Page 26 of Dukes All Night Long

Even his boots made squelching noises as they made their way back to Sibyl’s lair. Her books were well off the floor, which tended to get a trifle damp, even though it was covered with a layer of wood. Nothing but the best for her father’s hermits!

Her reading chair was in the corner, and the desk on the opposite side. He made to drop down into the plush cushion of her chair and Sibyl squeaked out in panic. “Not there! You’re soaking wet!”

Eyeball grunted and moved to the wooden chair next to the desk.

She wasn’t sure if it would hold him, honestly.

His shoulders matched the width of the entire writing surface.

His green eye closed in a wince as he sat down.

Sibyl watched as the chair legs wobbled and braced.

She exhaled with relief when it looked as if it would hold.

“You’re the hermit now? I’ve never heard of a woman hermit. A hermitess?” The green eye was still closed, but the blue one looked at her quizzically.

She wondered if he was suffering some brain injury from her wallop. “Just because you haven’t heard of a thing doesn’t mean it can’t exist, Archibald.”

A smile played at his lips, and the green eye opened a crack. “Formal, now, eh? You must be peeved with me.”

“Keep speaking and I won’t bother to examine your wound.” Two minutes and he was already teasing her. It was her childhood all over again. He was exhausting to be around.

“Is that a threat or a promise?” His hand rubbed at the spot on the back of his head.

“You’re just going to smear blood all around your hair and get it on your clothes, and all over my home.” It was this tone of voice that made people think she should have been a governess.

“My deepest apologies,” he grumbled.

She pulled one of her rags out of the chest at the foot of the bed, tucked in the back alcove.

Was it meant for blood? Yes. Was it meant for blood from a head wound?

Well, it was now. She tucked it against the back of his head.

“We need to hold pressure against the wound in order to make your head stop bleeding.” She plucked at his arm resting on the chair, but it was honestly too heavy for her to lift one-handed.

“I mean you, you overgrown pony. You hold the cloth there.”

He shook his head mildly, and her hand went with his head. “I don’t feel right,” he said.

Ready to chastise him for his entitlement, she noticed his face going pale as a sheet. “Oh no,” she said, shaking her own head this time, looking around the room for any empty container. “You aren’t casting up your accounts in here.”

Her kitchen area was near the door, and thus, all her bowls and buckets. She dropped the rag and dashed to her chamber pot under the bed. She’d just emptied it, thank goodness. It was more embarrassment for him than for her, anyway.

“I think I’m—”

“Hold this,” she instructed, handing him the pot.

He obeyed, swaying in the chair. She dashed over to her kitchen and poured the man a small beer.

It was a rustic place to live, so she had to resort to rustic methods, like having watered down ale instead of fresh water, to avoid becoming ill.

Not all of her professors had held with the idea of germ theory, but Sibyl did.

She thrust the cup into Eyeball’s hand and bid him drink. She retrieved the rag and resumed her post at his side. He stopped swaying. Slowly, a bit of color returned to his face. He lowered the chamber pot to the ground.

“May I have more?” His voice was gruff, but sounded steady.

She looked at the rag, which made it clear the bleeding had stopped. She parted his hair to inspect the wound. It was only a minor gash.

“Of course. Stay put.” She returned with another cupful, which he drank gratefully.

Of all people to stumble into her hermitage, it was Eyeball.

Archie. The man whose carelessness, thoughtlessness, callousness had doomed her.

But here she was, sopping up his blood and fetching him drinks as if she owed him, and not the other way round.

A sharp rap on the front door pulled Sibyl out of the swirl of mixed emotions. “Don’t say a word,” she warned him.

He looked at her with weary apprehension, so at least he wasn’t expecting a guest either. Sibyl crossed into the dark antechamber and opened the door a crack.

Bernard stood in the pouring rain. “I only wanted to warn you about him, Your Grace. There’s a man about, and the house has gone looking for him. You may receive unwanted visitors.”

“A man.” Sibyl sighed and gazed upwards, as if she could see through the layers of wood scaffolding and rock into the sky, where there might be an answer written in the clouds for why she was so utterly unlucky. “He’s here.”

She opened the door wider and Bernard peered in, squinting in the dim candlelight.

Sibyl noted a sopping wet hat, wrinkled and misshapen on the floor.

It must’ve fallen when she’d hit Archie on the head.

The clanging feeling of the iron skillet still reverberated in her wrists.

If it had affected her that much, he was probably in real pain.

“You’ve warranted a search party.” She left the door open for Bernard, and strode back to Archie, shaking off any feelings of pity.

All she had to do was remind herself that he had barged in on her. “If you tell anyone about me—”

Archie held his hand up. “I won’t. You have my word.”

Sibyl snorted and rolled her eyes. Archie looked at her as if she were a hog. It was supremely unladylike, yes, but she lived alone. In a hermitage. She was a hermit . One of the advantages was that she could be unladylike.

“I’ll make up a story about slipping, and hitting my head on a tree or a rock, and—”

Sibyl pulled him up and shoved his massive body towards the door. “Get out before anyone finds me.”

“—I’m only saying that you needn’t—”

“Fine. Thank you. Or rather, no thank you for breaking into my solitude. Good night, sir, be on your way, go ruin some other woman’s life.”

His tree-trunk sized torso twisted about. “I have ruined no one’s life, I’ll have you know.”

Sibyl stilled. Did he honestly not know what wreckage he’d left in his wake? She shook her head, returning to her shoving, his hard muscles barely moving under her insistence. “As you would know, I’m sure—now get out.”

“My lord,” Bernard said from the doorway. “Come. I’ll say I found you, with your boots stuck.”

Archie looked over at the man, as if it were his words that bid him go, and not Sibyl’s. “Your Grace.”

Sibyl curtsied briefly, a shallow acknowledgement of the rank they both carried in a world she no longer inhabited.

The door pulled shut and Sibyl stared at the wet trail of muddy prints across her rugs.

Then, not knowing why, she sat down in the chair he’d just occupied, wet and warm from him, and cried.

*

The baroness reached up to touch the back of his head, but he flinched. “Bit tender,” he said, excusing his wince.

“You poor thing,” she cooed, letting her hand land on his bicep instead. He flexed as a matter of habit.

If anything, the minor dust-up of his disappearance seemed to aid in his illicit courtship of the baroness, and her husband was too caught up in the gambling to notice or care.

But Archie found that instead of continuing to lay plans for the wealthy woman, he was stuck on what Sibyl had said to him about ruining someone’s life.

Surely, he had not done so, but when he’d protested, she’d dismissed him.

Last he’d heard, she was in Switzerland teaching at an elite boarding school.

Why was she unmarried anyway? It had not been lost on him how beautiful she’d become.

She had been pretty when she approached her debut, lithe and long of limb the way young women were.

But now, she had the gravitas of a grown woman, the high cheekbones and elegant hands, the sinuous curves that came with ripening.

But it was her wide, wary eyes that made her stunning.

The depth of knowledge and intelligence that made his chest ache.

Even in his bruised state, he’d noticed her as a man would, regretting his childhood promise to Feltenbrough once again.

He’d given in to his desire for Sibby only that once, as she’d begged him to, before leaving England for his Grand Tour.

He hadn’t the money for a proper tour, so he’d gambled and worked and relied on the charity of older women as he traveled the Continent.

When he’d returned, Sibyl was gone, and Feltenbrough was dismissive, so Archie had gone on his merry way.

All these years later, he was still in need of an heiress. Or a baroness for the time being, who might lavish enough upon him for a new tailor’s bill, that he might woo an heiress.

The next morning, waking far too early with a massive headache, Archie was committed to visiting Sibyl, though he would knock this time.

It was that look in her eye when she’d said, go ruin some other woman’s life.

The comment had taken root. Once dressed and braced with a thermos of coffee from the kitchens, he made his excuses that he wanted to range around the property he’d visited in his youth.

Sibyl had looked too thin. Living in the dark hermitage was surely unhealthy; was that not why they no longer hosted a professional hermit?

His youth had been spent envious of all the boys who didn’t have to worry over what they might be saddled with when their fathers died.

Because boys like Feltenbrough spoke with glee over what titles and carriages and horses they might have.

Archie had nothing but debt and a title that ensured he’d be forced to pay.