Page 24 of A Duke Never Tells

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

MEG PINWELL

The unfortunate thing about venturing down to the library daily, Meg reflected, aside from the very real danger that one or both of the footmen would drop her down the stairs, was that she had to dress again. Now that she had to do it mostly on her own, she’d gained a great deal of respect for the old matrons who confined themselves to bed with tea and a cat, generally. Always being in a night rail and dressing robe was not only comfortable, but it kept one from having to summon assistance for something as silly as buttons and ribbons.

Of course, wearing comfortable things also brought on a creeping sense of… sloth, she supposed it was. All she needed was one of those bed cats, and she could instantly become an old matron. “Enough of that,” she muttered at herself, and flung a pillow aside.

Carefully she stood on her good foot, then hopped to the wardrobe for a shift and day dress, leaning against various pieces of furniture as she went. There was a certain comfort to these simpler gowns she’d been wearing, as well. No itchy lace or tight bosoms for companions. No one—no man, anyway—was supposed to notice a companion. In London she would be frilly and very much in need of help again. But at the moment her two greatest challenges were the trio of buttons running down her back, and trying to forget that Clara expected her to converse with the Duke of Earnhurst this afternoon over tea.

Why had she agreed to that, anyway? Her decision had been made. In eight days, she and Clara would leave, and she would never see Earnhurst Castle again. She certainly would never have reason to set eyes on its butler. No more kissing, or chatting, or laughing about nonsense.

“Drat,” she muttered, leaning one hip against the bed and bending both arms behind her back to reach the row of buttons. There was no future for her and James. At the same time, she knew she would be comparing every man in Mayfair to him, and to the warm, bubbly way she felt in his company. It was ridiculous. She knew better, and every instinct she possessed, especially the ones that had listened to her mother’s endless lessons about status and propriety, shrieked at the very idea of her falling for a servant.

But James didn’t act… subservient, she supposed. He spoke out of turn, did as he wished, criticized his employer and half brother with a keenly honed humor, did kind things for her because he wanted to, looked delicious even sweaty and dirty, and most of all, looked her in the eye, spoke to her as an equal, and kissed like the devil. In his company she kept forgetting what a horrible idea it was to be in his company.

Ostensibly Clara should have been supportive of her fondness for the butler, because Clara claimed that deeds and character were the most important ingredients that made up a man; birth and privilege being the least of them. Then again, James’s deeds before he was dragged to Earnhurst were rather questionable, and Clara was not just a reformer but also an aunt and a friend who wished every possible advantage and comfort for her niece.

At this moment Meg wished a few more comforts for herself. Mainly, the presence of her maid, Nelly. She twisted, trying to reach the middle button along her back—and lost her balance. With a thud she fell to the floor, arse first and only one button managed.

“Ouch.”

Now she would likely have a bruise on her backside in addition to the purple one on her ankle. Carefully she bent arms and legs and flexed her fingers, hoping she hadn’t sprained anything else. It would be horrid to have to spend the next week on her face because she’d broken her bottom. Meg reached up to grab on to the footboard, but the bed was too high for her to get any leverage. Sighing, she turned onto all fours, crawling on her hands and knees—her bad ankle and foot lifted off the floor as best she could—around to the chair set by the bed.

“What the devil are you doing down there?”

Meg yelped, nearly going down onto her face again. “You opened the door without knocking!”

“I did knock. You didn’t answer.” James strode forward and lifted her up, leaving her feeling a little breathless, before he rather abruptly set her back on the bed. That was where she’d begun this morning, dash it all.

“Well, you must have done it at the same moment I fell on my arse. And yes, I know that’s not the polite thing to say, but it hurt.”

When he stepped back from the bed, she took a good look at him. Coatless, his dark green waistcoat unbuttoned, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, the white material of his shirt clinging damply to his chest. Dirt smudged his forehead, likely where he’d wiped it with his hand, his trousers and boots were dusty, and his dark brown hair looked wild and disheveled.

“What?” he asked, glancing down at himself. “I’ve been laboring.”

“You look like you’ve been wrestling potatoes,” she countered, leaving out the additional comment that no potato wrestler had any right to look that delicious. Oh, my.

“Yes, and they’re winning.” He shrugged, a slight grin touching his mouth. “You’ve already said I’m an odd butler.”

“I didn’t say all the dirt looked ill on you.” She almost reached out to tug on one of his waistcoat buttons, but clenched her fingers instead.

“No?” He looked down at himself, brushing a hand across his front.

“No. I’d even go so far as to say you’re enjoying mucking about outside. You have a… satisfied look about you.”

“Taking something broken and mending it is… Yes. I have been enjoying it.”

“According to my employer, your sudden resolve to help restore the garden has astonished the duke. I believe that’s good, as your buttling skills still leave something to be desired.”

“Your employer is too kind,” he returned, his voice a little flat. “Perhaps I won’t be sacked at the end of this, after all.” He leaned sideways to flick a finger along her shoulder, skin brushing skin. “Your gown is unbuttoned.”

His touch felt like fire—pleasant fire, warm and alive and aware. Her cheeks warmed in response. She’d been thinking, imagining, skin-to-skin interactions with James a great deal over the past few days. Even with her annoyed at him for avoiding her, the idea of how it would feel to be in his arms, to feel his laugh, the beat of his heart, more of his heart-stopping kisses, and things which she could only imagine but very much wanted to experience with him, all tugged her in every direction but the one she needed to go—which was any direction but the one she wanted to go. He was still gazing at her, though, his expression growing more amused by the moment, so she needed to say something. Something coherent, preferably. “I was attempting to fasten my dress when the floor and I had our disagreement.”

“Ah.” He made a twirling motion with his fingers. “If you would, then.”

“ You mean to button me?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Why wouldn’t I? We’re just two servants, one of whom is having difficulty with her uniform.”

Yes, that was them. Two servants, one of whom happened to be lying with practically every breath she took. Except in his company she hadn’t been lying really, about anything except her position. And her name. But the rest, her likes, the things that amused her, her love of books and silly stories and gardens, that had been genuine. Her giddy joy at spending time in his company. That had definitely been genuine.

When James twirled his fingers again, Meg gave an exaggerated sigh and turned around. “A competent butler would have summoned a maid to do this, you know,” she grumbled, pretending to be exasperated even as his hands brushing up her back made her shiver.

“Perhaps I’d make a better maid than a butler.” A finger grazed the nape of her neck, and then he cleared his throat and moved away. “All buttoned up.”

She turned around again, lifting her chin to meet his light gray gaze. For heaven’s sake, he was like honey, and she a person who very much liked honey. To keep from grabbing his waistcoat and kissing him, she sat on her hands. “Did you go start digging up the garden because you’re helping Earnhurst, or because you kissed me and I’m so irresistible you had to put physical distance between us? Because you have been noticeably nowhere near me over the past few days.”

The duke’s half brother cocked his head. “Do you always just say whatever comes to mind?”

Her parents thought so, and that it was her greatest flaw. But she wasn’t trying to impress James with her manners, for goodness’ sake. “I’ve been trying to do otherwise, but I’ve also been holding on to that question for several days, now. I have a great many thoughts and a great many feelings, too, you know.”

He looked at her, the grimace on his face softening. “I honestly have no idea what to make of you, Mabel Gooster. And I find that… enchanting.”

“I’m not certain what to make of either of us,” she countered, wondering what the Duke of Earnhurst would do if he ever found out that his betrothed had kissed his bastard brother butler—and liked it. So much that she ached inside when she wasn’t doing it. When she wasn’t near him. “I am, however, going to remain here for another eight days, whether you like it or not.”

“Eight days,” he muttered, still eyeing her as if she was some sort of deadly, apple-carrying snake. Abruptly he stepped forward again, but instead of kissing her as she expected, he scooped her off the bed and turned for the door. “Come on. You’ve a chaise longue waiting for you in the library.”

“I thought you’d recruited Timothy and Randall to tote me about,” she squeaked, grabbing on to his neck.

“I heard Randall nearly dropped you on your head yesterday going downstairs.”

“Well, as you know, the house has very limited staff, and you were in the garden fighting tubers.”

“I will make myself available to see you moved safely,” James stated. “No matter what else I might be doing or whether I’m attempting to avoid utterly ruining you or not. Have someone fetch me if I don’t arrive at the appropriate time.”

“You want to utterly ruin me?” That sounded… very naughty—and very tempting—and both what he’d said and his possessive tone heated her up inside.

“Promise me, Mabel. I won’t allow you to be injured again.”

“I may be allowed to limp about on my own soon, you know, if Dr. Grimsby gives me leave to do so. However shall we spend our time together, then?”

“I imagine we’ll find something to fall over,” he rumbled, and she laughed.

“I never used to be clumsy. Some have even called me graceful, I’ll have you know. There were days I never so much as grabbed on to any furniture to keep my balance.”

He stopped on the landing, standing there with her in his arms, and simply looked at her. “Yes, I want to utterly ruin you, Mabel. I want you in my bed, your bed, any bed, naked and in my arms. I’m attempting to be… good, however, and so I would settle for kissing you senseless. And as you have a great deal of sense, that could take me a lifetime,” he murmured. “You’re driving me mad.”

“I don’t mean t—”

His mouth covered hers, warm and soft and whispering promises that she desperately wanted him to keep. Meg kissed him back, feeling her own yearning and desire reflecting back to her, wishing with all her heart that he was other than what he was, or that she was other than who she was. If only one or two things could be just a little different, this might have been the beginning of something wonderful. Something forever.

“Is that you, James?” Randall’s voice came from below.

James lifted his head. “Yes. I’m just delivering Mabel downstairs.” He looked at her for another few, hard beats of her heart, then captured her mouth again.

“Oh, good. I was about to go up and fetch her, and I’m afraid I nearly dropped her yesterday.”

Ripping his mouth from hers, James uttered a curse. “So I heard. Damnation.” Descending the stairs, they reached the foyer and turned up the hallway to see the elderly footman toting a bundle of logs. “Fetch me if she needs carrying anywhere, Randall.”

“I’ll do that, your lordship. And thank you.”

The older man trundled into the drawing room, and they continued past that toward the library.

“He called you a lord,” Meg noted, grinning and rather grateful to have something other than that spectacular kiss with which to occupy her thoughts and her very aware body.

“Yes, well, I think he helped build Stonehenge,” James quipped. “I don’t much resemble a lord, do I?”

“Today you resemble a farmer who’s been bowled over by several pigs.” She loosened one hand from her grip around his neck to brush at the dirt on his forehead. “And two cows. Very large ones. Possibly French.”

He knocked sideways into the wall, sagged back against it, and kissed her again. He smelled a bit of sweat and dirt, but she probably smelled of liniment and tea. And oh, did he know how to kiss. Tingles running up and down her spine, she lifted one hand to tangle her fingers into his hair. Oh, my.

While her heart thrummed like a hummingbird’s wings, he backed away just enough to rest his dirty forehead against hers. “You are quite nearly irresistible, Mabel Gooster. What say we duck into the morning room for a bit?”

Now she wished she’d used her real name, but if she had, they wouldn’t be having this conversation, and he certainly wouldn’t be kissing her and tempting her to ruin herself. “I want to,” she whispered back. “You have no idea how much.”

“I think I do,” he murmured back, kissing her, feather soft, on one corner of her mouth.

“I find you quite compelling, James Riniken.”

He pushed away from the wall, righting them again. “I am a man of very limited regard for rules, Mabel, and I seem to be failing horribly at being good. At nearly everything, in fact.”

“I think it only took you a moment to find your footing,” she said, meeting his gaze. “Because look at you now. If you hadn’t taken the reins and begun work on the garden with your own hands, none of these workers would be here today. Nothing would have changed. You did this.”

James looked at her for a long moment. “You’re not helping me keep hold of myself at the moment, you know,” he breathed. “God, I want you.”

Her cheeks, everything, warmed. She was not accustomed to being the sensible one. And she had no idea how to continue to resist him, when every part of her wanted him back. “You’re the butler of a prestigious house,” she began, her voice shaking, “and I’m a lady’s companion in a different household in a different shire. We… We’re impossible.”

“‘Impossible,’” he echoed, almost soundlessly.

“Yes, impossible. But there’s no reason we can’t be friends. Good friends.”

He tilted his head. “Friends who kiss and think constantly about doing sweaty, naked things with each other?”

“Yes.” Oh, she’d just stepped into the deepest part of the pond, and the water was well over her head. “But you have to promise me one thing, for both our sakes.”

“And what might that be?”

“That you will never tell your employer about us, and in return, I will never tell mine.” Of course, Clara already knew her niece was mad for the butler, but it was far more important that the Duke of Earnhurst never discover that. If he ever realized that Mabel Gooster was Lady Margaret Pinwell, even if he agreed to break the marriage contract, at best, James Riniken would lose his employment. At worst, well, her own reputation would be dragged through the stickiest, dirtiest mud ever found, and James… She didn’t even want to think about what could happen to him.

“I promise. I will never speak to the Duke of Earnhurst about any of this.”

She nodded. “And I will never speak to Lady Sophronia Frumple about it, either.” At least that wasn’t a lie; there was no such person, after all.

His grip on her tightened just a little, then his fingers loosened again. “I hear we’re to have tea in your bedchamber this afternoon. You and me and Earnhurst and Lady Sophronia.”

“Yes, she mentioned the duke was considering introducing you into Society.” She watched his expression. “How do you feel about that?”

She could feel the deep breath he took. “I feel like things are going to change, and I’m not certain I want them to. In fact, I’m fairly certain I’d prefer that they remain as they are. I’ve become rather fond of this little corner of Dorset.”

Oh, she knew that feeling. “It’s almost magical here, isn’t it? Like a ruined old castle with a kindhearted ogre living inside.”

“Who’s the ogre? The duke, or me?”

“I think the moral would be that everyone is the ogre.”

James chuckled. “Your ogre craves biscuits. I know that.”

He’d asked a good question, regardless. And she’d promised Clara she would listen to the duke and try to discern for herself, finally, what sort of man he was. Time for her to grow up, she supposed. “Tell me something. When you were sitting about in London’s gaming hells, did you hear rumors about your employer? Your brother? He would have been the Marquis of Duffy, then.”

“Why so curious?” he countered.

“In all honesty, when Lady Sophronia and I arrived here and discovered the duke was in residence, we half expected to see naked women swinging from the chandeliers, fountains of champagne everywhere, and horses in the drawing room.”

James snorted. “‘Horses in the drawing room’? I can understand the other ones, but why that?”

“According to the newspapers, Lord Duffy wagered on horses quite frequently, and would even bet for ownership of them. His stable here seems nearly empty, but I imagine the one at Clay House is stuffed with derby horses.”

“Earnhurst owns three derby horses. Two of them are retired and leased to other lords for stud, and the third one is Faro.”

“The one here? The bay?”

“Yes. He’s six years old and is also retired, but he was gelded as a colt and won’t be breeding little Faros.”

“Three isn’t so bad, I suppose. Not nearly what I imagined.”

Several things about the Duke of Earnhurst were proving to be other than what she’d previously believed. And that made other things trickier. No, she didn’t want to marry him, but the more she learned, the less she could say it was because he was a horrible man. It seemed more likely that he was somewhat self-involved, accustomed to a life without responsibility, and not eager to try living up to his father’s impeccable reputation.

She couldn’t even imagine attempting to live in Dorset as his duchess, though. The man she saw, while not much like the rakehell he was reputed to be, was too old, too stern, and… Well, all of that and the fact that she couldn’t seem to keep her eyes or her thoughts or her hands off his butler.

And that would never do.

They walked into the library to find Clara in one corner, an open book in her hands. James muttered something under his breath that might have been another curse, but he said it so quietly she couldn’t be certain. He couldn’t have been surprised to see Clara there, because she was the entire reason he was carrying Meg down to the library in the first place. Did he dislike her? No, that couldn’t be possible. If he liked her to the degree he seemed to, he couldn’t dislike Clara. Perhaps it was that he hadn’t had much interaction with her, and so he lumped her into the pile of stuffy aristocrats where he’d already tossed his brother and all the peers whom he’d beaten at cards.

“Lady Sophronia,” she said loudly, because she had no doubt her auntie had completely forgotten both her surroundings and their present circumstances.

Clara jumped, nearly dropping the book. “Ah, there you are, Mabel. You’ll never guess what I’ve just uncovered. A very early edition of The Iliad, in its original Greek and without annotations. No snobbish Englishman has inserted his own interpretation of Homer. It’s quite refreshing!”

“Oh, I’d like to see that, as well.”

James set Meg down on the chaise longue and faced Clara. “You read Greek, my lady?”

“I do. It was Cleisthenes of Athens who invented the first democracy, you know. Where everyone might have equal rights under the law.”

“Lady Sophronia is very keen on gaining voting rights for women,” Meg explained, wishing her aunt would ease her tone a bit. Women not being able to vote was certainly not the fault of one illegitimate butler.

“But Cleisthenes’s democracy only allowed votes by free men,” James commented. “Not women, and not slaves, of which they had a great many.”

Clara’s eyes narrowed. “I never said it was a perfect democracy; only that it was the first. One might think that in the more than two thousand years since then, we, as a people, might have become more enlightened, and yet, here we are, having the very same argument as the ancient Greeks.”

“Technically, my lady, we’ve gone backward, as the United Kingdom is a monarchy.”

“A constitutional monarchy. One where laws have been con stantly added, removed, and modified for the past two hundred years. We are not static; we cannot remain so for long without withering.”

“My lady,” Meg said more loudly, “I don’t believe butlers have the right to vote presently, either. Not unless they have holdings worth more than forty shillings.”

“Yes, well, you were very quick to counter my position, James,” her aunt said, lowering her shoulders.

He inclined his head. “A habit, my lady. Perhaps we might chat about it more over tea.” Sending a glance at Meg, he turned for the door. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a garden to dig up.”

“Well,” Clara said, the moment he was gone, “that was rude of him.”

“Him? You began arguing the moment he asked whether you could read Greek.”

“He’s very arrogant for a butler. Even if he is a duke’s son. He’s certainly arrogant for a man who lived by wagering.”

“Oh, you know a great many professional gamblers, do you?” Meg asked, putting on a grin. “Do stop it. I know you like to argue, but this is not the place for it. Now hand me some books.”

Her aunt obliged, carrying an armful over and setting them on the floor beside the chaise. “You might have taken my side, at least,” she grumbled.

“He wasn’t talking to me. And I’m a companion. I don’t think I read Greek.”

“Perhaps Mabel doesn’t,” Clara retorted, then lowered her voice. “But Meg does. Passably, anyway.”

“Just promise you won’t frighten him away during our tea. If you’re his first civilized conversation with a lady, you could at least be polite and kind about it.”

“I’m always kind.”

“Mm-hmm.”