Page 20 of The Governess and the Brooding Duke
‘I am speaking a truth you do not wish to hear, Your Grace.’
He could dismiss her. He should dismiss her. No one should speak to him this way. No one had ever dared.
But dammit, it fired his blood, and it made him feel something other than the relentless, endless grey that had taken over his life.
She excited him. And that was better than anything else she might make him feel.
He wished to push her. Harder. He wished to get beneath her skin, to make her walls crumble.
He wanted to know her. She was a mysterious smooth box and he could not find his way in.
And it was better than the mystery of his children. The mystery of what he was to do with the life that he was left with.
‘Your truth, perhaps. But at Attingham, the only truth that matters is mine. And I disagree. I think the children need you. Provided, of course, you are able to give them what they require. And if not, leave my study now, leave the estate now. Pack all of your things and do not stay another night.’
That incensed her. Regardless of how still she held herself, her anger was clear.
‘I can care for your children. I told you, I am not bothered by Michael’s moods, what I am bothered by is that there are no tools to help him. And certainly none coming from you.’
‘Do you see this?’ he asked, gesturing to his desk, to the papers there. ‘I am responsible for the lives of many. I must manage the estate, and all those who depend on it, and that is when I am not in my seat at the House of Lords for matters of Parliament. I have many responsibilities, and you have one. It is to care for my children. Can I trust you to do that?’
‘I am doing it.’
‘Good. Then we will keep this to the confines of our meetings. You will do as you are instructed to do, and you will not return to this study with a list of tasks for me to perform. I set the standard. I set the boundaries. I set the rules. Are we clear, Miss Smith?’
She looked down for a moment, the lovely sweep of her lashes fanning over her cheekbones tightening his gut. And then when she looked back up at him, with that emerald brilliance, he felt the impact of it echo in his cock.
It was a base and undeniable reaction. He could excise his thoughts about her beauty as the vague observations of a man who was fond of beautiful women.
He could not excuse the abject lust that fired in his veins in that moment. Could not dismiss it as an aberration or the consequence of some time of celibacy.
It was specific. And it was about her.
The way she held her posture, the way she looked down, while he could still feel a fight brewing beneath her skin like a storm.
‘Yes, Your Grace.’ And then she looked up, her eyes meeting his at just the right moment.
It was like fire.
It was not supplication. Not truly. And there was something about that which felt like a challenge.
To make her sayyesand mean it. To make her sayYour Gracewithout the poison lacing each syllable.
To say it as a prayer.
He took a step back, rejecting those thoughts wholly. They did not fit within the confines he had created for his life. She did not fit inhisrules, and yet he needed her here.
You want her here. Because she distracts you. She excites you.
He ignored that. He did not have to answer to anyone, least of all the interrogation of his own mind.
He was a duke, after all, and what good was it if he had to be subject to the whims of others, or answerable to anything.
He had a moral code, and he would follow it. He knew it so well now that he did not have to question his every action. And that was the point of it.
‘You are dismissed, Miss Smith.’
‘I bid you good evening, Your Grace.’
