Her eyes widened with bewilderment, and she flushed. ‘Forgive me, your Grace, but I don’t understand. When I entered just now, you were looking through the window, saying nothing.’
‘Very well, then, very well.’ He cleared his throat to cover his discomfort. That was a fine start to things, stammering out an apology when none was needed, like some tongue-tied schoolboy. ‘I’ve no intention of sending you off to fend for yourself without any warning. It’s not right, and I won’t have it said that I’d do such a thing to any woman in my employment.’
‘You’re very…kind.’ Now her smile was tremulous with an uncertainty he’d never seen from her before, and that touched him at once. Little tendrils of her dark hair had escaped from beneath her linen cap, doubtless coaxed into curls by Venice’s perpetual dampness, and reminding him again of last night. Why had he always believed her hair to be straight and uninteresting before this?
‘It’s not kindness,’ he said as firmly as he could. ‘It’s my duty to you, in return for how well you have served my daughters.’
‘It is kindness, your Grace,’ she said carefully, ‘and I thank you for it. But I cannot continue here, a governess with no charges to govern. It would not be right.’
‘And I say it is.’ To prove it, he took her letter and tore it in two. ‘There. We’ll forget about this notice, and you can continue with the same wages. I’ll have Potter settle the particulars, to make sure I’m not in arrears with you for the quarter.’
‘But for what, your Grace?’ she asked. ‘Before you arrived, I could continue to stay here until I took the passage for home because I was following my orders as we had arranged last summer. I could continue as I was, because I’d no reason not to, even without any responsibilities. But now that you do know my situation, everything changes. To accept wages from you for being idle would be perceived as unseemly, your Grace.’
Her cheeks had remained pink, and he wondered if she, too, were remembering last night. Had he surprised her as much as she had him? Had she been aware of him as a man, and not just a master? Is that what she meant by ‘unseemly’?
‘You’ve been in my household for years, Miss Wood.’ A thousand memories of her with his daughters came racing back to him—more, really, than he had of the girls with his wife. All he asked now was that she share that with him for another fortnight. ‘You are in many ways a part of our family, you know. Certainly my two daughters feel that way towards you.’
With triumph he saw the brightness in her eyes that meant unshed tears. She wouldn’t go now, not so long as she thought of Diana and Mary.
He lowered his voice, softer but no less commanding. ‘Please, Miss Wood. No one would question it if you remained here another few weeks.’
But instead of immediately agreeing, as he’d expected, she shook her head. ‘Forgive me, your Grace, but I believe they would. A governess is always vulnerable to talk.’
‘No female servant has ever come to grief in my household,’ he declared proudly, ‘and I defy anyone to say otherwise. That shall not change, Miss Wood. I give you my word of honour.’
‘I thank you, your Grace.’ She rose, and he stood, too, on the other side of the table with her torn letter lying between them. ‘But I must refuse. I have no choice, not if I hope to be at ease with myself. I cannot remain here to take money from you for doing nothing in return.’
‘Nothing?’ Swiftly he turned away from her again and back towards the window, unwilling to let her see his surprise at her refusal. When was the last time anyone had refused him like this? What more did she wish from him, anyway? What more could he offer her?
‘For the sake of my girls, I would ask you to stay,’ he said to the window. ‘Reconsider, and stay. Please.’
Yet she did not answer, and he sighed impatiently, clasping and unclasping his hands behind his back.
‘An answer, Miss Wood,’ he said. ‘Damnation, you can at least grant me that courtesy, can’t you?’
No answer came, not a word, and with a muttered oath he swung around to confront her.
And to his chagrin, learned that she had left him and he was already alone.
With feverish haste, Jane packed the last of her belongings into her travelling trunks. Despite the luxury and comfort of this house and the hospitality shown to her by Signora della Battista, the sooner she left this place, the better. No matter how much the duke insisted she stay, she could not remain here with him. She could not. It was as simple, and as complicated, as that.
She muttered with frustration, a rolled-up stocking clutched tightly in her hand. She had anticipated this tour across the Continent so much. Likely it would be the one time in her life she’d be able to see the places and paintings she’d only read about in books. While most tutors to noble families had travelled to France and Italy, very few governesses ever left their schoolrooms, and she’d counted on these new experiences to increase her value to families who’d hire her in the future.
But what she hadn’t counted on was how this trip had altered her.
The changes had been imperceptible as they’d happened, or at least they’d been so to her. When she studied her reflection in the looking-glass, she appeared much the same as she always had, with more thoughtfulness than beauty in her face. She wore the same clothes as when she’d left Aston Hall, and pinned her hair back into the same tidy knot as she had since she’d been a girl. She still wore no scent, no ornaments or jewels, no extra little enticements designed to beguile. She dressed for sturdy, respectable practicality and nothing else.
Nor could she say exactly when or how the changes had occurred. Was it because she’d been forced to step so far beyond her usual place in life, and accept more responsibility for herself and her young charges? Was it the art she’d seen in the galleries here, frankly sensual images of pagan love among the ancient Greeks and Romans, of writhing nymphs and satyrs, of Romish saints in the throes of exquisite ecstasies, that had subtly marked her? Or had the proximity to the heated affairs of Mary and Diana affected her, too, softening her, burnishing her, making her less like her familiar spinster self and more receptive to male attention, even admiration?
Because that was what had happened. Not only was she noticing gentlemen with more interest than she ever had before, but they were noticing her. To be sure, Signor di Rossi was Italian, and by his nature much given to emotional displays, but for him to have proposed assignations had stunned her. The very word sounded beyond wicked. She would be thirty on her next birthday, well beyond the impulsive age for making assignations with gentlemen. Wasn’t she?
Then why had she seen his Grace in an entirely different light last night? For ten years he had been her master and no more, the father of her charges and little else. She had admired him from afar, of course; there was much about him to admire. But once she took the letters to his room last night, everything between them seemed to have shifted. When he’d opened the door himself, she hadn’t thought of him as her master the duke, but as a large, tousled man roused from his bed.
She’d been acutely aware of his physical presence, glimpsed outside his nightshirt, of the muscles of his bare forearms and the curling hair on his chest like the naked Roman gods in the paintings by Tintoretto. His unshaven jaw bristled with a night’s worth of whiskers, and his uncombed hair had fallen across his forehead. She’d stood so close to him that she’d smelled his scent, the warmth of his skin combined with the faint fragrance of freshly washed bed-linens. He’d looked at her, too, looked at her as if he’d never seen her before, with admiration and interest and with desire for her as a woman, too, if she were being honest. In her confusion, she’d looked down to avoid his scrutiny, and had seen the shocking intimacy of his bare feet, so close to hers that their toes could have touched.
And then he’d spoken of his daughters and love and desire and she’d heard the passion in his voice, the urgency of his