Page 8

And that’s how Titus had spent his entire life up until his release seven years ago. He had been treated adequately or poorly within the household of the Duke of Ayr, depending on his father’s behavior.

It had been a horrible way to live.

“Aye, it was a long time,” he said. It was all he could manage. “Please excuse me, m’lady. I do have pressing business elsewhere.”

This time, Agnes let him go. “Of course, Titus,” she said, watching him head for the door. “I shall tell my husband that I have seen you and that you look well. We are staying at Trinity House in town. You remember the place? To the north, near the sea. Please visit us when you have the time to do so.”

Her last words were called out to him as he quit the shop, a shouted invitation he would never accept. But just as he rushed through the doorway and onto the street, he plowed into a small body in his path. He hadn’t even been watching where he was going, and he heard a feminine yelp as he knocked a woman into the gutter.

Titus would have kept going, leaving the woman on her backside, had she not been in his way. But she was, and if he took another step, he would have stepped on her. Therefore, he was forced to stop out of necessity, annoyed that she was blocking his exit. He sidestepped her and reached down to pull her to her feet, purely as a courtesy.

He didn’t know why he should show any courtesy because he wasn’t the courteous type. Or polite when it came to women in general. Other than natural male urges or a way to make money, he’d never had any use for them. But the moment he pulled the woman to her feet and looked into her eyes, something changed.

Titus found himself looking into a face that could only be described as angelic. The startled eyes gazing at him were large and bottomless, a pale shade of brown he’d never seen before. Her nose was pert, her mouth lush and generous, now popped open in surprise. There was a strange magic to the moment, a buzzing in his ears that shut out everything else around him.

Suddenly, he didn’t feel like running off.

“My apologies, m’lady,” he said. “I dinna see ye.”

She was trying to brush off her beautiful dress. It was pale green, perhaps silk because it was so fine, with yellow edges around the neckline and at the bottom of her belled sleeves. Now, it had the addition of dirt from the avenue, and Titus took his eyes from her long enough to realize that she was quite dirty as a result of his handiwork.

“No wonder,” she said in an accent that was not Scots. “You were moving so quickly, it is a wonder you waited for the door to open at all. Why not take it right from the hinges?”

She was scolding him.

He deserved it.

“Had it not moved aside fast enough, I would have,” he said defensively, crouching down to brush the dirt from the bottom of the hem. “If I’ve ruined yer dress, I’ll pay for it.”

She continued shaking out the dress, looking for any real damage. “It is not my dress,” she said. “It belongs to the Duchess of Ayr. She will not be pleased if you’ve ruined it.”

She was shaking the dress around so much that he stopped trying to brush the dirt from it. Standing up, he studied her for a moment, coming to think there was something oddly familiar about her now that he’d had a good look.

It began to occur to him that he’d seen those eyes somewhere before.

“Are ye a lady for the duchess?” he asked.

She nodded, now brushing her left sleeve. “I am,” she said, taking more time to look at him than at her dress. “No harm done, I suppose. But be careful the next time. The next lady you shove into the gutter may not be as gracious as I am.”

“What’s yer name?”

She stopped brushing, incensed at the question. “That is none of your affair,” she said. “Go on with you or I shall call for a guard.”

He shook his head. “Ye misunderstand,” he said. “I… I think I’ve seen ye before.”

She cocked a disbelieving eyebrow. “Nay, you have not,” she said. “Go on, now.”

“Will ye at least tell me where ye’re from? Ye dunna speak like a Scots.”

“That is because I am not Scots.”

“What are ye?”

“I am from Navarre, if you must know.”

She turned away from him, brushing him off. Titus could hardly believe it. Was there really a woman in Scotland that would brush him off? He was embarrassed, but more than that, he was incensed. Now, it was becoming a matter of pride.

He wanted to know who she was.