which she folded, end over end, into a tiny, tight square.
He moved his rook. “Check.”
She tucked the handkerchief away and made herself sit forward. Her king was menaced. There was an easy way out of this trap, she felt sure of it. But she could not concentrate. What reasons must he be imagining for her disguise? He must think her daft—but what of it? He himself was no model for reasonable behavior.
She shifted her queen to block the rook—realizing, a moment too late, that she had moved that piece into reach of his knight. He would checkmate her in two moves, no help for it.
His hand moved toward the knight—hesitated there for a fractional moment—and then moved onward to his bishop.
“Don’t,” she burst out.
Their eyes met. Again, that hot shock—as though he had touched her. His eyes were intensely blue. Sapphire was the word. “Don’t what?” he asked, but there was something hot and devouring in his gaze, which said far more than his words did. She could not look away. A woman could fall into his eyes. Drown there. She would, gladly.
The thought echoed, panicking her. What was she doing? “You know what I mean,” she said. “I’ve lost the game. Don’t take pity on me.”
Sitting back, he offered her a rueful smile. “As you pitied me during the first half of this match?”
“That wasn’t pity.” Oh, she did not want to like him! Especially not if his eyes could cast spells on her, and his lips could reduce her to a gibbering ninny. What a perilous combination. “A servant cannot pity her employer.” And he was still her employer, no matter that she’d told him to find a replacement for her. He was the Duke of Marwick. Her next victim. “It was only good strategy on my part.” And avoiding him was good strategy, too. Why had she come inside?
He shrugged. “Once again, you parse diction. But I will call it pity, Mrs. Johnson, when a slip of a girl must yield her pawns to salve the pride of a man who once fancied himself a chess master.”
Had she heard him right? A slip of a girl? Nobody had ever used that phrase to describe her. It made her sound diminutive, fragile, when she stood almost six feet in her stockings.
She dug her nails into her lap to punish herself. She should not feel flattered by the idea that Marwick viewed her as feminine. He might be kind, very well. He might have gorgeous eyes. But he was not—could not—be a man to her. She had no wish to make a fool of herself. Say this spark between them was mutual. It only became an invitation for him to take advantage of her. And then . . . what? She would steal from him regardless.
She made herself give a devil-may-care shrug. “Hardly a slip of a girl. Why, I’m taller than most men.”
His arrested look made her realize her mistake. Her remark revealed all too clearly that she had fixated on his description of her. That she cared how he saw her.
Which she didn’t.
“True enough,” he said. “But since I happen to be taller, I have the luxury of failing to notice that.” He smiled again, a slow, openly suggestive smile.
She cast a panicked glance toward the door. That it stood shut had not bothered her before. But now the sight left her breathless.
He followed her glance. “You may open it if you like,” he said casually. “But I insist that we finish the game.”
“I have duties, Your Grace.”
“They can wait.” He toyed with one of her captured pawns. His fingers were long but not slender, his hands large, his palms broad: the strong hands of a workingman, misplaced on an aristocrat. Only his nails suggested his privilege, neat and clean. “As you say, it is good strategy to coddle one’s employer.”
“I never used that word.” He wore two rings now: the signet on his pinky, and a gold medallion on his middle finger. “Coddle, I mean.” At this rate he’d be bejeweled as an empress by spring.
“I beg your pardon. Then it is good strategy, as you would say.” He eyed her. The smile playing at the corners of his mouth made him look boyish, mischievous. “You really did miss your calling when you declined to become a governess.”
His flirting outclassed hers by far. She stood. Here ends the lesson. “Regardless, I am a housekeeper. And there are several items remaining on my—”
“And there’s the starch.” He leaned back, linking his hands together behind his head as he surveyed her. “You carry it off very well. Once you have a few lines in your face, a bit of gray in your hair, you’ll be fearsome indeed. Small children will flee, and all the housemaids will scrape and cringe.”
Something trembled inside her. She knew she had a starchy aspect. Did he imagine she was glad of it? She had no desire to be a Medusa. “Don’t mock me.”
“Oh, I don’t,” he said softly. “But the glasses do give you away, Mrs. Johnson.”
She hesitated, riven by twin impulses: the burning desire to know what he meant, and the fear of what he might say. That he might somehow say something true.
What a terrible thing it was to wish to be known, to be seen, when one’s life depended on remaining unnoticed.
He could not know her. A man of his station lacked the insight—and she could never permit it anyway. Nobody could know her until she was safe. She gathered up her skirts. “I must go.”
“You don’t wish to hear my theory?”
A flash of anger made her turn back. When had he ever known the kind of vulnerability a woman must suffer, when left on her own to face the world? How could he know that a woman might seek any strategy to render herself ineligible, invisible? “I am sure it will be very entertaining,” she said. She was, after all, a curiosity to him, was she not? A cure for his boredom, that was all.
“I don’t know about that,” he said gently—yes; to her amazement, there was no other way to describe his tone. “You’re a woman who has made her own way from a tender age. Unusually tall, conspicuously redheaded, very young, quite intelligent, and driven from your last position by a man who took unwanted note of you.” He tipped his head. “Mrs. Johnson, I would guess there is only one reason for you to wear those glasses.”
“And what is that?” she whispered.
&
nbsp; “You wear them to hide.” He gave her a wry half smile. “Alas that we don’t all have the luxury of a townhome in which to closet ourselves. But you are welcome here to play chess any time you wish. You are, after all, far better at it than you wanted me to know. But to my credit . . . I’d rather suspected you would be.”
She gaped at him. The force of her reaction overwhelmed her: distress, shock, embarrassment, gratitude. For he was right. She was so much more than she permitted others to see. Yet he had seen it anyway. And imagine what it would be like—what it would mean—if his remark was an offer of true friendship. For with a man like him to aid her . . .
Why, he was one of the few men in the world with no cause to fear Bertram. Quite the opposite: Bertram should rightfully fear him.
But what madness! She meant to deceive him. She already was deceiving him. She could not bear to think his offer was genuine—that his sympathy might be more than a passing lark. For what would that make her?
The outright villain of this piece. Again, the villain.
“I must go,” she said, choked.
He nodded. “Go, then.”
Only after she had shut the door did she realize, with a pang, the strangeness of their final exchange: she had not been asking his permission, but telling him what she must do. And he had not given permission. Instead, in a very small way, he had ceded her the authority.
CHAPTER TEN
Moonlight filtered through the crack in the curtains, bringing Alastair’s half-written letter to his brother into stark clarity:
My behavior was abominable. I would put it down to madness, but that smacks too much of excuses. I would offer my most abject apology, but that would imply that your forgiveness is possible. Believe me, though, when I say that I wish all the happiness in the world to you and your wife. And if I could undo only one thing, it would be my
Alastair laid down the pen. He could not write a lie. If he could undo only one thing, it would not be his behavior toward Michael. The memory shamed him deeply, but the whole episode, his insistence that Michael marry to his choosing, and Michael’s enraged rebellion—all of it seemed only a piece of the larger nightmare.