Minerva inwardly frowned; she hadn’t picked up any connection between Phillip and Susannah-indeed, she’d thought Susannah’s interest lay elsewhere.
With a widening smile, Susannah waggled her fingers at Royce, then left him.
Royce watched her go, and inwardly shrugged; after his years in social exile, she was right-he couldn’t know her adult tastes that well.
He was about to look around for his chatelaine when Margaret raised her voice, directing everyone back to the drawing room. He would have preferred to adjourn elsewhere, but seeing Minerva go ahead on Rohan’s arm, fell in at the rear of the crowd.
The gathering in the drawing room was as uneventful as usual; rather than remind his chatelaine of his intentions, he bided his time, chatted with his cousins, and kept an eye on her from across the room.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t lulled. She clung to the group of females, Susannah included, who had rooms in the east wing; she left with them, deftly steering them up the wide main stairs-he didn’t bother following. He would have no chance of laying hands on her and diverting her to his room before she reached hers.
He retired soon after, considering his choices as he climbed the main stairs. He could join Minerva in her bed. She’d fuss, and try to order him out, shoo him away, but once he had her in his arms, all denial would be over.
There was a certain attraction in such a direct approach. However…he walked straight to his apartments, opened the door, went in, and closed it firmly behind him.
He walked into his bedroom, and looked at his bed.
And accepted that this time, she’d triumphed.
She’d won the battle, but it was hardly the war.
Walking into his dressing room, he shrugged out of his coat, and set it aside. Slowly undressing, he turned the reason he hadn’t gone to her room over in his mind.
In London, he’d always gone to his lovers’ beds. He’d never brought any lady home to his. Minerva, however, he wanted in his bed and no other.
Naked, he walked back into the bedroom, looked again at the bed. Yes, that bed. Lifting the luxurious covers, he slid between the silken sheets, lay back on the plump pillows, and stared up at the canopied ceiling.
This was where he wanted her, lying beside him, sunk in the down mattress within easy reach.
That was his vision, his goal, his dream.
Despite lust, desire, and all such weaknesses of the flesh, he wasn’t going to settle for anything less.
Eleven
B y lunchtime the next day, Royce was hot, flushed, sweaty-and leaning against a railing with a group of men, all estate workers, in a field on one of his tenant farms, sharing ale, bread, and bits of crumbly local cheese.
The men around him had almost forgotten he was their duke; he’d almost forgotten, too. With his hacking jacket and neckerchief off, and his sleeves rolled up, his dark hair and all else covered in the inevitable detritus of cutting and baling hay, except for the quality of his clothes and his features, he could have been a farmer who’d stopped by to help.
Instead, he was the ducal landowner lured there by his chatelaine.
He’d wondered what she’d planned for the day-what her chosen path to avoid him would be. He’d missed her at breakfast, but while pacing before the study window dictating to Handley, he’d seen her riding off across his fields.
After finishing with Handley, he’d followed.
Of course, she hadn’t expected him to turn up at the haymaking, let alone that their day would evolve as it had, due to the impulse that had prompted him to offer to help.
He’d cut hay before, long ago, sneaking out of the castle and, against his father’s wishes, rubbing shoulders with the estate workers. His father had been a stickler for protocol and propriety, but he had never felt the need to adhere to and insist on every single privilege at every turn.
Some of the men remembered him from long ago, and hadn’t been backward over accepting his help-tendered, he had to admit, more to see how Minerva would react than anything else.
She’d met his gaze, then turned and offered to help the women. They’d worked alongside those they normally directed for the past several hours, he swinging a scythe in line with the men, she following with the women, gathering the hay and deftly binding it into sheaves.
What had started out as an unvoiced contest had evolved into a day of exhausting but satisfying labor. He’d never worked so physically hard in his life, but he, and his body, felt unexpectedly relaxed.
From where the women had gathered, Minerva watched Royce leaning against the fence enclosing the field they’d almost finished cutting, watched his throat-the long column bare-work as he swallowed ale from a mug topped up from a jug the men were passing around-and quietly marveled.
He was so unlike his father on so many different counts.
He stood among the men, sharing the camaraderie induced by joint labor, not the least concerned that his shirt, damp with honest sweat, clung to his chest, outlining the powerful muscles of his torso, flexing and shifting with every movement. His dark hair was not just rumpled, but dusty, his skin faintly flushed from the sun. His long, lean legs, encased in boots his precious Trevor would no doubt screech over later, were stretched out before him; as she watched he shifted, cocking one hard thigh against the fence behind.
With no coat and his shirt sticking, she could see his body clearly-could better appreciate the broad shoulders, the wide, sleekly muscled chest tapering to narrow hips and those long, strong, rider’s legs.
To any female this side of the grave, the view was mouthwatering; she wasn’t the only one drinking it in. With all ducal trappings stripped away, leaving only the man beneath, he looked more overtly earthily sexual than she’d ever seen him.
She forced herself to look away, to give her attention to the women and keep it there, pretending to be absorbed in their conversation. The quick glances the younger women cast toward the fence broke her resolve-and she found herself looking his way again. Wondering when he’d learned to use a scythe; his effortless swing wasn’t something anyone just picked up.
Their lunch consumed, the men were talking to him avidly; from their gestures and his, he was engaging in one of his disguised interrogations.
If anything, she’d increased her assessment of his intelligence, and his ability to garner and catalog facts-and that assessment had already been high. While both were attributes he’d always had, they’d developed significantly over the years.
In contrast, his ability with children was a skill she never would have guessed he possessed. He certainly hadn’t inherited it; his parents had adhered to the maxim that children should be seen and not heard. Yet when they’d broken for refreshment earlier, Royce had noticed the workers’ children eyeing Sword, not so patiently waiting tied to a nearby post; waving aside their mothers’ recommendations not to let them pester him, he’d walked over and let the children do precisely that.
He’d answered their questions with a patience she found remarkable in him, then, to everyone’s surprise, he’d mounted and, one by one, taken each child up before him for a short walk.
The children now thought him a god. Their parents’ estimation wasn’t far behind.
She knew he’d had little to nothing to do with children; even those of his friends were yet babes in arms. Where he’d learned how to deal with youngsters, let alone acquired the requisite patience, a trait he in the main possessed very little of, she couldn’t imagine.
Realizing she was still staring, broodingly, at him, she forced her gaze back to the women surrounding her. But their talk couldn’t hold her interest, couldn’t draw her senses, or even her mind, from him.