Romancing the Duke (Castles Ever After #1)(36)
Author: Tessa Dare

“Well?” he prompted.

“Well,” she said, “it’s plain to see that you were once a devastatingly handsome man.”

“And now?”

“Now . . .” She sighed. “I really hate to say it. Don’t make me say it.”

His hand caught her wrist. “Just say it.”

“Now you are a devastatingly handsome man with an impressive scar. That is the unhappy truth. I wish I could tell you otherwise. You will be impossible now.”

“But . . .” He released her, looking bewildered. “But that first day. When you saw me, you swooned.”

She laughed a little. “Your face did not make me swoon. I was already feeling faint. I hadn’t eaten anything but a few crusts of bread for days.”

“So the scars don’t frighten you?”

“Not at all.”

The words were a lie. The truth was, his scars did frighten her—but only a little, and only because they tempted her to care. Even now, her heart was softening in her chest, faster than a lump of butter left in the sun.

She couldn’t let this happen. It was all well and good to say “no expectations,” but Izzy knew how her affection-starved heart worked. She was so desperate to love and be loved, she could sprout tender feelings toward a rock. And rocks didn’t call her “bewitching” or “temptress.” Rocks didn’t have touchable golden brown hair.

But rocks and Ransom did have something in common.

Neither one would love her back.

“We should go,” she said. “It’s been at least one hundred counts, and the girls are waiting.”

He stood and brushed dust from his breeches and coat. “I’ll make my own way back.”

“By yourself?” The moment the words left her lips, Izzy cringed, regretting how they sounded. Of course he was able to walk back on his own. “It’s just that the handmaidens are waiting for their hero to find them.”

“Then they’d best keep waiting for some other man.” He moved past her. “I’m no one’s hero, Miss Goodnight. You’d do well to remember it.”

Chapter Fourteen

Miss Goodnight. Is that you?”

Izzy froze, perched on tiptoe.

Drat.

After several hours of walking, talking, counting wild roses, and fending off questions about two Ulrics, Izzy had finally bid a warm farewell to the handmaidens and the Knights of Moranglia. She’d been hoping to sneak back into the castle unnoticed. So much for that plan.

At least it wasn’t the duke who’d caught her.

“Yes, Duncan?”

“What is that in your hands, Miss Goodnight?”

Izzy glanced down at her wadded, soiled shawl. She’d been carrying it around ever since her interlude with Ransom that morning.

Embarrassed, she thrust the thing behind her back. “Oh, it’s nothing.”

“Is that your shawl?”

The man had a marksman’s eye when it came to laundry.

She sighed, drawing it out again. “Yes. I . . . You see, there was a bit of a mishap.”

Lord, how did she begin to describe what had happened to the thing? She ought to have pitched it in the moat. It wasn’t as though it could be salvaged.

“Give it here.” The valet took it from her hand. He shook out the frail, tissue-thin fabric and examined it, clucking his tongue. “Dirt . . . grass . . . My word. Are these bloodstains? On silk embroidery?”

She bit her lip, praying that he wouldn’t be angry with her for the duke’s recent injury. Or worse, demand a full explanation of how it had occurred.

“Miss Goodnight, I don’t know what to say. This . . .” He shook his head. “This is marvelous.”

“Marvelous?”

“Yes.” He gripped the fabric in both hands. “This is what a valet lives for. Removing stubborn stains from quality fabric. It’s been months since I had a challenge like this one. I must away to the laundry, at once. If the stains have any longer to set, I’ll never get them out.”

Amused, Izzy followed him down to the room designated as a laundry. He stoked the fire, put a kettle on to boil, and gathered soap, an iron, and pressing cloths.

“These grass stains will be the most stubborn.” He laid the shawl out on the worktable, assessing every little spot and stain. “Lemon juice and a cool rinse first. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try a paste of soda.”

“Can I help at all?”

“No, Miss Goodnight.” He looked faintly horrified. “You’d spoil my amusement. But you’d be most welcome to keep me company.”

Izzy took a seat and watched, quite amused herself by his careful campaign to attack the stains. He scraped them first with a knife. Then rubbed them with a soft-bristled brush. Only then did he reach for his small, brown-glass bottles of spirits and salts. She felt as though she were watching a surgeon at work.

“Duncan, how did it happen? The duke’s accident.”

The valet paused in the act of dabbing vinegar on a grass stain. “Miss Goodnight,” he said slowly, “I know we discussed this. A good manservant does not gossip about his employer.”

“I know. I know, and I’m sorry to pry, but . . . now I work for him, too. Isn’t this what employed people do? Gossip about their employer?”

He arched one brow in silent censure.

She hated seeming so petty, and she didn’t want to break her word to Ransom and disclose his headache the other night. Or mention the letter he’d crumpled and tossed in the grate.

“I’m just concerned, that’s all. The duke’s so . . .” Stubborn. Wounded. Maddeningly attractive. “So angry. At the world, it seems, but especially at me. He’s so determined to interpret everything in the worst possible way, and I don’t think it’s only his injury. I wish I understood it.”

Duncan took a break from his scrubbing to attend the whistling kettle. “Miss Goodnight, it wouldn’t be fitting for a valet to tell tales about his employer.”

Izzy nodded. She was disappointed, but she wouldn’t press him further. He was saving her best shawl, after all.

“But,” the silver-haired man continued, “seeing as you are Miss Izzy Goodnight, and so fond of a story, perhaps I could tell you a tale about . . . an entirely different man.”

“Oh, yes.” She straightened in her chair, trying not to betray her excitement. “A fictional man. One who isn’t Rothbury at all. I would so love to hear a story like that.”