“Fifteen,” he said bluntly.
Fifteen. There had been fifteen before her? A mocking glint lit his eyes. Did he revel at having shocked her? “Yes, well, I have it on authority of the Earl of Lavery, my employer, that as long as I desire the post, it is mine. So...” She rested the broom briefly against the wall and set her supplies down on a bronze base table stacked with books.
“You’d disregard my wishes?” he seethed, bringing her head up. At the desperate glimmer in his eyes, understanding slammed into her.
How many soldiers had she known, not unlike Captain Rayne, who’d lost a part of their souls and been forever changed by war? But witnessing the results of her father’s betrayal up close, made his crime all the more real. Now she stood here, defiant of Captain Rayne’s wishes, robbing him of a desperately desired self-control, when he’d already had so much taken from him. Her throat constricted and, reflexively, she gripped the cloth in her hand. She could never undo her father’s sins, but mayhap she could make atonement for the hell he had wrought for this one man.
“Well?” he snapped.
“I will leave,” she said quietly, her voice surprisingly steady. His mouth fell agape. “But you must do something first.”
He eyed her warily. “Are you threatening me, Mrs. Nelson?”
“No.” Eve shook her head. She was helping him—an offer this proud, commanding man would rebuff ten times to Sunday. “I’m bribing you. Entirely different.” In a bid to dull the thick tension blanketing the room, she waggled her eyebrows.
The gentleman jerked his chin up. “I’m listening.” Gone was the earlier vitriol in his sharp tones. In its place was a reluctant curiosity.
Eve felt a sliver of satisfaction. Did the gentleman realize he’d let his guard slip? She’d wager her security with this very post that few had cracked his powerfully erected barriers.
“The day you step outside Castle Rayne, I’ll leave. In the meantime...” Her promise would see her sacked without work and, yet, some good would come from it. Eve drew out her cloth and returned her attention to that table.
“You’re mad,” he called out.
Yes, with the nightmares that came to her in the dark of night, one could say that. Refusing to rise to his bait, she fixed on her task. Curiosity pulled at her and she squinted in the dark, attempting to bring the titles of the books on the table into focus. What books did a man such as Captain Rayne, shut away in his chambers, snarling to keep the world out, in fact, read? She dusted her cloth along the first cover. Cassius Dio: Roman History. Setting it aside, Eve sifted through the small leather volumes. Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus: Life of Antony. Strabo: The Geography. Flavius Josephus: Antiquities of—
“You’re here to clean, not snoop.” That angry voice hurled from the bed and she shrieked, dropping the book. It landed with a loud thwack. “And then get. Out.”
Get out. With casual movements, Eve grabbed the broom and started over to the shards of glass at his bedside. “I could read to you,” she offered. “You enjoy the ancient classics?”
“I enjoy being alone,” he said bluntly as she set the broom to motion, gathering all the pieces into a small pile.
Eve snorted. “If you so desired to be alone, then you shouldn’t have made a mess of your chambers.” She paused and looked up. “Unless, mayhap, you secretly wish for companionship?” Did she speak of him in this moment or of her own selfish yearning for that precious gift? Their gazes collided and the air lodged in her chest.
His eyes, the piercing pale green the soft hue of a peridot she’d once seen captured in a painting of Cleopatra hung in the Louvre , held her riveted. That stone she’d long ago admired on a painting alone; light and hopeful amidst the darkness unfolding in Europe. And now, she noted details she’d been too anxious to take in before; his harshly chiseled cheeks marred by several days’ worth of beard. It leant him a rugged beauty. His aquiline nose. A hard, square jaw befitting a man of noble roots and power. Even the single, jagged scar, down the left side of his cheek, enhanced the primitive rawness to him. He really was—
“Did you have a good look?” he whispered. With cheeks afire, Eve returned her attention to her efforts.
Her earlier erroneous opinion had proved her wrong. One gentleman could be difficult. “Hardly,” she said, proud of her steady, slightly bored tone as she set the broom into motion once more.
There was a pregnant pause. “Hardly?”
A smile pulled at her lips. No doubt, a specimen of masculine beauty who had a face better suited to one of those works of art she’d long ago admired in her travels would be accustomed to ladies fawning. She’d never been the fawning sort. Eve hesitated and then looked up. “With that scruff on your face and lion-like mane, it’s nearly impossible to make out anything other than your scowl.” It was a blatant lie. Only a blind woman would fail to appreciate such male perfection in even this darkened space. “If you’d like me to trim your hair and shave you, I’ve experience—”
“No,” he clipped.
Only there was a brief hesitancy there that roused her interest. Did he wish to be free of the hair that hung past his shoulders and free of this room? Tamping down questions she had no place asking, nor knowing the answers to, Eve brushed all the shards into the dust bin. With her every movement, she felt his gaze following her. Unnerved by that piercing scrutiny, she dropped to her haunches and carefully picked up the large pieces, adding them to the bin. Captain Rayne’s eyes revealed a man haunted and hunted by things he’d seen and suffered.
Having witnessed the aftermath of those battles waged, and fighting her own demons for it, she well knew the hell visiting him. All battle-hardened people dealt with their horrors in different ways. Some donned a false smile, while aching inside. Others retreated.
As Captain Rayne had.
Coming to her feet, Eve set aside the broom and fetched a cloth. Returning to the gentleman’s bedside, she proceeded to dust the mahogany nightstand. She paused, her gaze going to the copy of Plutarch’s Life of Caesar. She brushed her palm over the title. What an odd book for a man scarred by war to keep at his bedside; a work documenting the grandest feats and triumphs of the great Roman emperor.
“You said you were here to clean.” His deep voice rumbled in the quiet.
She jumped and the cloth slipped from her fingers, sailing to the surface in a silent heap. Eve forced her eyes to his, once more, and another bolt of awareness ran through her at the intensity of his focus. “No,” she said calmly. “You said I was here to clean. I said I’m here as a maid of all things, including a companion.”
Did she imagine the ghost of a smile pulling at the corners of his hard lips? Of course, a man such as him, like so many other soldiers she’d known through the years, had long ago forgotten how to smile. That same age-old hungering to drive back that bleak desolateness filled her.
“I’ve no need or desire for company,” he said belatedly, that telltale delay proving him a liar.
“I don’t believe that,” she countered as she knelt at his bedside and dusted his nightstand drawer. Small flecks danced in the air and she wrinkled her nose to stave off a sneeze.
“You presume to know what I need or desire after just one meeting?” he challenged, his voice a scratchy demand.
She’d seen the hell war wrought on a person. It turned them into wary, cautious, and guarded figures who’d keep the world out—in different ways. “I’ve known you but one day and you’ve stated your desire to be alone no fewer than four times.” Eve paused and balanced her weight on knees. “And that tells me you have need for the right company.”
A rusty chuckle rumbled in his chest. “That is presumptuous of you, love.”
Her heart skittered a beat. It was, of course, all manner of silliness to respond to that flippant address. And yet, gentlemen had treated her with deference for her status as their commander’s daughter or as a sister-like figure. Not a single one had ever wrapped an endearment in a husky caress as this stranger had. Would that be the case if he gleaned her true identity? “You’ve sent everyone away,” she said, when she trusted herself to speak.