Page 12 of The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke

Charlotte glanced away uncomfortably. “She hasn’t waited at all.”

“What are you saying?”

“Do you remember Lady Coralie?”

“The earl’s young niece?” Emma asked slowly. The earl whom she had been courting forever for patronage. His niece had been expected to enter the academy a week ago. Two of the lady’s younger sisters were supposed to follow a few months later. “Her baggage was due to arrive this week. I have a bed in readiness for her arrival.”

“Apparently, she is reconsidering,” Charlotte said. “She’ll inform us as soon as she decides.”

“How do you know this?” Emma demanded quietly.

“Our butler’s sister has gone to work for Lady Clipstone.”

“To work for my rival?” Emma allowed a note of mild indignation to deepen her voice. “Well, I never. She’ll be threatening to expose our secrets next.”

“You have no secrets, Emma,” Charlotte said with a consoling smile.

“I didn’t until today, but—oh, dear, I don’t suppose that Lord Wolverton’s presence can be kept secret.”

“He is a little large to hide away.”

Emma shook her head. “Still, we shall have to keep the girls removed from him and carry on as if nothing has changed. Thank goodness their wing is on the other side of the house.”

“We should be able to manage.”

“It’s only for two days,” Emma murmured. “Good heavens, if I can tame the lionesses I should be more than able to take care of one wounded gentleman.”

Adrian pretended to be asleep the three times Heath Boscastle crept into the bedchamber to check on him. He suspected that his light snores did not deceive Heath for a moment, but he had a splitting pain in his skull and was in no temper for conversation.

He was almost asleep when Heath’s wife Julia tiptoed in with an older maidservant to place a fresh poultice on his scalp. And after that, with the warm herbal unguent dripping down his neck, he could not sleep at all. Disgruntled, he flung off the covers, found flint and tinder to light a candle, and noticed the leather-bound lady’s journal on the chest of drawers opposite the bed.

“Well, well,” he muttered. “All I need is a lacy nightcap and pair of dentures and I could pass as my own grandmother.”

He opened the book, yawning, and settled back into bed to read. He could have told the old saw-bones Scot that it would take an entire bottle of laudanum to knock out a man of Adrian’s size. Not that he’d needed a sedative, anyway. There was nothing wrong with his head but a deep bruise. He’d suffered worse.

He started to read. It was a handwritten journal penned in tidy, feminine script, the subject being—

He blinked. The words jumped about the page before he could see them properly. Ah.

Winter 1815

The gypsy fortune-teller at the ball tonight predicted I would meet my true love within the year. Of course, she wasn’t a genuine Romany. It was only Miranda Forester dressed in disguise again, and I doubt she could predict my next dance, let alone whom I shall love.

But I predict that it is dear Emma who shall be wed ere the year’s end—I have seen the way she dotes on Grayson’s baby and remember how once she dreamed of her own children—

The dressing room door that led to the bedchamber opened. By damn, if it was Heath acting mother hen again, and he caught Adrian reading a young girl’s love secrets, he would never hear the end of it. He leapt up from the bed, sending the rosette-embroidered coverlet flying in the air.

With only a moment to spare he vaulted over a footstool and wedged the journal between the other books piled upon the chest of drawers. Then, schooling his face into an expression of startled innocence, he faced the figure who hesitated on the threshold behind him. For an instant neither said a word. He merely savored the unfamiliar thrill that chased down his spine.

It was her. At last. He gazed into her eyes, waiting in anticipation. His little caretaker, in a high-buttoned blue-gray dressing gown, but with her hair cascading about her shoulders in an apricot gold cloud like a heavenly halo.

Or was it two haloes? he wondered. Suddenly it appeared that his angel of mercy had sprouted another head. Another face. Yet even though his vision was blurred, there was no mistaking the concerned frown on her fine-boned face.

Nor the warm familiarity of her voice, the cultured notes penetrating into the deepest recesses of his pounding skull. “Lord Wolverton, what folly is this?” she asked in exasperation. “What were you doing? You may not walk about in your condition.”

“I was”—he glanced guiltily at the journal that protruded from the stack of ill-heaped books where he’d stuck it—“searching for the chamberpot.”

“We certainly do not keep it upon the bureau.” She marched into the room, her finger pointing at the four-poster. “Get back into bed so that I may summon a footman to assist you in your private needs.”