Chapter Seven #2
Why would he? He’d approached her in person before. “Because I am a duke, and presumably dispatch others to attend all my business for me?”
“A duke.” She sounded a bit dazed. She touched the pelerine, ensuring the buttons were fastened, smoothing the lace over her shoulder. “I cannot imagine why you have concerned yourself with our small little charity.”
He owed a debt. Rutland had helped him out of a sticky place, once.
Also, there was that society, the one for rogue dukes, who had agreed to admit him.
They’d given him a signet, a seal of some sort they used to identify one another.
It was in his desk at the moment as he wore the ring with the Declan family crest.
Besides all that, if he performed a service for a woman in distress, he could prove himself worthy of this position to which he’d suddenly been catapulted. He could be accepted at last. If not admired, at least tolerated, which was a step above the usual run of things.
At the very least, Fenton might stop trying to kill him.
She tilted her head to the side and studied his face. “We are not going to make you rich.”
What the devil? She must know he wouldn’t demand payment. He was rich already, or at least, in possession of more wealth than he’d ever had in his life, than he ever knew existed. “I never imagined you would.”
“Even if you do take our land and sell it.” She opened a small drawer in a desk with a yank.
He stared at her, well and truly at sea. “Hell’s doorknobs. You think I want your land?”
“Wasn’t that your demand?”
“I’m here to help, you aggravating woman!”
“You’re here to take everything!” she cried. “Are you not Lord Vérité?” She brandished a vellum letter at him.
“Lord Who?” He snatched the letter and scanned it quickly.
The image on the seal was not one he recognized, but then, his brainbox was still fogged from the confusion of that kiss and her sudden animosity.
“How banal. I’d be much more inventive in my demands, if I knew your secrets.
” He handed the letter back to her. “What do you mean, he wants your land?”
“He.” She narrowed her eyes at him.
“Yes, he. He signs himself Lord Vérité, ergo, he identifies as a masculine sort. A dastard, in point of fact.” The sort of man who preyed upon vulnerable women and children, apparently. Gabe knew all too many of those.
“I do not know the whole of his intentions yet. He approached me at the ball. He said he would send an agent to present me with an offer. Then you appeared, and—” Her expression grew fiery. “You made a demand of your own.”
That she be his lover. A fine idea, that. The most brilliant notion he’d ever originated in his life.
“And you met my terms,” Gabe said smugly. “Most satisfactorily. But I wouldn’t have required it, you know. I’ve never had to manipulate a woman into my—”
He cut off the words when he found a fury flying at him, a flurry of lace and cotton and soft woman battering against his chest. She was hitting him, her lace indoor mittens like puffs of cloud against his waistcoat.
A haze of honeysuckle enveloped his brain, and his blood roused instantly at her nearness.
He grasped her wrists, yanked her body against his, and clamped his arms around her. Then, because it seemed the best way to distract her from her anger, he kissed her again.
He fell on her and devoured her. There was no other way to describe it. Some madness descended on him when he was in her presence. Some hunger long denied came roaring to the surface. The wildness in him that he pretended wasn’t there slipped its lash and reared, clawing, raging.
And met an answering wildness in her. He’d never met a woman whose need, whose passion, matched his own.
“A-hem. Just anyone could walk in here, y’know,” the maid said.
Gabriel came to his senses to realize he had backed Louisa against the wall. His hips pressed against hers, and he’d raised both her arms above her head, wrists pinned to the wall with one hand. His other rested on her breasts, pushed high and toward him.
And she’d risen on tiptoe so his cockstand pushed directly into the crevice at the top of her thighs. That was her doing, not his.
He stared into her glowing eyes, unable to pull away. She stared back, her breasts rising and falling with her short pants of breath.
He’d been well on his way to taking her right here in her office, against the wall.
And it appeared she meant to take him right back.
He released her wrists. Inhaled a deep breath, drawing in the scent of her. His mind was gone already, might as well obliterate the rest of it. In an automatic gesture he raised his hands to smooth his neckcloth as he stepped back and away.
Dear God, he didn’t want to stop touching her. What madness had seized him? He was as randy as a sixteen-year-old boy around her.
He arranged his coat and tried to look ducal.
Her gaze fell on his ring, eyes narrowing. She clutched his hand and examined the seal. He tried to ignore the darts of warmth that shot up his arm and through his chest at the press of her hands around his.
“Crest of the house of Declan. Named after the Irish saint of Ardmore, Déaglán, if you’re asking. He converted the Déisí long before the mighty Patrick arrived.”
Why was he babbling? He made no effort to impress anyone. Quite the opposite, in fact. All the same he tucked the ends of his cravat back beneath his waistcoat, as Orde didn’t approve of their sticking out everywhere.
She moved away from the wall, somewhat unsteadily. He affected her, he was happy to see.
Only seemed fair, since she leveled him to his knees.
“Barkham is an English title.” She shoved the blackmail letter back into its place and slid the drawer shut.
“It is. I could bore you with that history too, if you’d like.”
“Why are you here? Alice,” she called as an afterthought, “you may enter.”
The little maid came into the room, her eyes on Gabe as if he were a wolf who might leap for her throat if she shifted her gaze for a second. “Sister Agatha asks if ye wants tea with the etiquette lessons today.”
“Etiquette lessons?” Gabe watched with interest as Louisa picked up a small hand mirror and readjusted her cap, which he’d once again disarranged. He took the carved wood handle of the mirror and held it for her.
An odd, unfamiliar warmth bloomed in his chest as he watched her smooth and repin a few curls, then pluck up the ribbons lacing her cap, which he’d crushed while holding her face to kiss her. Watching his female at her toilette was the privilege of a lover. Or a husband.
“Yes. I train the older girls in etiquette. Many of them will go into positions where they will be obliged to wait on ladies or the genteel. I want them to know how to conduct themselves in a manner that commands respect.”
“I thought this was a hospital.” He followed her out of the room, enjoying the sway of her skirts as she walked, and allowing a suspicion to grow and flower.
“It began as a shelter for needy women and orphans, and continues to be a hospital in the old sense of affording lodging. Once upon a time the Hospital hosted travelers, I believe, but since the premises were moved to Knightsbridge, we have focused on being a charitable institution that houses, tends, and trains women and girls as needed to find a secure position in the world.” She paused and threw an arch glance over her shoulder. “Alice can show you out.”
“I was promised a tour. As I might then be led to invest. Are you a workhouse?”
He followed her down a hall and past a large, airy chamber that appeared to be a schoolroom.
Children sat in pairs at rows of small wooden tables, sharing an open book and scribbling on a chalk slate while a schoolmistress in a plain gown, apron, and cap walked among them, offering suggestions.
Not reprimands accompanied by the slap of a ruler or a cuff along the head, which had marked most of Gabe’s schooling.
“Not the same as a workhouse. We do not make it a policy to punish people for the misfortune of being paupers. We are founded on a different philosophy, thus the Benevolent of our name.”
Louisa walked briskly past another high-ceilinged room. Gabe peeked in to see a crowd of women spinning and sewing. One sat at a handloom, patiently guiding the shuttle.
“Are you producing cloth? That is one way to secure an income.”
“We make as much as we can for our own use, including cloth. But we cannot complete with the factories, not without a spinning jenny and a power loom.”
A woman hurried up to her, dressed as Louisa was, plain but tidy.
Her expression turned to surprise as her eyes lit on Gabe, and she slowed to give him an appreciative look from head to toe.
He tried not to preen or hope Louisa had noticed.
It was gratifying to receive female admiration, all the more so if it made his siren jealous.
She appeared not to notice. “Sister Anna?”