Page 61 of The Governess and the Brooding Duke
‘Certainly you have, and yet your tone remains insolent.’
‘You called me Mary.’ She let out a sharp breath. ‘If we are to speak of respect then let us speak of it being mutual. I might not be a duke, but I am something.’
He said nothing. He only regarded her closely. Intently.
Her heart was fluttering, and she was angry. So angry. And yet there was something else. A strange sort of fierce excitement that kicked up within her as she challenged him.
‘Your children respect you, Your Grace, and yet I do not get the impression that they know you.’
‘Children are not meant to know their parents. They are meant only to respect them. I, as a father, am required only to provide them with that which they need. The tools to succeed in life. And I am meant to present a figure that they can respect. I could not do that with my own father, and I will be damned if I fail my children on that score.’
She could see that he regretted saying that. That he did not feel he owed her an explanation for anything and was upset with himself that he had done so.
‘My own father was a cruel man,’ she said. ‘And my mother was ground to dust beneath his cruelty. The only people that she had dominion over were her children, and she was not kind to us. Perhaps it was born of fear. I cannot hold her in equal responsibility as I do my father. And yet I will confess to you that I have never seen kind parenting, apart from the families that I have worked for. Even then, it is a distant sort of love. It is better, I admit, than the sort of actions my parents took in my life.’
‘You say this as if we might be of one accord. As if we might understand one another.’
‘You had a cruel father. As did I. What is there to misunderstand between us?’
‘I am a duke. And you, Mary, are a charlatan.’
The way he said her name sent a strange shiver through her body. It did every time and it was why she hated it. Not because she felt disrespected, but because it made her feel...warm.
‘My name is Mary McLaren, if you must know. I have not left her behind out of fear, but because I cannot bear to carry the weight of her anymore. I do not wish to think of that life, and I do not wish to be connected to it. Changing my surname cuts that tie between myself and my family.’
‘And yet when you are a member of the peerage to do so would be foolish. Your bloodline, the family line, is essential. Important.’
‘The only thing my family ever had to leave me was dirt and poverty and shame. Violence. I’ve no need of it. And so I’ve left them.’ She was breathing hard. ‘I know that you are not a violent man.’
Something glinted in his eyes. It was dangerous, but not dangerous in a way that made her afraid.
‘You think you know that about me?’
‘Yes. A woman alone in the world must become expert at reading men. I know when a man takes pleasure in hurting others.’
His lips curved. ‘An interesting choice of words.’
‘You do not wish to break another person’s spirit, Your Grace, and that is something I assessed the moment we met. When you correctly interpreted my accent, I became deeply invested in what you might seek to do with such information. If you might wish to simply dismiss me, something that is understandable, or if you might wish to make me pay. To make me suffer. And I did not see that in you. You and I share the common bond that we do not wish to be the cruellest parts of our parents.’
‘You speak with me in an extremely familiar fashion.’
‘Would you rather I was dishonest? Would you rather I pretended to feel an awe that I simply don’t?’
But then he moved towards her, and she felt her words echoing inside of her as a lie.
She was in awe of him.
His beauty, his strength.
She had never in all of her life appreciated masculine beauty, and when he strode towards her in the field only an hour ago, with his coat billowing behind him, she had known something new.
Something twisted inside of her.
And that urge she had felt to test his strength had become stronger.
All these years she had feared male strength.
And yet. She was not naïve about intercourse. It had been forced on her, after all.
