Chapter 4 #2
“How could you do that?” she demanded. Her face was flushed, likely due to a combination of the cold and being half upside-down during the walk back. Anger could also have been a factor, Aaron supposed.
“I’ve carried men much larger and heavier than you,” he said. “Most of them fought less since they were generally unconscious and bleeding heavily, but even so, it wasn’t hard.”
She gave him a very long, very flat look. He assumed that he was meant to gather something from that look, but she would need fiercer weapons to pierce his armor.
“Surely you realize that isn’t what I meant,” she said after a long pause.
He shrugged.
She made a sound in the back of her throat that reminded Aaron of that time, while in port, when a feral cat had gotten aboard the ship.
The cat had not been pleased when it had woken from its nap to realize that they had set sail once more and that there was nothing but great gray wetness in all directions.
“My staff is far better suited to finding your sister—if she is even out of doors in the first place—than you are. All you were likely to accomplish was freezing yourself in turn. And then we would have two crises to deal with.”
Recalling the feral cat, Aaron kept his voice steady and calm. That had been the only thing to soothe the rangy scamp when it inevitably turned to wreaking havoc on the ship.
Much like the cat, Miss Turner wore an expression that said she did not like giving in, but she would do it. With great, great irritability.
“Fine,” she said when he waited her out.
Just like the cat.
Victory made him magnanimous—or at least this is what he told himself. More to the point, he now felt sufficiently reassured that she wasn’t about to make another mad dash for the doors to notice other things.
“Now,” he said briskly, because this really was just business. Matrimony itself was just business—and he wasn’t even marrying Miss Turner. He only hoped that Miss Hannah was more biddable, though this whole episode of running off did not give him a great deal of hope.
“Your clothing is wet,” he said, nodding to her skirts, which were practically soaked for the first six inches off the ground. He could only imagine the state of her shoes. “You need to change posthaste before you catch your death.”
This took her by surprise. “I—what?”
Maybe the cold was already affecting her, though he’d never heard of a mild chill preventing someone from thinking clearly. That tended to happen when death was much, much closer.
Then again, what did he know of delicate ladies and their delicate constitutions?
“Your clothing,” he said, forcing himself to keep his tone soothing though he longed to turn to the snapping inflection that made soldiers hop to their feet. “It’s wet. You need to change it.”
And, lo and behold, it worked. Miss Turner’s lips twitched in something that was very nearly a smile.
“Do you speak so gently to your soldiers when ordering them about?” she asked wryly.
“My soldiers never would have dared disobey me,” he said darkly. “I ensured that they did what needed to be done—immediately.”
Every time he’d failed to do so flashed as one behind his eyes.
Men ripped apart by cannon fire. Good sailors, who had dreamed about going home, marrying their sweethearts, ending up with shock and horror etched permanently into their faces.
Hell, even the lousy soldiers, the ones who were never suited for the life… he saw their deaths, too.
“Change your clothes,” he ordered Miss Turner, no longer able to hold on to his cool head. “Immediately.”
She blinked, and for some reason, this made Aaron’s temper flare. He didn’t understand why she insisted on this foolish stubbornness. He wasn’t trying to harm her, and here she was, treating him like some sort of villain.
He knew his reputation was… less than savory. It was the whole reason for this stupid arrangement in the first place. But there was a great deal of difference between a curmudgeonly ex-soldier and an evil lord from a novel.
For all that she was resisting his every order like it was some kind of malevolent plot, however, she didn’t act afraid of him. And that made him feel…
Something.
Probably annoyed.
He didn’t like having all these feelings, and he didn’t like remembering all the things that he had seen, and he didn’t like that Miss Turner was making all those things happen.
“Get out of those wet clothes,” he snapped, “or I will get you out of them myself.”
Phoebe refused to react, even though the Duke’s refusal to back down sent chills through her.
She was a known bluestocking, and she really didn’t have any use for men. After all, she’d never found any interaction with a man that couldn’t have been more entertaining if he’d been a woman.
Women were simply better to talk to, better to befriend. She’d even known a few women who were better at being men—who lived their lives in breeches and squired their lady loves to events (and home again, though Phoebe had never been present for that part) with all the finesse of born gentlemen.
Despite this, though, she’d had flirtations with men. She’d enjoyed a drink, sometimes two, and then politely but firmly made sure they knew that it wouldn’t go any further. Some had been disappointed, but they’d all given in easily enough.
She’d never known a man who insisted. She should have hated it.
She did not hate it.
“Fine,” she said. She was not too stubborn to know when she was in a losing position. “Fine. I’ll go change.”
There was the briefest flash of surprise in the Duke’s face, but he covered it quickly enough. Soldiers and their self-control, she thought irritably. She was still smarting over him just picking her up and carrying her. He hadn’t even had the decency to act like it was difficult, either.
She stormed off before he could say anything more. She didn’t trust her tenuous control over her temper enough to continue their little spat.
Phoebe discovered, however, as she followed a silent maid whose face still hadn’t lost all of its babyish roundness, that being alone with her thoughts was far, far worse than being caught up in an argument with the Duke.
And it wasn’t even just that her worries about her sister plagued her—though they did, of course.
It was more that— as she struggled with the laces of her dress, which was fortunately one she could remove herself—she couldn’t bear to let the sweet-faced maid see her in such a state—Phoebe kept hearing the Duke’s words.
Get out of those wet clothes, or I will get you out of them myself.
It was too easy to imagine the way those strong hands, which had lifted her like she was made of nothing but fluff and feathers, would make easy work of the laces of her gown.
He had been competent and not at all tender, and she could picture how he would grasp her by the waist to turn her around, so he could get to the ties at her skirt. Businesslike and not at all lingering…
It was lunacy to have any sort of feelings about that.
Lunacy—and highly, highly inappropriate.
“He is marrying your sister,” she reminded herself as she kicked aside the mass of wet fabric. “Not to mention that he is cold and arrogant and rude.”
And she would repeat that to herself as many times as was necessary.
She’d just finished putting on a new gown—which did feel much nicer than her wet frock, darn that wretched duke and his good ideas—when a knock came at her door.
It was the maid again, her head ducked low, and something clutched tightly in her hands.
“I beg your pardon, miss,” she said. She sounded Irish, though her voice was so soft that it was hard to be certain. “But dinner is ready to be served, and I have this for you.” She held out the paper. “One of the footmen found it where the mail is usually left.”
Phoebe felt an instinctive, almost motherly impulse toward the young woman. She’d always had a soft spot for shy, reserved girls—the way Hannah had been as a child. The way she still was when she wasn’t being difficult in the way that had become her preferred mode of late.
It wasn’t necessarily proper to extend that sort of softness toward a servant, but Phoebe had lived by her mother’s dying wish for a long time, and she felt no urge to go back.
“Thank you,” she said, briefly patting the younger girl’s hand as she took the paper. “What’s your name, dear?”
“Mary, miss,” the girl said, bobbing a curtsey.
Phoebe gave her one more pat. “Mary. Nice to meet you. You’re doing a marvelous job.”
For this, she got a tremulous smile before the girl curtseyed again and fled. It was the first thing all evening that made Phoebe feel good. Her father would have hated it, the sentimentality of it. That wasn’t why it made Phoebe feel good, but it didn’t hurt.
That good feeling became a distant memory as soon as she read the note in her hand, which was written in Hannah’s spindly penmanship.
I’m sorry, Phoebe, it read. I need to follow my heart. I hope you and Father will forgive me.
Phoebe’s stomach plummeted to her feet.