AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But when he looked back at her, his eyes had changed. He’d lost the look that made her feel she knew him. ‘I’m sure Byron could find something to say about your hair much better than I could.’
She wanted to bring back the feeling of companionship between them. ‘Try,’ she challenged.
He frowned. ‘No. I am no poet.’
‘You are every moment the duke?’
He gazed at her hair and his voice dropped to a whisper before his gaze took control of her. ‘I do not have to touch it to feel it against my skin. A caress. Unequalled by any other woman’s fingertips.’
The explosions in her body took her breath. ‘I forgive you for what you said about my boots.’
‘I am fond of your half-boots.’ The seriousness left his face. ‘They are quite serviceable, you do not have to have a valet to care for them and they do cover your feet well.’
She looked at her feet. ‘That is the first nice thing anyone has ever said about them and I do think it might be the worst as well.’
He shook his head. ‘It might be. But you find them comfortable and you wear them and you do not care if they are not quite the thing. You like them and so they are on your feet. That is all that matters.’
She half-nodded. They also held her knife. ‘They are indeed serviceable.’ But most importantly, they made her feel safe.
Only even with the knife hidden in her boot, she’d still not recovered her ability to sleep well after the attacks she experienced on the ship from Greece to England—first from Stephanos and his men and then later from the crewman who had tried to strangle her.
She’d been asleep when the pirate, Stephanos, had attacked the ship and she’d only woken when Thessa had burst into the room after everything had ended and Captain Ben had secured their safety. Realising she could have awakened to find her sister gone for ever had terrified her.
Stephanos had always watched every move Thessa made when he saw her and when she and Bellona had fled Melos by swimming to the ship of Captain Ben—whose brother, Warrington, had taken Melina from the island—Stephanos and his men had followed them. The group had included the man who had wanted to marry Bellona... He had the demon’s eyes. Eyes that darkened to a soulless pit. All the demons in her dreams had devouring eyes. And they always, always had the same scent of rotted eggs, while jagged-edged black earth crunched under her feet when she ran from a man with eyes growing darker and darker as he came closer and closer.
Captain Ben and his men had fought off the invaders and defeated Stephanos. The pirates had had no choice but to retreat and allow the Englishmen to leave with Thessa and Bellona on board.
‘I must keep my boots nearby me at all times.’ She studied Rhys’s face.
‘I feel the same about mine.’
She looked at his feet. ‘Your valet is quite good.’
‘I surround myself with the best.’
She gave the merest nod of acknowledgment and let the thoughts rummage around in her head. She chose something safer to mention.
‘Your mother still says I must leave and when I agree with her, she becomes even more angry. She doesn’t want me to go, but she doesn’t want me to stay.’
Nothing about him moved, except the rocking of his boot, until he spoke. ‘Before you came here, countless times, every day, my mother said she prayed to die.’
He stood, towering up, but she did not feel frightened. ‘I would like you to stay. You have no notion how much better she is today than the day before you came. She has not summoned anyone but me since Geoff died. She has not looked at fashion plates since my sister died. You have roused her spirit.’
His eyes stayed on hers. ‘You’ve been a boon to me in so many ways.’
Looking up, she could only nod.
‘If she becomes too much for you to bear, seek me out. Any time of the day or night.’
He left. The glass remained along with the lingering scent of shaving soap and leather from the chair. She’d not noticed it before. It had the same earthiness of the duke and it surrounded her on three sides—an embrace.
Chapter Seven
Bellona shut the duchess’s door with the lightest of clicks and stood in the hallway. Then she made a gesture she’d seen the sailors use.
The older woman deserved respect, but certainly did not earn it. She’d called Bellona an ungrateful bumble-knot. A foreign muddle-mind. A featherhead.
The woman had been unwilling to accept that Bellona did not want to learn to read English, had managed just fine so far without such a habit, and the letters did not all stick in her head.
Bellona had explained she couldn’t read that much in Melos as she hadn’t had books and with so much work to do there hadn’t really been time. Then she’d been told she was not in Melos now and discovered that the duchess and Bellona’s own father had a similar way of expressing their ire. They waged a war on her ears.
