Guilty Series (12 page)

Anthony laughed, watching as she walked out of the room. He was beginning to enjoy this battle with Miss Wade. He had lost on his attempt to buy more time with lessons in etiquette, but if he paid close attention, other opportunities would present themselves. If he kept his wits about him, his museum just might be opened on schedule after all.

A
fter dinner that evening, while she was working in the library, a footman came in search of her. “Miss Wade?” he asked from the doorway.

Daphne looked up from the Romano-British tablet she was translating. “Yes, Oldham?”

“His grace sent me for you.”

It must be time for her dance lesson. She glanced at the clock on the mantel, which showed the time as quarter to eight, but perhaps the clock was slow. She set her book aside and followed the footman out of the library. He picked up a lit candelabra he had placed on a table outside the door and proceeded to lead her up a set of stairs to the top floor, and all the way across the house to the north wing. Anthony had found a place that was
indeed far away from any sort of audience.

During the nearly six months she had been at Tremore Hall, Daphne's life had been limited to a small part of the immense ducal house and she had given herself little time to explore the rest. As a result, she was completely lost by the time she and the footman reached a door at the end of a long corridor. Oldham opened the door for her to enter and stepped aside.

Anthony was waiting for her, standing beside the fireplace in an empty room. He bowed to her as she came in, and he nodded to Oldham to depart. By the light of the fire as well as the four lit wall sconces in the corners, she could tell this room had not been used for a long time. The floor was covered with a layer of dust, and the heavy draperies of robin's-egg blue that covered the windows seemed as if they had not been taken down for a good shaking in years. The only object in the entire room was an intricately carved wooden box on the mantelpiece.

“I have never been in this part of the house,” she said as she looked around. “What is this place?”

“This is the children's wing.”

“But it is so far from the other rooms.”

He gave her a look she could not explain, a bit of both cynicism and humor. “I do not think Tremore Hall was originally built with children in mind. The fashion has long been to keep children well out of the way.”

“A poor fashion, in my opinion.” She looked around. “Was this your room as a boy?”

“Yes.”

She tried to imagine him as a child, but it was not easy. She looked at the wall and the purple chalk marks on the cream-colored paint. She smiled and traced a line with her finger. “A map of the Roman empire?”

“Well, an attempt at one. Not perfect, but good enough for Parliament, as my mother was wont to say.”

He had never mentioned his parents. “What was your mother like?”

Anthony looked past her as if remembering. “She was one of the most extraordinary people I have ever known, and yet I doubt I could explain why in any satisfactory way. She was always busy with the many duties of a duchess—and those duties can be overwhelming—but she made time for my sister and myself every day, going over our lessons with tutors, making sure the cook prepared our favorite desserts, thoughtful little things like that. Viola and I both adored her. I was only nine when she died, but I remember that everyone who knew her felt the same.” He looked at her. “So, are you ready to begin learning to dance?”

“Yes, of course.” She glanced around again, puzzled. “What about musicians?”

He pointed to the wooden box on the mantel beside him. “Given our conversation this morning, and your desire to avoid an audience, I thought perhaps you would prefer this to a group of violinists.”

A musical box. Daphne walked slowly over to his side, staring at the carved walnut object on the mantel. She wanted so much to hate him for what
he had said about her, why was he making it so hard?

She ran her finger along the polished silver trim of the box. “I had a musical bird when I was a little girl,” she said, “but when Papa and I left Crete it would not sing anymore. Too much sand and dust in Mesopotamia, I think.” Turning her head, she looked at him and found he was watching her. “Thank you, your grace. This was very considerate of you.”

Anthony looked away. “Not at all,” he said, and cleared his throat almost as if he were embarrassed. “I suppose we should begin. The first thing you need to know—”

He broke off as he turned toward her. His gaze made a slow perusal from the neckline of her dress, over her apron, down to the sturdy brown boots on her feet, and she was sure he was likening her to a brown mantis, or making some other equally unflattering comparison. But when he spoke, his words were not at all what she expected.

“Take it off.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The apron, Miss Wade. Remove it, I beg of you.” When she did not move, he stepped closer and brought his hands to her sides. Before she could stop him, he was pulling at the ties that held the front and back of the apron together. Shocked, Daphne started to move away, but his grip tightened on the strings, preventing her escape.

“Do not move,” he ordered as he pulled at the first two bows, untying them. “I am ridding you of
this, for I vow it is the ugliest thing I have ever seen.”

“I believe
please
was supposed to become part of your vocabulary,” she shot back. “And my apron may be ugly, but is also a very practical garment.”

“It is atrocious.” He bent down slightly to unfasten the second set of ties, then the third. “You are a woman, Miss Wade. Why should you wish to hide the fact behind a suit of canvas armor?”

There was more than irritation in the question. There was genuine bewilderment as well. When he straightened, the candlelight caught on gold lights in his brown hair and softened the lean planes of his cheekbones. For an instant, she remembered the man she had thought him to be—a man she had fashioned out of her imagination, a man who was not only a sort of prince, but also a kind and thoughtful man. Now she saw something in his face, something that reminded her of that day in the rain, and she suddenly realized what it was. He was looking at her, and he was not seeing a stick insect. He was not seeing a person in his employ, not a servant, not a machine. He was seeing a woman.

Daphne felt her countenance freeze into the safe, placid lines she had always used as a mask to hide her feelings from him, a mask she had thought would protect her from heartbreak, but it had not protected her at all. Heartbreak had already come and gone, there was nothing to hide now, so why did she care how he looked at her? She shouldn't. But she did.

He lifted his hands to her shoulders to undo the
last two sets of ties, then he took a step back, pulling the two pieces of canvas away with him. He held them up, eyeing them with distaste. “I believe I shall burn this thing.”

“You will not! I wear that to protect my clothes.”

“If you had clothes worth protecting, I could see your point.”

She ignored that. “It belongs to me, and you have no right to destroy anything of mine.”

“Miss Wade, I do not ever want to see this garment again unless you are working. Please,” he added as he tossed the two pieces of her now dismantled apron toward a corner of the room.

She was not fooled into thinking that word made it a request, but she did not argue. She hoped they could just get on with the business at hand, but he did not seem inclined to do so. Instead, he reached out and jerked off her spectacles.

Daphne gave a cry of outraged protest, but of course, he ignored it. He folded the glasses and put them in the pocket of his jacket, then took another look at her face. “Much better.”

“Give them back.”

“Miss Wade,” he interrupted, “you have beautiful eyes. To distort them behind a pair of thick glass lenses is a shame at any time. When you are with a gentleman, it is unpardonable.”

How many times had she wished he would notice something, anything, about her? She was fully aware that any compliments he gave her now were empty ones. He wanted her time, and if compli
ments would get him more of it, he would tell her she was as alluring and captivating as Cleopatra had ever been. Daphne held out her hand. “Give me back my spectacles.”

“Do not the rules of
please
and
thank you
apply to you as well as to me? I just paid you a compliment, Miss Wade.”

“Thank you. I want my spectacles back, if you please.”

“You are not going to be wearing them to Covington's ball. I promise I shall give them back to you when we are finished here.” He lifted his hands to her neck.

Daphne gasped as his fingertips brushed against her skin, too startled to continue arguing with him. “Now what are you doing?” She reached up to pull his hands away, but her efforts were futile.

“That bun is almost as hideous as the apron,” he answered as he began removing pins from her hair, the pads of his thumbs brushing against the sides of her neck. “Since we are alone and there is no one here to stop me, I am ridding you of it. I have wanted to do this for days.”

As her hair came down, Daphne felt her sense of control unraveling. She could have pulled away, but that would imply that she was affected by what he was doing, and she forced herself to remain still. “And you always get what you want, of course.”

“Not always. If I did, you would be staying. Hold these.”

Daphne looked down and took the pins from him. She could not believe she was letting him do
this, but the feel of his hands in her hair was so delicious, she could not bring herself to pull away. No man had ever touched her so intimately before. “How do you know how to dress a woman's hair?” she asked, trying to distract herself from those dangerous feelings.

“I don't.” He raked his hands upward through her hair, twisting her tresses into a pile atop her head. Holding her hair in place with one hand, he took a pin from her with the other and pushed it into place. “I am making this up as I go along.”

“But if it isn't pinned right, it could come tumbling back down.”

He looked at her between his upraised arms and gave her a wicked grin. “God, I hope so.”

Her heart slammed against her ribs, and she spoke again. “I cannot imagine why you are concerning yourself with something as trivial as my hair.”

“To a man, a woman's hair is never trivial. Imagining a woman with her hair down, imagining how it looks loose around her shoulders, how it feels in his hands or spread across his pillows, can become a man's obsession.” He paused to look at her, curling a loose tendril of hair at her ear around his finger, his knuckles brushing her cheek. “I know it has been mine on occasion.”

Waves of heat flooded through her body at his words and his touch as the image of her hair spread across his pillows flashed across her mind, followed immediately by horror at the very thought of such a thing. She reminded herself of his contempt and her
pain, throwing the chilling water of reality on the hot, inexplicable hunger flaring inside her, a hunger she could see reflected in the intensity of his gaze.

Daphne forced herself not to look away. “The outside of a woman is your first priority, then?” she asked as if they were discussing the weather. “Are all men concerned only with the package rather than the goods within?”

He took another pin from her hand and continued his task. “In thinking about women, men are not very deep.”

She gave what she hoped was a disdainful sniff. “You do not seem to have a very high opinion of the character of your own sex.”

“Men have no character when it comes to women. Love turns us into complete idiots or dishonorable villains. Usually both.”

“Why do you always speak of love in such a derogatory manner?”

“Do I?” He paused again, and his lips compressed briefly into a thin line. “That is an irony, for the truth is that I am in utter awe of love. It scares the bloody hell out of me. That is why I have never allowed myself to fall into that state.”

This was a man who walked the earth as if he owned it—all of it. She could not imagine him afraid of anything. “Why does love frighten you?”

“Forgive me for my choice of language,” he said, his gaze skating away from hers. “It is not proper for a man to curse in front of a woman,” he went on as he resumed his task, “and I apolo
gize. Discussions of this sort bring out the worst in me.”

“You did not answer my question. Why should love be a frightening thing?”

“You should know the answer to that,” he countered, plucking a hairpin from her grasp and pushing it into place. “It frightens you.”

“It does not.”

“Oh, yes it does.”

“Don't be absurd. Love does not frighten me.”

“Really?” He lowered one hand to grasp her chin in his fingers. He lifted her face, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Why do you insist on donning that apron, never removing your spectacles, wearing dresses in the most drab colors imaginable, and fashioning your hair in the most unflattering style invented by womankind? You are hiding from something.”

Daphne realized he had neatly turned the tables on her, putting her on the defensive without revealing anything of himself, and she wished she had never asked him the question. She jerked her chin out of his grasp and lowered her gaze to his perfectly tied cravat. “I am a sensible person. I dress to suit what I do.”

“How convenient, if one wishes to fade away and become unnoticeable.”

Like a stick insect on a twig.

Repeating those words in her mind was like a kick in the stomach. Her mind flashed through all the times her feelings for him had compelled her to withdraw into herself, to be so afraid of her own
emotions and his certain rejection of what she felt that she had tried to become invisible. Repeating the pattern of her whole life. Knowing she would always be leaving for the next project, the next set of acquaintances, the next good-bye.

No wonder she had been so hurt. His opinion might have been unkind, but it had the ring of truth. True or no, she would die before admitting anything of the sort to him. “I am not afraid of love,” she lied. “If I were, I certainly would not be considering the idea of a husband.”