Chapter 2 #2
This man with his dirty blond hair poking from beneath a slouch hat and eyes the gold of an evening sunset on a field of wheat was handsome in the devastating way that made the breath catch in ladies’ chests and set fans fluttering in his wake was no concern of Delilah’s.
He never had been. For while she could observe his handsomeness, she’d never been compelled to consider it directly.
It was that superior attitude of his—like he knew what was good for people better than they knew for themselves.
Quite simply, he was very much a duke.
And Delilah had no use for dukes. She knew her mind. She knew what she wanted. And yet…
How was it that every time she pursued her wants and desires this…duke!…arrived to plant himself in the way? First, Eton, and now Ye Olde Albion Players.
Truly, she’d just experienced the best two months of her life.
A wave of anger surged. Well, she simply wouldn’t allow Ravensworth to muck this up for her. She was a full-fledged woman of four and twenty years who was capable of forging her own path.
And this duke would know it.
But first… “You know Flora and Dorie think we…” Delilah felt a hot blush rise to the rhythm of her racing heart. It was simply a sentence she couldn’t finish.
“Aye,” he said, utterly unbothered.
That bit of business out of the way, the pressing question flew from her mouth. “Ravensworth, what are you doing here?” She wasn’t about to allow him to backfoot her.
He shrugged. “Enjoying a night’s entertainment.”
Only now was she able to take in his attire. “And what are you doing dressed like that?” She swept her arm up and down to indicate his entire person from slouch hat to plain workman’s clothes to dusty brown boots.
“Dressed like what?” he asked. As if he didn’t know.
“Like a…a…a man.”
He shifted his shoulder against the doorframe and crossed his arms over his chest. A blaze of something flashed behind his eyes. “Oh, I can assure you,” he said, usual sardonic smile coming to a curl about his mouth. “I am very much a man.”
Now that her body had begun heating up, it couldn’t seem to stop.
Beads of sweat would be dripping down her face before long.
But he couldn’t possibly know that—could he?
—so she pressed on. “You know exactly what I mean. Why aren’t you dressed as your usual dukely self?
” Before he could answer, she held up a staying hand.
“Wait, what are you doing here at all?” A suspicion flared, and her eyes narrowed.
“Are you following me?” Another suspicion reared its head. “Did Archie—or worse, Amelia—send you?”
Ravensworth snorted and shook his head. “I so happened to be at one of my country estates when I heard of the traveling theater company in the area.”
Now it was Delilah’s turn to snort. “Is there any county in England where you don’t own property?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Cornwall.”
The flickering light from the caravan’s single lantern caught the line of his jaw, illuminating its strong line and day’s growth of golden stubble.
She couldn’t help wondering if he knew of the effect it had on her.
Most definitely. She’d never met a man more supremely aware of his effect on the world.
He cocked his head. “Aren’t you supposed to be spending the summer in Switzerland?”
Delilah drew herself up to her haughtiest height—even from her seated position on the short stool. “My whereabouts are none of your concern.”
It was worth a try, anyway.
Ravensworth nodded slowly, as if giving her words due consideration. “That is entirely true, but…”
Delilah waited, breath held, for him to finish the sentence. It was possible he was intentionally torturing her.
“But your whereabouts are your family’s concern.”
A point she couldn’t argue—not that she owed this man an explanation. But her family…
It was quite simply that Amelia, Archie, and Juliet were now all happily married and settled and starting families. She couldn’t always be hanging about—the unmarried spinster sister.
Delilah experienced the pang she always felt at the thought of Juliet—a pang of loss. Which was silly, really. Juliet hadn’t died. She was alive and well in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands.
Her younger cousin by a year, Juliet had come to live with her uncle, aunt, and Windermere cousins after her parents had perished in a carriage accident.
Juliet had been part of Delilah’s life since before she’d begun forming memories.
And since Juliet’s marriage to one of the most wonderful men on the entire planet, Lord Rory Macbeth—a marriage Delilah didn’t begrudge her cousin in the least—it simply felt that a sizeable portion of her heart held a void.
So, it only followed that after Juliet’s elopement in April an idea would spring to mind. It was quite simple, really.
She didn’t have to hang about.
She’d sought out the theater company that had been traveling through the area of Scotland where she and Juliet had been visiting and inquired about their summer schedule, which so happened to have them traveling south with the intention of arriving in London by fall.
It had been too perfect an opportunity and impossible to resist. From there, the invention of a Swiss friend and a yearning for some Alpine mountaineering had been a short hop.
She’d joined Ye Olde Albion Players a few weeks later, thereby seizing the chance to run off for a summer.
After all, just as her family had their own lives to lead, so, too, did she—a destiny to fulfill and her own happiness to pursue.
And she owed the man before her none of this explanation.
Yet…he didn’t seem to understand that. “You cannot stay here, Lady Delilah,” he said, smug, so certain of his rightness.
It was impossible to miss his emphasis on lady.
“Shh,” she hushed, peering around him to make sure no one was within listening distance. “I’m Lilah here.”
“Lilah,” he repeated. Something flashed behind his eyes. If she didn’t know better, she might think he liked that name for her.
And a responsive something flashed inside her, too—something that made deep, secret places slightly uncomfortable.
Something she’d felt before with this man, truth told. Something she always shoved to the side and ignored.
Like now.
“Do you think me too good for this life?” she asked.
His brow crinkled. “That’s not what—”
“I’ll have you know,” she began, letting her righteousness flow. “The acting art is one of the most noble professions in all the world.”
At that very moment, an actor dressed in a harlequin costume came to a stop before the open caravan doorway, just visible to the side of Ravensworth’s rather massive form.
The man gave a little wave and bow. Then on a quick, unexpected swivel, he presented his back, bent forward, and let rip the loudest, gustiest expulsion of wind anyone was ever likely to hear, before sauntering away, a satisfied swagger in his step.
Delilah only just didn’t groan as she held a hand to her mouth to stem the sudden, riotous giggle that wanted out.
Ravensworth lifted a single skeptical eyebrow.
The high-in-the-instep duke crouched in a caravan doorway had likely never been subjected to such a blustery bit of flatulence in all his life.
Well, in all fairness, neither had she until she joined Ye Olde Albion Players. That harlequin got around.
She cleared her throat. “Windy actors, notwithstanding.”
Ravensworth remained utterly unmoved. “Pack your belongings. You shall be coming with me tonight.”
A statement of fact.
Delilah willed calm into mind and body before responding. She would get nowhere by fuming at the blasted arrogant man. “I understand that as a duke,” she said, evenly, “you’re accustomed to issuing edicts and having them followed, but I am not yours to command, and I shall do no such thing.”
His jaw clenched and released, leaving a mulish set to his mouth.
It felt good to have put it there.
Then his golden eyes narrowed, and the solid ground shifted beneath Delilah’s feet.
“Of course,” he said, low and sure, “there is another solution.”
“Which is?” she asked, wary.
“If you stay, I stay.”
She searched his eyes for amusement within, for surely he was having her on. But it wasn’t to be found. The breath caught in her chest. The man was utterly and completely serious. But…
He couldn’t be.
He was bluffing.
“You wouldn’t dare.” She had nothing to lose by calling that bluff.
He didn’t flinch. “I hear a carpenter is needed.”
“A carpenter, yes,” she allowed. “A duke, not so much.” She canted her head. “In fact, I’m not sure what good a duke is in this world.”
“Oh, I can think of a few things,” he said. “A few of them I think you’d like very much.”
The heat she’d experienced a few minutes ago sparked into a sudden conflagration.
Unspoken words lay between the spoken ones in that sentence.
She didn’t understand.
No, that wasn’t true.
She did understand. Men spoke words like that to women—to women they wanted to seduce.
Which was why she couldn’t understand why this man had spoken those words to her.
“I’m a fair hand with a spanner,” he said as if he hadn’t just said that other thing.
She blinked. “A spanner?” What did a spanner have to do with anything?
“The tool.”
“Ah.”
He’d so upset the balance of what she’d thought was the basis of their acquaintance—her brother’s closest friend…and her sworn enemy—that she’d momentarily forgotten what a spanner was.
She inhaled a bracing sip of air. “I’m staying through the end of summer.”
There. That should set this conversation right.
“Then, so am I.”
He simply stood, shoulder braced against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, looking utterly unmoved and utterly, damnably arrogant.
“Don’t you have dukely responsibilities to take care of?”
He shrugged an indifferent shoulder. “My secretary can manage without me for a time.”
Certainty sank deep into Delilah. “You’re determined.”
“Quite.”
A roar of frustration wanted release. Why did this bloody duke always arrive to spoil her fun? Truly, it was a near universal constant in her life.
But she wasn’t done fighting. “You’re being absurd, of course. You can stop it now,” she said, punching at a different angle. “You wouldn’t dare join this troupe.”
“Wouldn’t I?”
She was starting to see how he and Archie were such good friends. While Archie proclaimed to the world his openness to a lark anywhere, anytime, Ravensworth kept that desire hidden—which didn’t mean it wasn’t there, lurking, just waiting for an opportunity.
Like this one.
Still, she couldn’t give up. “You’re a—” She lowered her voice. “Duke.”
He spread his hands wide as if that settled it. “See, there you have it.”
But Delilah didn’t see. Not at all. “See? Have what?”
She suspected she’d stepped into a trap.
“Dukes run around England doing whatever they please,” he explained, patiently. “And this—running around England with a traveling theater company—pleases me. So, to your point, I would dare.”
Delilah was struck speechless. Perhaps for the first time in her life.
“Further,” he continued, “you’re to tell the rest of the company that I’m a carpenter.”
Ah. And here she had him. “Why in heavens name would I do that?”
“So I don’t tell them you’re a lady.”
Of a sudden, Delilah felt like a popped balloon—all the air gone out of her in a great whoosh.
It was he who’d had her the entire time.
“This is most ungentlemanly behavior,” she protested. It was worth a try.
“But I’m not a gentleman tonight—or for the foreseeable future.” Ravensworth’s sardonic smile went a little wicked. “You can call me Seb.” A beat. “Lilah.”
A shiver rippled through her at the velvet crush of her new name against his throat. She found her eyes straying down the strong column of that throat. Since working men didn’t wear cravats, he wore only a neckerchief, leaving more of him open to view than his usual dukely self.
Seb.
She supposed a man like the one before her could be a Seb.
“Do you decree it, Your Grace?”
It would be dangerous to forget who he was.
She wouldn’t let herself—no matter how appealing her gaze found the muscular column of his neck and the light brushing of hair peeking just above the V of his shirt.
Silently, he tipped his hat before pivoting on his heel and descending the caravan steps to disappear into the night.
But not from her life.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
It defied belief.
Ravensworth…
Her nemesis.
Here.
And yet…
Who was the man she’d just encountered?
She snorted. A man full of dukely imperative. And yet…
Tonight, dressed simply, he’d appeared all man…manly.
She’d never viewed Ravensworth as manly. Handsome… sophisticated… arrogant… condescending… Those were the insufferable ingredients that composed Ravensworth.
But, tonight—and presumably for the rest of the summer—he wouldn’t be Ravensworth. He would be Seb.
And she would just have to suffer it.
She would ignore him.
It was possible.
Right?
The fact was she was under no obligation to spend time with Sebastian, the Duke of Ravensworth—or Seb the carpenter.
This summer was the start of the rest of her life.
And she wasn’t about to let one meddling man—duke!—ruin it.
Not again.