Page 9 of A Duchess Worth Stealing (Saved by Scandal #2)
Chapter Seven
T he following afternoon was bright with the kind of sunlight that filtered through the trees like golden lace, warming the path and making the very leaves seem to glow. It was the sort of day one might expect would bring serenity and pleasant thoughts.
Cordelia, however, was sweating rather inelegantly into her borrowed gardening gloves and had just nicked her thumb for the second time in as many minutes.
“Oh, do behave,” she muttered at the rosebush.
It did not.
With a rather cross expression, she leaned back on her heels and turned to the open book lying on the grass beside her.
The Complete Treatise of Decorative Shrubbery and Their Sentimental Meanings had been discovered in a dusty corner of the library that morning—one of the only corners, she presumed, where she had not already been explicitly forbidden to tread.
She peered at the page again.
“‘Remove any dead branches with a clean snip. Never saw or twist,’” she read aloud. “Right, well. You needn’t be so smug about it,” she told the page, as if the book had judged her for being clumsy.
She turned back to the rosebushes. Well, to Isabelle’s rosebushes, technically.
They were growing in a wild, unapologetic sprawl against the edge of the garden wall, as though no one had dared to rein them in for years.
Some blooms still held their color, which was a lovely blush pink, like tea left too long on the tray.
Others had wilted or grown crooked, their branches arched and tangled like a story left unfinished.
Cordelia carefully reached for one of the overgrown limbs.
She had asked permission, of course. From the Dowager herself, who had blinked in surprise and then smiled in a way that made Cordelia feel oddly seen. It had been a brief conversation, but it had ended with a soft “yes, dear, thank you” and a hand resting lightly over hers.
She had not asked Mason.
She did not think she could bear the bracing cold of his scrutiny again, not after the way he’d looked the day before, like a man who could kill with a glance and yet chose words instead. She could still hear the bite of them in her memory.
“Careful how you answer.”
Cordelia snipped another branch, this one less lopsided than the last, and tried to ignore the warmth blooming behind her ribs.
He hadn’t needed to speak. He certainly hadn’t needed to defend her. He could have stayed silent. He could have let her suffer through it. But he hadn’t.
It was that fact, more than the threat in his voice or the sharpness of his words, that stayed with her. That was what made her want to do something in return. Of course, it couldn’t be some grand gesture. No, that would not do at all. In fact, that would be utterly absurd.
But perhaps… perhaps making this little corner of the world beautiful again. The rosebushes were hers now in a strange way. She had claimed them not by planting but by tending, by choosing to care.
She brushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek with the back of her gloved hand, smearing a bit of dirt along her temple in the process.
She was sun-warmed, sore-kneed, and not at all elegant, but she didn’t mind.
This was good work, the kind of work that made her think about the man who had made her feel safe. And that was dangerous.
She brushed the thought aside. But just as she did so, there he was, emerging from the woods, as if summoned by the sheer strength of her thoughts. She stood up and dropped her shears directly onto her foot.
“Oh!” she yelped, hopping once as pain and alarm competed for her attention. The book fluttered shut in the grass beside her. “Oh no.”
He was approaching dangerously fast, looking like a romantic painting gone grim. She didn’t give him time to speak.
“I know what you’re going to say,” she blurted, brushing leaves from her skirts and trying to ignore the thudding of her heart.
“And I can assure you that I asked your mother first, and I have not wandered, snooped, meddled, rearranged, or breathed on anything that did not explicitly belong to me. I am merely trimming the roses which, frankly, were in such a state of moral disrepair, I feared they might begin organizing a rebellion.”
He raised a silent brow.
“Also,” she added, snatching up the book with a flourish, “I am following scholarly advice. Scholarly , Your Grace. Not that I am frightened of you. Though I do think the decanters ought to come with warning labels.”
He stood very still for a moment then stepped forward and bent to retrieve the shears she had dropped. Cordelia snatched them before he could.
“I’m managing fine,” she said quickly.
“So I see,” he replied, glancing pointedly at her mud-smeared glove and the pricked skin just below her cuff.
There was a pause, heavy with the scent of roses and tension.
He looked at the hedge. “My sister planted these.”
“I know.”
“She named them.”
“I was told.”
“And you thought to hack away at them with borrowed shears and optimism.”
Cordelia tilted her chin. “No, I thought to restore them. Beauty thrives under care, not neglect.”
His amber eyes fixed on her. “Not everything responds well to being touched.”
Cordelia stared back, stung by something she could not name. “Then perhaps you should lock them away.”
He didn’t say anything. It drove her utterly mad. So, she opened her mouth, likely to say something she would certainly regret a moment later, but then she remembered something.
“Wait… you told me,” she said, narrowing her eyes, “never to go into the woods.”
“I did.”
“And yet you’ve just emerged from them. With mud on your boots and secrets in your eyes.”
His mouth twitched, but it was not a smile. “A duke may go where he pleases.”
“Oh, of course.” She folded her arms. “But if I take three steps off the path, I am reckless and in need of rules.”
“You are in need of protection ,” he said tightly.
Cordelia frowned. “Is there something in those woods I ought to be protected from, Your Grace?”
His lips thinned then he seemed as if he changed his mind about what he originally intended to say. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“I’m more clever than I look,” she replied quickly then regretted it, for his gaze dropped to her lips.
“That,” he murmured, “is not in dispute.”
She flushed.
“What is in dispute is one’s tendency to keep oneself out of harm’s way,” he said, reaching forward and catching her wrist as well as herself off guard.
His thumb brushed over the pale skin just above her glove. Without meaning to, she flinched.
The scratch was minor. There were children in the streets of London who had survived worse. But his grip tightened almost imperceptibly, and his brows drew together with the sort of thunderous displeasure that made her forget the clever retort she had been planning.
“That,” he said lowly, “is not from the first rosebush.”
Cordelia cleared her throat. “I told you I was working my way down the line.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“A little,” she admitted.
“You are scratched from wrist to elbow.”
“I am fine,” she retorted. “And I’m nearly done with this section; just let me finish this bit?—”
“No.”
The word landed like a judge’s gavel. She opened her mouth, indignant.
“I said?—”
But she got no further because in one swift, decisive motion, he bent, placed a firm hand behind her knees, another across her back, and lifted her clean off the ground and over his shoulder.
“Oh!” she squeaked while the world tilted alarmingly. “You absolute caveman! Put me down this instant!”
“You are injured.”
“I am fine! This is barbaric! You cannot simply haul women about like sacks of flour!”
“Apparently I can,” he replied dryly as he began walking toward the house. “And if you do not stop flailing, I may drop you, and then your scratches will be the least of your concerns.”
“I was doing something kind, you brute!”
“You were doing something foolish.”
“I’m trying to repay you!”
“For what?”
“For defending me!”
He stopped so suddenly that her stomach did a strange flip.
“I do not require repayment,” he revealed, refusing to put her down even now. “I require sense. I require you to take care of yourself. I require…” He trailed off.
“What?” she asked, her voice muffled against his back.
“I require,” he muttered, “that you not drive me to madness with your incessant need to play martyr in my garden.”
“Well,” she grumbled, “perhaps if your gardener weren’t so woefully incompetent?—”
“If you insult him again, I shall drop you into the fishpond.”
She gasped. “You wouldn’t.”
He resumed walking. “Try me.”
Several minutes later, he brought her to the kitchen.
The cook had gone to the market. The scullery maid had been conveniently ordered away.
And Cordelia, who was by now thoroughly disheveled, mildly humiliated, and achingly aware of her own limbs, was perched on the edge of the marble counter like some awkward, overgrown child awaiting judgment.
Only he wasn’t judging her. He was kneeling before her with a basin of warm water, a cloth, and a frown.
“Hold still,” he murmured, dipping the cloth into the basin and wringing it out with practiced care.
She obeyed, while her feet dangled slightly above the ground. Her gloves lay discarded beside her, and her arms, bared to the elbow, looked pitifully scratched and speckled with smudges of dirt.
He took her right hand first, turning it over in his own. His fingers were warm and the touch so gentle she had to glance at him, just to be sure it was truly him tending to her like this. She couldn’t stop staring at his eyelashes. They were infuriatingly thick.
“You’ve gone very quiet,” he said suddenly, not looking up.
“I am never quiet,” she replied faintly.
“I know,” he said. “That is precisely why I find it unsettling.”
She tilted her head. “You miss the sound of my voice already?”
“I miss knowing what chaos is forming behind it,” he muttered, flicking his eyes up to hers with a flash of amber that made her breath catch.
Cordelia looked away, and for a moment, neither spoke.
She watched the way his thumb held steady beneath her palm, anchoring her hand with surprising tenderness as he cleaned the shallow scratch along her forearm.
A strange feeling unfurled in her chest. In fact, it was stranger than strange, like someone calling her name in a dream.
“No one’s ever done this for me,” she said before she quite meant to.
He paused. “Clean your wounds?”
“I should hope someone has,” he added quickly, a teasing edge softening his voice. “Though I suspect you’re the sort to get into regular trouble, so the odds are?—”
“No,” she interrupted him. “That’s not what I meant.”
But now, it felt too exposed and downright too silly to explain what she had meant, so she laughed instead. He said nothing.
Cordelia stared down at her hands. “I only meant… people didn’t usually fuss over me, not unless it was to tell me to behave or be silent, or for goodness’ sake, sit like a lady.”
Still, he said nothing. And that was somehow worse than any reply because silence left room for meaning.
He bound the last of her scratches with a strip of linen and secured it neatly before rising to his feet. She found herself looking up at him again, too aware of the distance and how little of it remained.
“You’re a difficult woman to ignore, Lady Cordelia,” he told her, almost amused.
“I’m also a difficult woman to lift over one’s shoulder,” she muttered, feeling herself blushing.
“I had no trouble with that,” he murmured almost playfully and turned away to rinse the cloth.
Cordelia stared after him, heart oddly full and confused in equal measures. For he had no obligation to her. And yet, here she was, washed and bandaged and warm with something dangerously close to affection for a man she barely knew.