Mastered by Love (Bastion Club 8)

“Very well. If there’s nothing more you need from me, I’ll start planning the funeral, so once your sisters arrive we can proceed without delay.”

He nodded curtly. “Please God.”

He heard a soft chuckle as she glided to the door. Then she left, and he could, at last, focus on picking up the dukedom’s reins.

He spent the next two hours going over her lists and the notes he’d made, then penning letters—short, to-the-point scrawls; he was already missing Handley.

Jeffers proved invaluable, knowing the fastest route to fly his communications to each of his holdings; it appeared he needed a personal footman after all. Through Jeffers he arranged to meet with Wolverstone’s steward, Falwell, and Kelso, the agent, the following morning; both lived in Harbottle, so had to be summoned.

After that…once Jeffers had left with the last of his missives, Royce found himself standing at the window behind the desk, looking north toward the Cheviots and the border. The gorge through which the Coquet ran was visible here and there through the trees. A race had been cut into the steep bank some way north of the castle, channeling water to the castle mill; only the mill’s slate roof was visible from the study. After the mill, the race widened into an ornamental stream, a series of pools and ponds slowing the pummeling torrent until it flowed peacefully into the large manmade lake south of the castle.

Royce followed the line of the stream, his gaze fixing on the last pool before the view was cut off by the castle’s north wing. In his mind, he continued along the banks, to where the stream reached the lake, then farther around the western bank…to where the icehouse stood back from the shore in a grove of sheltering willows.

He stood for a while more, feeling rather than thinking. Then accepting the inevitable, he turned and walked to the door. Stepping out, he looked at Jeffers. “I’m going for a walk. If Miss Chesterton looks for me, tell her I’ll see her at dinner.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

He turned and started walking. He supposed he’d get used to the form of address, yet…it wasn’t supposed to have been like this.

The evening, blissfully quiet though it was, felt like the lull before a storm; after dinner, sitting in the library watching Minerva embroider, Royce could sense the pressures building.

Viewing the body laid out in the icehouse hadn’t changed anything. His father had aged, yet was recognizably the same man who’d banished him—his only son—for sixteen years, the same man from whom he’d inherited name, title and estate, his height and ruthless temperament, and not much else. Yet temper, temperament, made the man; looking down on his father’s no longer animate face, harsh featured even in death, he’d wondered how different they truly were. His father had been a ruthless despot; at heart, so was he.

Sunk in the large armchair angled before the hearth wherein a small fire burned incongruously bright, he sipped the fine malt whisky Retford had poured him, and pretended that the ancient, luxurious yet comfortable surroundings had relaxed him.

Even if he hadn’t sens

ed storms on his horizon, having his chatelaine in the same room guaranteed he wouldn’t—couldn’t—relax.

His eyes seemed incapable of shifting for any length of time away from her; his gaze again drawn to her as she sat on the chaise, eyes on her needlework, the firelight gilding her upswept hair and casting a rosy sheen over her cheeks, he wondered anew at the oddity—the inconvenient fact—that she wasn’t attracted to him, that he apparently didn’t impinge on her awareness while he—every sense he possessed—was increasingly fixated on her.

The arrogance of the thought occurred to him, yet in his case was nothing more than the truth. Most ladies found him attractive; he usually simply took his pick of those offering, crooked his finger, and that lady was his for however long he wanted her.

He wanted his chatelaine with an intensity that surprised him, yet her disinterest precluded him from having her. He’d never pursued a woman, actively seduced a woman, in his life, and at his age didn’t intend to start.

After dressing for dinner—mentally thanking Trevor who had foreseen the necessity—he’d gone to the drawing room armed with a catechism designed to distract them both. She’d been happy to oblige, filling in the minutes before Retford had summoned them to the dining room, then continuing through the meal, reminding him of the local families, both ton and gentry, casting her net as far as Alnwick and the Percys, before segueing into describing the changes in local society—who were now the principal opinion makers, which families had faded into obscurity.

Not that much had changed; with minor adjustments, his previous view of this part of the world still prevailed.

Then Retford had drawn the covers and she’d risen, intending to leave him to a solitary glass of port. He’d opted instead to follow her to the library and the whisky his father had kept there.

Prolonging the torture of being in her presence, yet he hadn’t wanted to be alone.

When he’d commented on her using the library instead of the drawing room, she’d told him that after his mother’s death, his father had preferred her to sit with him there…suddenly recalling it was he, not his father, walking beside her, she’d halted. Before she could ask if he’d rather she repaired to the drawing room, he’d said he had further questions and waved her on.

On reaching the library, they’d sat; while Retford had fetched the whisky, he’d asked about the London house. That topic hadn’t taken long to exhaust; other than having to rethink his notion of having his butler Hamilton take over as butler there, all else was as he’d supposed.

A strangely comfortable silence had ensued; she was, it seemed, one of those rare females who didn’t need to fill every silence with chatter.

Then again, she’d spent the last three years’ evenings sitting with his father; hardly surprising she’d grown used to long silences.

Unfortunately, while the silence normally would have suited him, tonight it left him prey to increasingly illicit thoughts of her; those currently prevailing involved stripping her slowly of her weeds, unwrapping her curves, her graceful limbs, and investigating her hollows.

All of which seemed guiltily wrong, almost dishonorable.

He inwardly frowned at her—a picture of ladylike decorum as, entirely oblivious of the pain she was causing him, needle flashing she worked on a piece of the same sort of embroidery his mother had favored, petit point he thought it was called. Technically, her living unchaperoned under his roof might be termed scandalous, yet given her position and how long she’d resided there…“How long have you been chatelaine here?”

She glanced up, then returned to her work. “Eleven years. I took on the duties when I turned eighteen, but neither your mother nor your father would consent to me to being titled chatelaine, not until I turned twenty-five and they finally accepted I wouldn’t wed.”