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He just laughed and proceeded to back her against the wall.
“You shall come to me eventually,” he murmured against her neck. “They always do and you won’t regret it. It isn’t as if anyone need know. It’s just you and I,” his voice was smooth and held an appealing tone that she knew had worked for him in the past. Perhaps with an upstart or overly trusting soul, but never with a fine bred lady who had been trained to abhor just such circumstances. In Caroline’s eyes, this behavior did much to sour her opinion of the gentleman. A tiny voice in the back of her mind did argue, however. What if he was meant to love you but he is fighting his own control because he thinks you to be too low for acceptance? She thought just as his hand settled upon her waist and made as if to inch its way northward toward her breast. No! This was not right. He had no right to her. It was an even more despicable act, considering as a maid, she was beholden to him as her employer.
“Get off me!” she hissed. Caroline was fearful because she dared not yell. Maids, no matter the situation, were not permitted to cause a scene especially if it involved the family of the house direct. She found herself thinking that she hated nothing more than the bindings of this station. Mayhap, she hated murder more, she acquiesced, but not by leaps or bounds. She swore that if she ever got back to her old life, she would tell every servant in her company to yell as loud as they wish if the ever had need. Honestly, this behavior was repulsive. Oughtn’t a Lord to know better? Lord Robert—no the Duke of Manchester—knew better.
Lord Edward pulled away but not before his tongue snaked out and tasted the flesh at her neck. She froze in horror.
“Later,” he promised. “You’ll want me later.”
“You are a monster,” she snarled as she grabbed the tray and scurried from the room. The more that she thought on it the more repulsed she became. Others? So he made a habit of this behavior? It was second nature to him and nothing more than a game, an intrigue. Disgusting, vile creature. To think, she had thought Edward the better of the two men. Lord Robert might still be a monster in his own right, but he certainly was not the same sort as his brother. He may yet be worse. The elder may be the seller of women sort instead of their despoiler. How could one chose between bad and worse? She had to focus on the details that she could confirm at present.
She had sorely misread Lord Edward’s character. Maybe she had been more inclined to like him because of his easy features and charming style. His nature in general seemed amiable and kind. It was only in these small hidden moments that anyone might suspect different. Perhaps she had pitied him for his plight as a second, underappreciated son, and because he did not have his father’s dark visage. Now she was starting to think that his father had not been mistaken in his evaluation that his younger son did not have the makings of a duke. He did not even have the makings of a gentleman. The entire family was a bane, she decided. From sire to spawn they each seemed corrupt in one manner or another, no matter how well they might try to hide the truth, it would out.
Spring rolledinto summer and Caroline found that she could not escape Lord Edward. This task was particularly bothersome since she was not allowed to leave the premises. She completed the same series of tasks every day so it was not difficult of him to learn her patterns. He was never as bold as that day in his bedchamber, but he did nothing to hide the lust in his eyes every time their paths crossed. He was hopeful, she realized, that she really would come to him.
If he were to come upon her at her lonesome, he would tuck a strand of hair beneath her cap, using the opportunity to slip a charm or the bud of a flower beneath its band as a gift she supposed. She had stopped wearing the cap and simply braided her hair.
He might trail his hand down her arm or lean in close to breathe in the scent of her. She took to ducking into the nearest room whenever she heard booted footsteps that might have a chance, slim or no, of being his.
When Lord Edward learned that she had spare hours while she waited for the final closing of the night, he began to send the butler to call her up from where she had gathered with the other servants in the kitchen, so that she might read to him since his eyes were tired or he had the beginnings of a megrim. She thought that he must have learned this technique from his father who had used the exact method. The pitying glances that she got from the other maids told her that they understood her predicament. She was only grateful that they did not assume that she was receptive to his attentions. Despite their silent support, they could do nothing to ease her burden. It seemed that the whole house was simply waiting for her to give him what he wished so that he might burn out whatever lust he had gathered and be on to the next maid who caught his fancy.
After several weeks of this,Caroline could take no more. She had vowed that she would not return to the study and bother the duke, or fall into one of his schemes, but her evaluation told her that any of Lord Robert’s schemes had to be better than Lord Edward’s. One brother might look like his father but the other acted like him. The rotter had dropped a piece of an ice confection down the front of her dress in the hope of watching her squirm and reach in to fish it out.
She hadn’t.
She had stared at him in cold fury, still as a statue, and let it melt.
“Your stubbornness is unshakable,” he had mused with awe. Too late Caroline had realized that her response had only succeeded in making him want her more. She ought to have known, based on her father’s warnings about the late duke, that such behavior would be viewed as a challenge to be bested.
So it was that she found herself slipping into the safety of the study just before the sound of boot heels came around the bend. Lord Edward would not dare enter this room. The brothers rarely sought each other out and when they did, it was only to exchange clipped tones and well-disguised insults. At first Caroline had sided with Lord Edward, thinking it right that he should punish his brother for being a authoritarian brute. Now, as time went on, she knew she’d had it wrong. The duke was disapproving of his brother and made no attempt to hide it. From what Caroline had now seen, he had every reason to withhold his endorsement.
The duke was sprawled out on one of the pair of velvet rolled-arm sofas that faced each other perpendicular to the hearth with his cravat undone. The windows were open to let in a breeze. He had one arm tucked behind his head and he was reading a pamphlet that was folded in half in the other. The piles of pamphlets on the floor beside him were either waiting to be read or had already been discarded.
If he noticed her arrival, he did nothing to indicate it.
The room was brighter than usual with the evening sun shining its last rays through the window. In addition, the lamp on the table behind his sofa had been lit so that the duke might not strain his eyesight.
Caroline padded in and headed for the aged book that had sat unread on the lower shelf since that first night. She retrieved her prize, checked again to see if he was watching her; he was not, lit the lamp behind her seat, and took her place on the settee opposite.
They sat in companionable silence for that first evening, and Caroline breathed a sigh of relief. For the first time in months, she felt safe.
CHAPTER14
It became habit for Caroline to slip into the study for several hours each evening. Sometimes they were silent and sometimes they talked. They never spoke about anything significant. It was not as if Caroline could talk about her past or explain how she had come to be a maid in his house. The only thing that she could be honest about was her deep friendship with Marilee. She was able to speak openly, only adjusting the tales enough to allow him to assume the friendship of two maids, because no one knew that the other captive was anyone other than her cousin, Kate. If somehow her musings did get out, they would mean nothing to her enemies. At least, she hoped that they would not. She certainly could not tell the duke that she was being held against her will and was actually the woman he was devoting a good portion of his time and income to finding. For all she knew, he was aware of the house’s inner workings. For all she knew, he wanted to find her for no other reason than to tie up loose ends. Perhaps his father had been killed by accident. It was possible. Lord Bennington was not supposed to have been on the road that evening. Not only had his trip been seriously delayed by the flooding of the byway in Northwickshire, but the carriage had been forced to take an alternate route due to the overturned hay carts. But if the murder revealed the threads of a twisted plot in London involving highway robberies and the selling of indentured women, then whoever was in charge would do whatever it took to make sure that no evidence led back to the source. She was evidence…living, breathing evidence. If he did not realize that she was Miss Caroline Graves that might be the only thing keeping her alive. If he or anyone else discovered that she had the knowledge to lay bare the entire plot then she might as well pull the trigger herself. Besides, there was Marilee to think about. Even if the duke were somehow, miraculously, oblivious to the treachery under his roof, Marilee would be harmed if Caroline told anyone the truth, himself included. It was best to handle things on her own or wait for her father to pay the ransom. She had known that these things took time, but the waiting was excruciating.
The duke truly had been devoting a considerable amount of effort into finding his father’s wife’s body, she had learned. She encouraged the topic to come up more often than was prudent, if only to track the progress of the constables and try to predict the timeframe that the ransom would be declared. At this point, she wondered if they ever were going to call for a ransom. It had been months since the duke’s murder and her father would still not be like to believe that she was alive. Everyone was firmly convinced that she was dead and any call for payment would be viewed as nothing more than an attempt to exhort money from a grieving father. Too often ransoms were paid only to find that thugs had never even been in possession of the person to be recovered. Only when every other avenue had been exhausted would anyone take the claim in earnest.
Caroline tried to keep her mind on those distrustful thoughts. It was too confusing to consider the alternative.
During her evenings in the study, she found out that Lord Robert was still looking for her father’s murderer and his missing step-mother. He was nothing if not persistent, she thought. If Lord Robert were providing time and resources toward looking for a lady that he had never even met out of a mere sense of duty or familial obligation, then he was a better man than she had ever given him credit for. She hated to think that she might be misjudging him so poorly. So many times, she considered unburdening herself, but still she hesitated. It was better to be safe, however, than to be sorry.
“Do you ever do anything besides toil over your duties?” she had asked on the third evening when he had seemed more weary than usual.
“No,” he had chuckled as if the matter were obvious. “What else would I do?”
“I cannot say. What do you find enjoyment in?” she had pressed.
“Work,” he laughed.
