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“The room is perfect,” she said flatly. “Hawthorne would doubtlessly love it. You have more than proven that you are capable beyond my expectations. But the point is that you didn’tlisten, Miss Barrow. You were to start nothing, let alone finish a room so quickly.”
Quickly? She had been employed for over a month. She had worked her fingers to the bone merely to earn a lecture? She tried to think of the money as incentive to bite her tongue. Sour wordswould win her no repeat customers. Not that she necessarily wanted to continue to work for the duchess anyway, or anyone else from the nobility if this was how they showed their appreciation—or lack thereof.
“Most clients appreciate when a job comes in under budget and ahead of time, Your Grace.” Were time and money considered only by the middle class and lower? Letty couldn’t fathom it. “I was not hired to take things apart. What I love about my job is the opportunity to create—to build something beautiful and serviceable and meaningful. I wanted to prove to you that if you leave the decisions to me, as you seem to have a great deal of trouble making any yourself, then you can have a finished product that exceeds your expectations.”
“This is what you do not understand, Miss Barrow. I don’t wish the project to finish.”
Chapter Eight
The duchess sank into one of the upholstered chairs in the corner of the duke’s dressing room, her posture still impeccable. She didn’t look angry anymore. Now she looked exhausted.
Letty tamped down her irritation and took the chair next to the duchess. She had arranged the seating close together to encourage intimacy, and their knees almost brushed. “You are correct that I do not understand. The delay to start the renovation is causing frustration and confusion among both your staff and my crew and is costing you a small fortune.”
“The money is going to good places. People must work, after all. Artisans must be paid, whether the pieces we commission are displayed in my husband’s room or consigned to the attics. Isn’t it our noble duty to provide work?”
“Not like that,” Letty said with a frown. “Artists don’t want their wares to be stored away. They want them displayed. And you’re causing double work for everyone by changing your mind all the time. What do you really want, Your Grace?”
The duchess’s eyes glittered. “I don’t want the duke to return to Hawthorne House. If the renovation is unfinished, then he cannot come home.”
Letty was shocked. The duchess had been so solicitous of the duke’s comfort—or so she had thought. “Did you ever intend to have me finish anything?” The duchess’s hesitation was all theanswer she needed. “You may not value my time or my expertise, but I assure you that I can find good work elsewhere, where I can actually build my portfolio.”
But the truth was that she was no further along than she had been before she started. In fact, she would be in a worse situation as the crew would lose faith in her capabilities to keep a job. What if the duchess refused payment for the past month’s wages? Letty had been docked more for overstepping far less. She felt sick as she thought of the money she had given Robert last week for the new books that he insisted he needed.
“What do you expect from me now, Your Grace?”
“I don’t quite know. All that I am certain of is that I have grown to hate this house.” The words rushed out, and the duchess looked startled, as if she hadn’t meant to say such a thing at all.
This was more emotion than Letty had ever seen cross the duchess’s face. “I can help you with that,” she said. “What do you hate about it?”
She gave her a sidelong look. “My own suite, for one.”
Letty’s interest sparked. “What if I abandoned the work in the duke’s chambers, and shifted my focus to renovating yours?”
She rose to her feet. “Come with me, Miss Barrow.”
As soon as she saw it, Letty hated the duchess’s bedchamber too. It was enormous but crowded to a dizzying degree, from clocks to figurines to settees to footstools and more.Muchmore. “This is a lot of gold.” She eyed a set of gilt candlestick holders crowding the mantel. “Very…intimidating.”
“The dowager duchess is an intimidating woman. I have changed nothing about the suite since I moved into it.”
Watching the duchess move through her most private rooms gave Letty a strange feeling. It wasn’t simply desire, though she felt it surging through her blood with an insistence that was hard to ignore, especially when a truly enormous bed was right there in front of her.
But she also felt something a good deal more tender. She wanted to tear apart this room and give the duchess something lovely and peaceful and gracious, something that reflected the new opportunitythat she felt so grateful for, something that showed her that Letty didn’t just see a duchess. She saw the woman.
But those words were difficult to express and felt far too intimate to be comfortable. Desire was easier, and that bed was beckoning.
“I told you during our interview that I would satisfy you,” Letty said in low tones. “And satisfy you I will, Your Grace.”
There was a long, heated moment where she was perfectly sure they understood each other, though she doubted the duchess would act on it.
“What exactly would you do to this room, if you had carte blanche to…satisfy me?”
Letty blinked. Perhaps she had been wrong. She licked her lips. “I would examine every inch. Look at every angle. Then I would strip the room bare and cover it with whatever came into my imagination.”
The duchess sucked in a breath. “Oh?”
“I was thinking of the lemon cake,” Letty said, watching her. The duchess didn’t tend to show much on her face, but she could see her nostrils flare and her pupils widen. Her chest was moving fast with shallow breaths. All very interesting indeed. “Light and frosted and pristine and elegant. Delicious. Like you.”
The duchess blinked.
