Duke of Midnight (Maiden Lane #6)(18)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

“She might be blind, Your Grace, but I believe she’s stronger than you think.”

He looked away from her alluring bare toes. Who was she to tell him how to take care of his sister? Phoebe was barely twenty years of age. “Two years ago my sister fell because she didn’t see a step, Miss Greaves. She broke her arm.” His lips twisted at the memory of Phoebe’s face white with pain. “You may think me overprotective, but I assure you I do know what is best for my sister.”

She was silent at that, though he doubted she’d changed her mind over the matter. He frowned, irritated, almost as if he regretted his cold words.

The folly loomed in front of them and they stopped to look at it.

Miss Greaves cocked her head. “It’s rather like Rapunzel’s tower.”

Big blocks of artfully weathered dark gray stone made a round tower with a single, low arched opening.

He raised an eyebrow. “I’d always imagined Rapunzel’s tower taller.”

She tilted her head back to eye the top of the little building, and the long line of her pale throat was caught in a beam of sunlight. A pulse beat delicately in the soft juncture of her neck and collarbone.

He looked away. “Certainly this would be no obstacle for a fit man to climb.”

She glanced at him, and he thought he saw that tiny smile at the edge of her lips. “Are you saying you’d scale these walls for a damsel in distress, Your Grace?”

“No.” His mouth tightened. “Just that it’s possible.”

She hummed under her breath. Percy romped up and dropped a sadly mangled, dead frog at her feet, then backed away and sat proudly by his prize, looking at Miss Greaves as if expecting praise.

She absently ruffled the spaniel’s ears. “You’d leave poor Rapunzel to her fate?”

“If a lady were so silly as to get herself locked in a stone tower,” he said drily, “I’d break down the door and climb the stairs to help her from the building.”

“But Rapunzel’s tower had no door, Your Grace.”

He kicked aside the dead frog. “Then, yes, I suppose I would be forced to scale the tower walls.”

“But you certainly wouldn’t enjoy it,” she murmured.

He merely looked at her. Was she trying to make him into some romantic hero? She didn’t strike him as a silly chit. Her eyes were a dark, soft gray, lovely and alluring, but her gaze was as steady and bold as any man’s.

He glanced away first, his lips twisting. “Anyway, it’s not Rapunzel’s tower. It’s the Moon Maiden’s.”

“What?”

He cleared his throat. What had possessed him to tell her that? “Mother always said that this was the Moon Maiden’s tower.”

She looked at him with those bold gray eyes. “Well, there must be a story in that.”

He shrugged. “She used to tell it to me when I was very young. Something about a sorcerer who fell in love with the Moon Maiden. He built a tower to try and be closer to her and walled himself inside.”

She stared at him for a moment as if waiting for something. “And?”

He glanced at her, puzzled. “And, what?”

She widened her eyes. “How does the story end? Did the sorcerer win his Moon Maiden?”

“Of course not,” he said irritably. “She lived on the moon and was quite unattainable. I suppose he must’ve starved or pined away or fallen off the wall at some point.”

She sighed. “That’s the least romantic story I’ve ever heard.”

“Well it wasn’t my favorite,” he said, sounding defensive to even his own ears. “I liked the ones about giant killers much better.”

“Hmm,” she answered noncommittally. “Can one go inside?”

Instead of answering he strode to the arched entryway, a bit hidden by briars. Ruthlessly, he pulled them aside, ignoring the scrapes on his fingers, then gestured for her to walk in ahead.

She glanced at his hands, but made no comment as she passed him.

There was a spiral staircase immediately inside, and he watched as she lifted her skirts to climb it. A bare ankle flashed and then the dogs pushed past him to follow her eagerly.

He followed her as well, but naturally not as eagerly as the dogs. At least that was what he told himself.

The staircase opened onto a small stone platform. He made the last step and joined her by the low wall, which was crenellated like a medieval castle’s battlements.

She braced her hands straight-armed on the wall and leaned over to look. The folly wasn’t high—no more than a single story—yet one had a nice view of the pond and the surrounding woods. Belle reared up on her hind legs beside her to look as well, while Percy whined and paced, unable to see. A gentle breeze teased a few strands of hair at Miss Greaves’s temple, and he couldn’t help but think she looked like a ship’s figurehead—proud and somewhat wild and ready for adventure.

What an extraordinarily foolish thought.

“It’s quite silly, isn’t it?” she said after a moment, almost as if speaking to herself.

He shrugged. “A folly.”

She cocked her head, looking at him. “Was your father a man given to amusements?”

He remembered the strong hands, the kind but somber eyes. “No, not much.”

She nodded. “Then he loved your mother quite a lot, didn’t he?”

He caught his breath at her words, the loss as bleak and frozen as if it’d happened yesterday. “Yes.”

“You’re lucky.”

“Lucky” wasn’t an attribute most people assigned to him. “Why?”

She closed her eyes and tilted her face to the sun. “My father was mad.”

He looked at her sharply. Craven had made his report last night. The late Viscount Kilbourne had been estranged from his own father, the Earl of Ashridge, and the rest of his family, and had been known for making wild, unfortunate investments—and, at his worst, raving in public.

He supposed the normal thing to do would be to offer some word of sympathy, but he’d long ago used up all his tolerance for polite, meaningless phrases. Besides. She’d been brave enough to forgo the usual false comfort when he’d told her of his own loss. It seemed only just to offer her the same dignity.

Still, he couldn’t help a small frown as he thought of her as a small girl, living with an unpredictable sire. “Were you frightened?”

She glanced at him curiously. “No. One always thinks one’s upbringing—one’s family—is perfectly normal, don’t you think?”