Page 94 of The Dueling Duchess

You could leave tomorrow.

He could do, except he’d committed to working for Cecile for six months. If he left now, he’d look like an even bigger failure. Indeed, he’d look as though he’d run away.

No, Guy had to stay and keep his word. It would hurt to be near her, but it would hurt worse when he had to leave.

The snow turned to sleet, but Guy didn’t even notice.

Chapter 17

Cecile glanced at Guy from beneath her lashes. After last night she had not believed that he would be ready and waiting to escort her to look at the prospective school that morning.

And yet he’d been dressed and waiting when she’d come down to breakfast.

At least it looked like Guy, but it was as if a different man inhabited his body. Gone was his mischievous smile, his teasing manner, and warm, admiring looks. He’d not called her darling or sweetheart or anything other than Miss Tremblay, and without the mockery that was his wont.

Cecile suddenly noticed things about him she’d never seen before—signs of age on a face that had seemed perennially boyish. How was it that she’d never seen the harsh grooves that bracketed his ridiculously sensual lips or the network of lines on his brow and around his eyes?

He seemed to have aged in a matter of hours.

Whether it was seeing her with Nathan or something else, she didn’t know. But he’d become a different person in less than twelve hours.

Cecile knew he’d been out late because she had waited for him to return home last night, lurking in the book room so she could hear the front door when it opened, ready with a scold because scolding him was always a perfect excuse to seek out his company.

Last night’s scold had been about summoning her away from her guest to mediate a dispute that her stage manager could have easily handled. In fact, that was Beryl’s job, and her employee had looked hurt when Cecile had arrived on the scene, as if she didn’t trust Beryl to sort out an argument between an excitable magician and a knife thrower who barely had a pulse.

Cecile had stormed back to the house afterward, both furious that Guy had possessed the audacity to disturb her, and relieved that she’d not had to tell Nathan to go home.

She had become even more furious when she realized that she didn’t want Nathan anymore. Indeed, had she ever wanted him? Or had he merely been a sop to her damaged self-esteem after Guy had cast her aside and she’d been forced to read about his exploits in the newspapers for weeks on end?

Cecile sighed. How in the world could she break off matters between her and Nathan without making an ugly scene? Ugh. That was why she always established limits for her lovers in advance. Who would have ever believed that Nathan—who was almost a decade younger than she—would offer marriage to a circus entertainer?

But she would have to speak to him—before next Wednesday came around and he arrived on her doorstep—and sort out the situation before matters got worse.

As for Guy . . .

After discovering that Guy had gone out into the vile weather, she had been unable to sleep last night. Instead, she’d stayed awake for hours, awaiting his return.

He’d finally returned shortly after three o’clock and, judging by his bearing, he’d not been drunk.

His coat and hat had been encrusted in a thick shell of ice and she’d hovered in the darkness of the book room, on the brink of going to him—of stripping off his frozen clothing and warming him. Of wrapping herself around his big body and easing the dejection she’d seen in his posture.

Of course, she had done no such thing, even though she knew she was at least partly responsible for his drooping shoulders.

Why was she making him so miserable when all she wanted was to take him into her bed?

She cast a surreptitious glance at him as he strode along beside her, silent and grim-faced.

Cecile honestly didn’t know what made her continue to hold him at arm’s length. Every single time she considered forgiving him, she would remember his casual, insulting insouciance that last morning in France—when he’d offered to make her his whore and set her up in a London house—and then it would be all she could do not to slap him.

They stopped at a busy corner to wait for the traffic to thin so they could cross. Cecile couldn’t help noticing that there was a rut in the street that was deep enough to submerge a good six inches of wagon wheel.

She glanced down at her ankle boots and frowned. They were sturdy enough, but they would surely be ruined if she marched through such a mess.

The traffic paused and the crowd of people began to cross the street.

But before she could move to walk around the rut, Guy turned to her and matter-of-factly took her by the waist and lifted her over the sludge, then set her down lightly before striding on.

Cecile stared at his receding back for one stunned moment. She was not a small woman—in fact, she was both tall and solidly built—and yet he’d picked her up as if she were as slight as Cat.