What do you wish me to be…?
She couldn’t have guessed the truth, and yet she had. How could she know that all his life he’d wished himself to be other than the sorry creature he’d been born?
“You need not concern yourself, Your Grace,” Tway was saying, for once misinterpreting Brant’s silence. “Most certainly the young lady will have been reunited with her family before then. You can be sure that she shall be quite gone from Claremont Hall before Captain His Lordship arrives.”
“Quite,” said Brant softly. There was no useful reason to correct Tway’s misconception, any more than there had ever been any lasting purpose to trying to change himself, no matter how hard he tried. “Now pray, return to Lippit’s reply, or we shall be at this until dawn.”
Jenny lay awake for what seemed like an eternity, listening until she was sure the rest of the household was fast asleep for the night. She slipped from the bed, wrapping the coverlet around her shoulders as a makeshift shawl, and padded barefoot across the darkened room to the window. Cautiously she pushed aside the heavy curtains a fraction, peering down along the walls to the house’s other windows. All were as dark as her own, and with relief she pushed the curtains more widely open. The window’s sash was latched but not locked, and she easily slid it open.
The clean night air rushed into the closed room, sweet with the songs of night birds and the scent of the lawns and the flower gardens, and she breathed deeply. That alone helped lessen the ache that still throbbed in her head; she’d always preferred the outdoors anyway, and hated feeling trapped in a closed-up house, particularly one where she’d already made such a mess of things, and without even trying, either.
With the coverlet bunched around her shoulders, she swung her legs over the sill. A narrow balcony ran along the facade beneath the windows, and though there was no doorway from her bedchamber, it was simple enough for Jenny to slip down to the paving stones and hurry along to the end of the balustrade, keeping close to the wall and away from the moonlight.
Anxiously she scanned the shadowy fringes of the trees and bushes, waving the coverlet back and forth as she searched for a sign from her brother. The few times they’d been separated by chance before, Rob had always reunited with her, one way or another, by the following night, and together they would then plot their next step. Rob would know exactly how to soothe this duke that she’d only been able to insult. She wasn’t even sure how she’d insulted him—asking a man what he’d like her to be had always been one of her standard questions, making them puff up and preen that she’d be so obliging when all she was really doing was learning more about them for Rob.
But tonight no matter how hard Jenny studied the gardens, there wasn’t a sign of her brother’s cheerful face popping from beneath the hemlocks, no false owl’s hoot calculated to catch her ear. She twisted her hands inside the coverlet, her apprehension growing with every second. It wasn’t like Rob to abandon her like this. Surely even given her accident, she must be easy enough for him to find, especially if the duke in turn was seeking information about her family in the most worrisome way imaginable.
No. The only answer—the answer Jenny desperately didn’t want to accept—was that the irate grenadier had caused Rob more trouble than he’d expected. With another worried little prayer for his safety, she leaned over the edge of the stone wall, hoping against hope to finally spot her wayward brother.
“Ha, so it is you, Miss Corinthia, surprising me again,” said the duke behind her, so suddenly that she gasped with surprise. “Here I thought I was the only ghost to patrol this walk.”
Jenny turned to face him, thankful that the moonlight would hide her guilty flush. At least she hadn’t been interrupted calling Rob’s name, or far worse, with Rob himself here on this walkway with her.
“Your Grace,” she said with a little dipping curtsy inside her coverlet cocoon. “I should say you are far too much of this world for me to mistake you for a ghost.”
“Flesh and blood and bone, you mean.” He held his hand out toward her to judge for herself. “I can assure you I’m real enough.”
She didn’t have to take his hand to know that. He had shed his jacket and unbuttoned his waistcoat, and the neck of his shirt was unbuttoned over his throat and a good deal of his bare chest. His sleeves were carelessly shoved above his elbows and his hair was no longer sleekly combed but rumpled and tousled, the way she’d remembered from when he’d first found her. He looked comfortably disheveled, too, more relaxed and also somehow much more male, as if a veneer of gentlemanly propriety had been shed along with the stiffly embroidered evening coat.
Had he forgiven her? she wondered warily. Heaven knew dukes could do whatever they pleased. Was this his way of showing that he was willing to overlook whatever unwitting misstep she’d made earlier?
“I trust my eyes to tell me the truth, Your Grace,” she said, hugging the coverlet around her shoulders. “I could scarce mistake a gentleman as imposing as yourself for some wandering specter.”
“Ah,” he said lightly, lowering his hand to the balustrade as his gaze never left her face. “So much for the magic spell cast by moonlight. Are you feeling better, then?”
“Thank you, quite.” She nodded, nervously smoothing her hair back behind one ear. How could she not be nervous, considering how carefully she’d have to tread with him? “Your Grace, please let me ask your forgiveness for…for whatever I said before that…that disturbed you so.”
He frowned. “Nothing disturbed me,” he said, “and so there’s no reason to apologize. Shouldn’t you return to your bed?”
“I’m not sleepy,” she said. “When I asked you what you wished me to be, Your Grace, I meant nothing wrongful by it. I only meant that because I could—can—recall nothing of my past, it seemed reasonable enough to look forward, to the present and the future where for now you are the only constant.”
“I can send for a sleeping draught from Dr. Gristead if you wish.” His looked down at his fingers resting on the moss-dappled stone, considering. “You are my guest. That is all. I have asked for no such grand gesture as to make me the center of your universe.”
“It’s fresh air that I sought, not sleep,” she said, “much the same as you did yourself. And I intend no grand gesturing, Your Grace. Rather, it’s the one practical thing I can seize for myself. If I have no other past, then I must make do with what I have in the present. And that, you see, is you.”
Oh, Jenny, Jenny, that was awkwardly phrased, and to what purpose? Think, lass, think! Think of what Rob would say, how many useful details he’d be learning of the duke and his circumstances in this precious time alone together, while all you can do is to babble on like some giddy green serving girl!
“I haven’t even tried to sleep yet,” the duke was saying, still looking away from her. “You see how I haven’t changed my clothes since supper. From habit I seldom see my bed before three or even four.”
“Fine gentleman often don’t, Your Grace.” She’d learned that from her father, who’d freely embraced gentlemanly habits—gaming, drinking and other such late-night amusements—without the income to support them. “I’d scarce expect you to keep farmer’s hours and rise with the cock’s crow.”
He smiled at her, something so unexpected that she felt a shiver of startled pleasure ripple down her spine.
“But I do keep farmer’s hours,” he admitted, “especially here in the country. I find I can accomplish all manner of things when the sun is down. Some nights I simply don’t sleep at all.”
“But that’s not good for you, Your Grace!” she protested, gliding over the nighttime accomplishments. Those were best left without inquiry, at least while she wore only a coverlet and a nightshift and most especially while she was feeling so giddy in his presence. “Perhaps you should be the one to ask for a sleeping draught.”
“I think not.” He shrugged carelessly,