Miss Danvers gave him an agitated look and seemingly could make no reply.
He lifted her hand and brushed his lips across her knuckles. What a pity she had replaced her gloves. Alexander turned around and opened the door to his waiting servant and bath chair. With a silent groan of relief, he settled into the chair and was pushed away.
The travel hadn’t been easy, for he had spent days alternating between being in the carriage and on horseback traveling from Perthshire to London. The few times he had stayed overnights at inns, his sleep had been restless and pain filled.
“To the carriage, Your Grace?” his manservant Hoyt asked, clearly sensing his master’s need for privacy.
“Yes.” Alexander would send a note to Sanderson in the morning. The man had been a friend in the past, and it was he who had closed himself from Sanderson while Alexander healed in Scotland.
“Was the meeting all that you expected, Your Grace?”
Alexander swore his servants were too interested in his private life. Their excitement as he’d packed for the journey had been appalling, and they had made no effort to contain their hopes of a duchess at last. He’d even discovered the damn butler in the servants’ parlor, reading the scandal sheets to all fifty servants of his castle, who had appeared to be listening with rapt attention and bated breath.
Curse them, he thought with amusement.
“It went better than I expected,” he allowed, blaming himself for their impudence, which he’d permitted to go unchecked over the years.
He felt his manservant’s satisfaction as he replied, “Very well, Your Grace.”
As his man pushed his chair along the hallway, he could feel Miss Danvers’s stare boring into them. Alexander had no earthly idea why the visceral need to be in her presence had flourished and bloomed through his heart. Nothing good could come of it. She could be neither his mistress nor his duchess. The notion of friendship had sprung from a well of confusion over the feelings she roused. No doubt he had frightened her immensely, and she had no notion of what to make of his demands.
That makes two of us, Miss Danvers…
…
The next morning, Kitty reposed by the windows facing the small side garden of their town house, waiting for the arrival of the Duke of Thornton with admirable equanimity. And upon a new plush rose-colored armchair, Kitty sat, the small notebook with the sum of all she owed the duke opened on her lap.
Almost a thousand pounds. A fortune she had no hope of repaying soon.
A careful economy and a well-situated post as a governess should allow her to repay him half in several years. With a scowl, she slammed the notebook closed. How foolish she had been to allow that solicitor to convince her to let the town house, have it furnished, and to hire more staff than her family had been accustomed to. She’d feared her refusal would be suspicious, but all that careful plotting, and the duke had still come for her.
And had alarmingly declared, in a no-nonsense fashion, that they would be friends. How preposterous. How frightening…and how thrilling. Surely a friendship of sorts would be quite beneficial to her family. The tentative connections they’d been slowly forming would strengthen, and the future for her sisters seemed infinitely brighter.
Yet Kitty was beside herself.
That was an understatement. She felt ridiculously vulnerable and out of sorts and hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep since returning from the ball. News would circulate of the duke in town for the first time in years, and his arrival portended only trouble.
Her mother had accompanied Judith and Henrietta to the park on a picnic, and Anna had taken a ride with the baron in his Landeau with their lady’s maid as chaperone. Kitty had not informed anyone the duke was to call, sensing all plans for the day would have been canceled. It had taken some finessing on her part, but Anna had promised to keep her confidence about the duke’s arrival at the ball. Of course, by the time her mother and sisters returned home, they would be fully aware, for the news was certainly already about town.
Kitty hadn’t wanted her family to meet the duke until she was much more confident of their arrangement. Friends indeed. Kissing friends? As if she were a light-skirts or someone easily persuaded to act wantonly.
Kitty scowled. Her ruse might have been outrageous, but she would disabuse the notion that he was allowed any sort of liberties for his silence and participation.
In anticipation of his call, she had dressed in her prettiest day gown and had artfully arranged her hair in a style of fashion. The best of refreshments had been ordered, the already spotless drawing room had been aired, and fresh flowers—roses and tulips—graced the room
. When the butler came to announce His Grace, the Duke of Thornton had come to call, she almost cried her relief.
She surged to her feet when he strolled in, the epitome of masculine grace and confidence. The duke did not walk with a cane of assistance, and for someone who had been missing from society for so long, he appeared a man of fashion immaculately garbed in fawn-colored breeches and waistcoat, knee-high walking boots, a dark blue jacket, and an exquisitely tied cravat.
He stopped, almost in the arch entrance, and their gazes met across the expanse of the room. There was no mask, and the severity of his scars in the daylight were more pronounced and hinted at a painful past and perhaps a lonely road to healing.
What had happened? The questions tumbled in her mind, desperate to be voiced, but she held them back. According to the rules of etiquette, it would be distasteful to intrude upon his privacy in such a brash manner when they had no familiarity between them.
He had a presence that was both intimidating and devilish. Kitty’s breath hitched at the flash of emotions in his eyes, a hint of a shadow, perhaps uncertainty. She stared at him, quite astonished.
Was it that he, too, was nervous?
It seemed so improbable, yet…