She’d never expected the duke to surprise her like this, or to make so perilous a journey on what seemed like a whim. Yet as soon as she’d seen his face, she’d understood—he’d missed his daughters just as she missed them now, and he would have travelled ten times as far to see them again. She’d been stunned by the raw emotion in his face, the swift transition from anticipation to bitterest disappointment. At Aston Hall, he never would have revealed so much of himself; he was always simply his Grace, distant and omnipotent, a deity far above mere governesses.
Yet tonight, she’d glimpsed something else. Loneliness like that was unmistakable, as was the love that had inspired it. Didn’t she suffer the same herself?
Swiftly she tied the letters together once again. Better to go to bed than to sit about weeping like a sorrowful, sentimental do-nothing. She climbed into her bed, blew out the candle and closed her eyes, determined to lose her troubles in sleep.
But the harder she tried to sleep, the faster her restless thoughts churned, and the faster, too, that her first sympathy for the duke shifted into indignation on behalf of Mary and Diana.
She could just imagine him, snoring peacefully in the huge bed in the front bedchamber upstairs. Even asleep, he’d be completely resistant to the notion that his daughters might be happy with men of their own choosing instead of his. He didn’t want to hear their side. He’d already made his decision, and he was so stubborn he’d never change it now, either.
He wasn’t just a duke. He was a bully and a tyrant to his own daughters, and it was time—high time!—that someone stood up to him on their behalf.
She flung back the coverlet and hopped from her bed, grabbing her shawl from the back of the nearby chair. She gathered the ribbon-tied letters from Mary and Diana into her arms and, before she lost her courage, hurried from her room and up the stairs to the duke’s chambers. The rest of the house was silent with sleep, and by the pale light of the blue-glass night lantern hanging in the hall, her long shadow scurried up the stairs beside her.
She stood only a moment at the duke’s tall, panelled door before she thumped her fist. She waited, her bare feet chilled by the marble floor, heard nothing, then knocked again. In truth, she was only summoning the duke’s manservant, Wilson, or perhaps Mr Potter, but she’d still make her point.
The duke. Hah, more like the Duke of Intolerance than the mere Duke of Aston, to say such impossibly cruel things of his own new sons-in-law, without so much as the decency of—
‘Yes?’ The door swung open, not just a servant’s suspicious crack, but all the way. ‘What in blazes—Miss Wood!’
She gasped, clutching the letters more tightly in her arms. Not Wilson, or Potter, but the duke himself stood in the open door, scarce a foot apart from her. Clearly she’d roused him from his bed, and from a deep sleep, too, for he was scowling at her as if he wasn’t quite sure who she might be. She understood his confusion; she’d never seen him like this, either. He wore only his nightshirt, rumpled and loose, yet somehow revealing far more than his usual dress did because beneath all that snowy linen, he was…naked. The darker shadows beneath the fabric, the way the linen draped over his body, left no doubt, and Jane’s cheeks flamed at the horrible realisation. To make matters worse, the throat of the shirt was unbuttoned and open to reveal his chest and a large thatch of dark curling hair, his sleeves were pushed up over his well-muscled arms, and his stocky legs and large, bare feet showed below.
Hastily she looked back up to the safer territory of his face. Or perhaps it wasn’t. In all the time she’d been in his Grace’s employment, she’d never seen him this dishevelled, his hair loose around his face and his jaw roughened with a growth of darker beard, his whole expression without its usual reserve and control. It was unsettling, seeing him without his guard like this, and it made him less like his Grace, and more simply like any other man.
A large, scarcely dressed and surprisingly handsome man that she’d just summoned from his bed.
Heavens preserver her, what had she done?
Chapter Three
The duke stared down at Jane, clearly not pleased to find her standing at the door to his bedchamber in the middle of the night.
‘Miss Wood,’ he said again, sleepily rubbing his palm over his jaw, ‘why are you here? I thought we’d agreed that in the morning—’
‘Forgive me, your Grace, but this could not wait,’ Jane said, speaking to him more firmly than she’d ever thought she’d dare. ‘It is most important, you see.’
‘But it can’t be more than two hours past midnight,’ he protested. He was looking downwards, not at her face, and his scowl had become less perplexed, more thoughtful. Belatedly she realised that if she’d noticed he wore nothing beyond his nightclothes, then he was likely noticing the same of her. Yet instead of being mortified or shamed, she felt her irritation with him grow. How could he let himself be distracted in this idle fashion when so much—so very much!—was in question?
‘Forgive me for disturbing you, your Grace.’ She raised her chin, and impatiently shook her hair back from her eyes. ‘But your daughters and the gentlemen they wed deserve that much from me, your Grace, and I would never forgive myself if I didn’t speak on their behalf.’
His frown deepened, his thick, dark brows drawing sternly together. ‘No gentlemen would steal another man’s daughters. They are rogues and rascals, and I will deal with them accordingly.’
‘Your daughters would not agree with your judgement, your Grace.’
‘My daughters are too young to realise their folly, mere girls who—’
‘Forgive me, your Grace,’ Jane interrupted, her voice rising with uncharacteristic passion, ‘but they are women grown, who know their own hearts.’
‘“Their hearts,” hah,’ he scoffed. ‘That is the sorriest excuse for mischief in this world, Miss Wood. When I consider all the sorrow that has come from—’
‘Such as your own marriage, your Grace?’ she demanded hotly. ‘That is what I have always been told, and by those who would know. Did you not follow your heart when you wed her Grace, and at the same age as your daughters are now?’
His face froze, his anger stopped as cold as if he’d been turned to chilly stone.
And at once Jane realised the magnitude of what she’d done and what she’d said. The late Duchess of Aston was often mentioned at Aston Hall, and always with great affection and respect, and sorrow that she’d died so young. Her beauty, her kindness, her gentleness, all were praised and remembered by those who’d known her, and over time in the telling the duchess had become a paragon of virtue, a veritable saint. By an order so long-standing that its origins had been forgotten, no one spoke of her Grace before the duke. It was terribly tragic and romantic, true, but it was also the one rule of the house that was never broken.
Yet this was Venice, not Aston Hall. Things were different here, or perhaps it was Jane herself who was different after having been away for so many months. Either way she likely wasn’t a member of the duke’s household any longer, and certainly not after this.
‘Forgive me for speaking plainly, your Grace,’ she said. The words could not be taken back now, nor, truly, did Jane wish them unsaid, not in her present humour. ‘But how can you not wish the same contentment for your daughters that you found with—?’
‘You presume, Miss Wood,’ he said sharply. ‘You have no knowledge of these matters.’
‘I know the young ladies, your Grace,’ she insisted, ‘and what brings them joy and happiness.’
‘I know my own daughters!’
‘You may know them, your Grace, but you will never know the gentlemen they love, not so long as you remain so—so set against them.’
He drew back as abruptly as if she’d struck