“You know many of the details of what will be required of you already,” he said. “Iris still has not spoken. Your objective will be to get her to feel comfortable enough to do so. As she revealed during your last visit, she is capable. It is merely a matter of figuring out why she has henceforth been unwilling.”
“Of course, Your Grace,” she replied. She was thrown by his sudden professionalism, but she had been in service long enough that returning the attitude was second nature. But then he smiled, and it wasn’t charming. It wasn’t practiced. It was real. Genuine.
It was like the sun, and for a moment, Letitia was blinded by it.
“She nodded this morning,” he told her. “I asked her a question, and she nodded.”
It was such a small thing, and it clearly had made him so happy. Letitia felt the protective layer of frost that she had built around herself begin to thaw.
“That’s good,” she said softly. “And... I didn’t say thank you, Your Grace. For the job. For Sarah. As you can see, she’s… very excited.”
She’d meant to be as earnest as he had been. Indeed, shewasgrateful. She knew that Sarah chafed under the idea that she was useless because of her hand, that she hated relying on Letitia’s income for support. When Letty had told her that she would be working as a maid in the duke’s house, you might have thought Sarah had heard she was being elevated to the peerage herself; that’s how pleased she was.
But in the end, she added a wry little note because the duke’s flicker of vulnerability had caught her off guard, and that was not a place she liked to be. She was relieved when familiar mischief went back into his eyes.
“She did seem best pleased,” he said. “But what about you, Miss Knightley? Are you pleased? I can assure you that the accommodations will meet your standards. You shall be near the nursery, which is in the family wing—just down the corridor from my own rooms. It gets fine light and?—”
“The nursery is down the hall from you?” she asked. “That is… unusual, isn’t it?”
In her experience, gentlemen preferred that children—with their noise and their mess—be far, far away from their own space. Of course, this particular child was distinctlynotnoisy, but still.
“Where else should I put her?” he asked, wrinkling his nose. It was annoying that he could do that and still be handsome. “The stables? Goodness, Miss Knightley.”
The duke looked surprised in a way that reminded Letitia that he was a bachelor and, as far as she recalled, without any brothers and sisters of his own, not that she kept a personal copy of Debrett’s on hand to check. But he wouldn’t be used to dealing with children.
And yet, here he was, bringing Iris into his hope, seeking out a governess, keeping her right down the hall from him—in the family wing.
She felt a deeply unpleasant pang of tenderness toward him. It was almostaffection.
Fortunately, he ruined that feeling almost immediately.
“Besides,” he said cheerfully, “the proximity will help me assess if you are likely to meet our month’s deadline. If I hear the cheerful chatter of children’s voices, I shall know you were as good as Helen says. If not, I shall have to wonder where on earth I went wrong, seeking you out for Iris.”
“So, your argument,” she said, smiling acerbically, “is that the important thing about the deadline—which determines my livelihood, mind you—is whether or not you were right about me?”
“Oh, naturally,” he said. There was nary a flicker in his grin. “I am a duke. We are dreadfully self-absorbed. Haven’t you heard? Nearly everything is about me.”
She could not help it; she rolled her eyes. When she looked at him again, he was still beaming, but now he was leaning in her direction a bit more.
“You will not let me down, will you, Miss Knightley?” he purred. “You’ll work very hard to please me, will you not?”
He sounded flirtatious, but it wasn’t the kind of flirtation that made her feel uncomfortable. Instead, it was casual, cheerful, as if he was simply so overfull with rakish energy that it flowed out of him like water.
Letitia knew dangerous gentlemen. Their flirtation—if it could be called such a thing—didn’t feel like this. It certainly didn’t happen when Letitia was in a room with an open door, a door that would let her back away from the duke easily. And the smiles they gave weren’t cheerful. They were cruel.
It wasn’t about happiness; it was about control.
But for all that the duke was leaning in, his hands weren’t reaching, grasping, or controlling. They were still behind him, propping him up on the edge of a table.
And, most importantly, he made Letitia want to smile back.
She didn’t, of course. He might not be a dangerous man, but God only knew that he didn’t need any encouragement. It was clear that far too many people in his life had told him he was charming.
“You seem to forget,” she said, squaring her shoulders in the way every governess learned to do as soon as they had their first angelic-looking child, the kind that knew their sweet face could get them out of all kinds of trouble, “thatyouwere the one who beggedmeto come here.”
Why did her bad manners seem to delight him so much?
“I don’t know that I would call itbegging, Miss Knightley,” he said, standing up straight.
