Page 9

FIVE

Briar

“Blast it!” I scowled at the ledger before me, as though that would help.

A snort came from the other side of the room.

“I don’t need that sort of attitude from you or my ledger,” I said testily.

Despite telling myself again and again that I wouldn’t allow myself to get annoyed by this sorely annoying man, he’d managed it—and within ten minutes of stepping into the room.

“I can’t help laughing if you’re going to act like such a wildcat,” said the Duke of Markham, yawning on the sofa opposite me.

It hadn’t been my intention to talk about the problem aloud. The Duke of Markham was here, in my words, to work. In his head, that obviously meant look fine as hell and lounge about with a duplicate of the ledger in his lap.

Closed.

I focused on the offending line of numbers. The whole thing was a mess. Despite there not being a thing wrong with any of the calculations, it was spouting gibberish. Half of it didn’t add up properly, and what was left was nonsense.

Ugh, it was so frustrating. I didn’t want to go to any of my advisors about it—they’d just tell me not to worry about it and get an accountant to do it. I was determined.

I’d fix it myself.

The Duke of Markham sighed with mock seriousness as he rose to his feet. “What’s the problem then?”

I clutched the ledger closer to me protectively, on instinct, as the Duke of Markham meandered around the room. “Nothing.”

“Liar.”

Flushed cheeks were a habit around this man, I was discovering. But that didn’t mean I was going to give up so easily. “It’s just a set of calculations.”

“Ouch. Looks pretty bad,” said the Duke of Markham airily as he walked behind me.

I would not give him the satisfaction of turning round. That’s what he wanted. Well, I was going to stay calm and?—

“There it is.”

I blinked. Somehow the Duke of Markham had lowered down onto his haunches behind me, and was peering over my shoulder.

At my breasts.

Well, no surprises there. What was surprising was that he seemed to be looking beyond my breasts at the ledger before me.

“Where what is?” I said testily. Ledgers did that to you.

The Duke of Markham jabbed a finger at the paper. “There. The miscalculation—you’ve derived a percentage point over a two year annum?—”

“Which is precisely what I meant to do!” I said hotly.

Who did this man think he was? I hadn’t asked him to look at the ledger. He hadn’t even given me the courtesy of reading the damned report I’d?—

“And in that damned report of yours,” the Duke of Markham said, once again giving the most disconcerting impression of being able to read my mind, “you said you’d be selling in francs. Not pounds.”

I blinked. My stomach lurched uncomfortably as I stared at the ledger.

Damn, he was right. It had been staring me right in the face, the problem I hadn’t been able to unpick for days. A simple currency mistake, and the whole thing could be solved.

Heart in my mouth, I opened up my notebook and made a few calculations based on the most recent exchange rate that my man of business had informed me of. My pen—my Herbin fountain pen—hesitated for a moment. But everything had adjusted. All the columns made sense now.

Damn.

I stared up at the man who was far too close for me to concentrate. I cleared my throat. As though that would help.

“How on earth did you do that?” I said quietly.

I’d expected the Duke of Markham to make an off-hand remark. Something cutting about my inability to see something obvious, perhaps, or laugh about how he was one of the greatest untapped minds in London.

Something that would align with the Duke of Markham I was pretty certain I knew.

Instead, the tall man shifted back onto the sofa opposite me. Alost as though he was…uncomfortable?

The Duke of Markham?

“I just did,” he said quietly.

But I shook my head. “I'm not going to let you off that easily. You just spotted something that not a single one of my advisors would manage to—and with just a cursory glance over my shoulder.”

“It wasn’t what I’d started looking at.”

Though I knew my cheeks would redden, I did not drop my gaze from his. “You can stare at my breasts all you want. You spotted the mistake.”

The Duke of Markham shrugged, his muscles knotting then loosening underneath the shirt as he stepped out from behind me, and to the sofa opposite. “I saw an error, big deal.”

“Lord Markham,” I said quietly. “What—may I call you by your first name?”

His eyes glittered. “I rather wish you would.”

Bother. Now I hardly knew what to do. “What aren’t you telling me?”

He caught my gaze, all dark languid eyes and teasing smile. And as I held it, longer and longer, the smile disappeared but the intensity of his gaze remained.

There was something about this man. Something deeper than I had seen, something perhaps the Duke of Markham rarely allowed anyone to see. What could it be? What could be so shameful, or so strange, that no one could know?

“You’re not the—doesn’t matter,” he said quietly.

I leaned forward, hardly caring that his eyes flickered—as expected—to my breasts for just a moment before returning to my face. “What were you going to say?”

The Duke of Markham looked up at the ceiling while blowing out a long breath. “Lady Briar, just leave it, won’t you?”

Leave it? Like hell. There was a deeper layer to Peregrine, the Duke of Markham than I had thought, and I wasn’t going to stop until I’d worked it out. Worked him out.

“What was it you called yourself when we first met? A rogue?” I grinned. “Perhaps you were right. Perhaps?—”

“You’re not the only one who’s constantly called foolish,” the Duke of Markham said in a rush.

I blinked. That was definitely not what I thought he was going to say. “I beg your pardon?”

He sighed, obviously regretting letting just those few words slip out.

“What you said the other day—that people just think you’re stupid.

Well you’re not alone, you know? My friend Kineallen, he was the leader of our little club—the Gambling Dukes.

I'm the youngest of the four of us. The youngest. My friend Georgiana, even Lilah, the Dowager Duchess of Kineallen—all my friends.

They treat me like I'm a complete idiot.”

The Duke of Markham, an idiot? I couldn’t think of anything less true. The man had worked me out in a heartbeat and played me like a fiddle.

A knowing smile slipped over his lips as he leaned an arm over the back of the sofa. “You don’t believe me.”

“You just spotted a problem over my shoulder in a report you haven’t even read yet,” I pointed out. “You’re a certified genius.”

“And what did I use those brains for, Lady Briar?” the Duke of Markham almost spat the words, but the hatred wasn’t directed at me.

If I were to guess, I’d say it was all self-inflicted.

“I stole from my family. The family I had made—indeed, Lilah was…is my sister-in-law. My late wife was her sister.”

I swallowed. Late wife. I had not known he was married—but of course he had been, one only had to look at the man to know that he had been wed. The way he had touched me…

So he had loved and lost—or at the very least, lost.

I’d thrown those words at him last week before his townhouse, calling him a thief, expecting him to put up a fight, laugh it off. At the time, he had.

Turned out, those words had gone deeper than I’d thought.

“I used my genius, as you call it, to make sure my friends had no idea I was raking off the top,” said the Duke of Markham bitterly. “How’s that for genius?”

Though I wanted to speak, I wasn’t entirely sure what to say. How did you go about comforting someone who had made one of the worst decisions of his life—and got caught?

“You could have used your brains for anything,” I said, the words slipping from my mouth almost without conscious thought. “So why did you do it?”

His dark eyes bored into me, and I knew there was an answer deep beneath them. It just wasn’t one the Duke of Markham was willing to share with me, and I had to respect that, even if it was irritating.

This was a man, it appeared, who didn’t share much. He hadn’t mentioned a mistress, and I knew there was no longer a wife. Try as you might, you just can’t keep that sort of thing out of Society. A quick question to Georgiana had confirmed the truth.

So what was his approach to life? Meaninglessly bedding women all the time?

My heart contracted painfully. Was I just one of many? Had he already taken a mistress since we?—

“I…I had my reasons,” the Duke of Markham said evasively, dropping his gaze to his hands. “Trust me, Lady Briar, you don’t want to know.”

I’d leaned forward before I’d even thought about it. “You presume a lot about me, you know.”

He snorted. “I’ve been right every time.”

True. Not that I was about to admit to as much. “Look?—”

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” said the Duke of Markham with a breezy air as he rose to his feet. “I'm not an employee, Lady Briar, I'm here because you’re forcing me to.”

I flinched. That was harsh, even for him.

“I mean—I didn’t mean, oh hell, you know what I mean,” he said wearily, tugging a hand through his hair. “I just meant I didn’t come here for a lecture. If I wanted that, I’d go to one of my friends.”

“And I,” I said softly, “am not one of your friends.”

I shivered as the Duke of Markham looked at me. Oh, no. Friends did not look at other friends like that. Like he wanted to unwrap me like a present, then touch?—

“Definitely not,” the Duke of Markham said darkly, before sighing and dropping back onto the leather sofa. “Fine. Throw me that ledger.”

My fingers tightened automatically around the ledger. “Why? What are you?—”

“I'm going to do something I haven’t done in a long time,” he said, holding out a hand and not meeting my eye.

My grip didn’t loosen. “And that is?”

The Duke of Markham sighed heavily. “Work.”

Markham

I’d surprised her.

That was rare. Not surprising Lady Briar—she clearly had such a bad image of me, it wouldn’t take much to redeem me even a little in her eyes.