But that face. Those shameless wenches had told her he was attractive, but a mere word could not encapsulate the harsh beauty of his face.
The duke’s visage should not have been handsome at all. Pale, cruel, unyielding. The angles a touch too sharp, the jaw a touch too square... and yet, touching was indeed what she longed to do. Feel those harsh lines beneath her fingertips. The firm lips of his unsmiling mouth, the dark lashes framing eyes that...
He had been too far away to gauge their color. His expression had not been angry or pinched or brooding, but rather... calculating, perhaps. As though when he looked out of his window, he did not see luxurious homes on a fairy-tale-perfect street, but rather the next battle in a war. He was moving chess pieces in his mind, and London’s lords and ladies were his pawns.
Definitelynot an attractive look, she assured herself. He exuded coldness and power and control. A god, dispassionately surveying his creations, and deciding what to toy with next.
By the flutter in Unity’s pulse and the shallowness in her wispy breaths, she had no doubt every woman who crossed his threshold hoped to be the next morsel on the menu.
Indeed, this was the quickest reconnaissance mission she had ever attempted. She hadn’t even made it all the way to the front door, and already she knew exactly why the female half of his guests would strike any bargain required to be allowed through the door. Hell, even some of the male guests likely felt the same way.
The duke’s magnetism was the sort where you knew—youknew—he was bad for you in every sense, but it only made you want to press even closer. To be the one that haughty face turned towards, to be the butterfly pinned by those all-knowing eyes.
She swallowed and hastened up the path before she lost her nerve.
A butler opened the door.
Did she curtsey? She curtseyed. Why did she curtsey? Roger had a butler, and she never curtseyed forhim. Then again, she’d felt as though they were of the same class. Servants and wards weren’t humans in the eyes of Roger.
Thisbutler, however. He didn’t seem like an employee at all. He seemed regal. A marble statue, like his master. Cold. Dispassionate. Waiting.
“Er,” Unity said. “I... came to see... the duke?”
“Have you an appointment?” the butler asked in a tone that implied they both knew she did not have an appointment.
Unity fought the urge to fidget, then went ahead and fidgeted. This was herbestdress, herbestbonnet. Was it the light brown of her skin? Or was “respectable governess” the mistake? Perhaps the duke had a personal policy never to meet with anyone who could be considered proper.
Or perhaps it was her extended gaping in the front garden that had given her away.
“I’ve no appointment.” She straightened her pelisse. “I’m here to beg just a moment of His Grace’s time. My name is—”
The butler held out his hand.
Unity stared at it. Was she supposed to shake it? Kiss it? Dance a reel?
The butler’s voice was impassive. “Your calling card, if you please.”
Hercallingcard. Of course. She would absolutely hand one over, if she’d ever had reason to own such a thing prior to this moment.
“If you could just...tellhim...” She trailed off. It was clear that one did not “tell” His Grace anything. If she were meant to be here, she would have an appointment, and they both knew it.
The butler lowered his hand. “If there’s nothing else?”
“Nothing else,” Unity mumbled and turned away before he could close the door in her face.
Lambley had won this round, damn him. But the game had just started.
* * *
The following morning,Unity had the hackney driver drop her off two streets away. Today, she would not be strolling down the immaculate pavement like a country bumpkin on her first visit to the city. The front door was not the way in.
She was heading for the back.
Unity no longer looked out of place in the duke’s fancy neighborhood. With her black dress and her starched apron and the mobcap hiding her hair from view, she looked exactly like any number of servants staffing the huge households. On this street, people like her outnumbered people like him twenty-to-one.
Her mistake had been trying to approach him as an equal. She was not his equal. Not only wasn’t she a lady, she also wasn’t a member of the land-owning class, or the dreaded nouveau riche whose fortunes were made in the mills and manufactories.
Unity wasn’t only good at coaxing businesses to higher efficiency and value. She was damn good with a broom and a mop as well. Once she was hired on as a maid, she would be able to inspect every corner of the ballroom as closely as she liked without anyone blinking an eye.
