Lady Powlis glanced up. “What kind of flower is it, Harriet?”
“A demonic variety by the look,” Griffin answered, squinting one eye.
Harriet smiled, using her elbow to delicately dislodge the manly hand that had settled on the arm of her chair. The hand came right back. “It’s a new breed from China,” she said, adding tuberous roots to the rectangular forehead. “They’re grown in hothouses all over England.”
Griffin blinked. “That looks like me when I get up in the morning.”
His aunt shook her head in despair. “This is why you aren’t married.”
“Not because insanity runs in the family?”
Lady Powlis gave Harriet a distressed look. “Do you understand now what I must live with? Go and fetch our cloaks, dear. If we have time, we will see about your new wardrobe. Perhaps we can find something prettier to entice Edlyn. She can’t stay in mourning forever.”
She rose. “Yes, madam.”
“Oh, what I endure,” her ladyship said with a moan, closing her eyes.
The duke made a face. “And what you inflict.”
Harriet curtsied, slipping her scribbled paper into her pocket before she escaped the combative atmosphere. She had no intention of leaving behind evidence that would incriminate her. If the duke recognized himself in her drawing, he was more perceptive than she’d realized. And if he never found the perfect wife he deserved, she doubted it would be for lack of willing candidates.
Griffin stared at the closed door until his aunt’s voice intruded on his silence. What kind of fiend had Primrose employed? What anarchy had he sanctioned under his authority? It was bad enough that Harriet’s presence in the house virtually guaranteed he would never enjoy a good night’s sleep again. But that she felt at liberty to mock him with a ridiculous drawing-well, it appeared he would have to put down his foot before she became the devil’s apprentice.
“Do you find her attractive, Griff?”
He pivoted and gave her a blank stare.
“Attractive, Griff. I asked an ordinary enough question. Do you think my companion is appealing to the eye, with her vivid coloring and pretty face?”
“I do understand what attractive means, Aunt Encyclopedia of Unsolicited Knowledge.”
“Dear me. I’m beginning to think you are the one who should become a student in the academy. Your manners have lapsed appallingly since… well, since you’ve assumed responsibility for your own life.”
“Yes. Yes, I know. You remind me every chance you get, no matter where we are or who else might overhear.”
“You will not forget that at the end of the week we are taking your betrothed to the park? And that two nights later the marquess is hosting another ball in our honor? This is to be a more intimate affair.” He groaned.
“Or that Edlyn has been invited to a breakfast party, which naturally we shall chaperone?”
“Naturally.” He edged toward the door.
“With my attractive companion.”
“Am I too old to run away from home?” he asked under his breath.
“Dear Griff, I know I’m a bit of a bother, but please give London a chance.”
And life, she might as well have said.
Chapter Twelve
What is this world’s delight? Lightning, that mocks the night.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The Flower That Smiles Today
Harriet would later look back upon her first day in Lady Powlis’s employment as less of a trial period than as a sort of honeymoon. And a shorter-lived honeymoon no woman in English history had yet to endure, unless it had been her misfortune to marry Henry the Bride-Beheading King. For a few blissful hours, Harriet convinced herself that she had transcended this miserable world and gone directly to heaven. Was there a better position in London? Could anyone hope for a more benevolent employer?
Lady Powlis demanded so little of her that she felt guilty for accepting the generous wage she was given in advance. All the lonely old woman asked was that Harriet accompany her on a brisk drive in the duke’s curricle to the dressmaker’s and describe her experiences as a young actress. As her experiences treading the boards had been brief and marked with infamy, and her employer appeared in need of immediate entertainment, Harriet decided it would be a forgivable deceit to embellish what little of that time she could recall. Unfortunately, Lady Powlis sensed omissions in Harriet’s tale and begged for more.
Only a fool gave everything away at the first offer.
“I will never divulge your secrets, Harriet.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.”
“I will be patient, though.”
Patient Lady Powlis might be. Unfortunately, by the end of that first day, Harriet had learned that her employer was also manipulative, tyrannical, and easily bored. No wonder the duke had warned her that she wouldn’t last before he closed himself up in his library.
For the next four days, Harriet wore her feet off running up and down the stairs to answer the beldame’s every request. Tea, milk, biscuits, magazines. Being of sound body, Harriet might not have bemoaned the exercise had, in between those random demands, the duke not emerged from his lair to frown at her in his forbidding way.
As if it were her fault that his aunt expected a companion to provide services as a circus entertainer, confidante, and fashion consultant at the same time. Not that Harriet knew a thing about the latest in French costumes and whether her employer should purchase French knickers or not.
“Must you thump about the house at all hours?” he finally demanded, dark and moody again, his cravat rakishly askew and his gaze following her every move.
She curtsied at his shadow. If he intended to act as though he’d never kissed her, well, so would she. He wouldn’t know by her professional demeanor that she thought about it morning, noon, and especially at night, when she fell, bone-dead, into bed. He’d never guess by her impervious air that she yearned to feel that wicked mouth of his against hers again or that, even when he was in a mood, his melodious voice raised warm shivers on her skin. She knew what a man wanted from a woman in her position. Let him want. Let them both want. And let them pretend to completely ignore each other. It was much better this way. He stayed in his room. She stayed out of his way.
“Well?” he said, lifting his brow.
She bit her lip. “Your grace must forgive me. My mind was wandering. Did you ask me something?”
“Yes, I did,” he said with a vexed scowl. “Why is it that every time I sit down at my desk, I am distracted by your banging up and down the stairs? I cannot write a letter, open an account book, or close my eyes for a moment without hearing you.”
“Unless his grace knows of another way to placate her ladyship, I have no choice but to obey her.”
He pushed off the wall. Harriet held her breath. All her senses went on the alert. What was he going to do? He had that intense expression on his face again, as if he were about to… whisper a secret in her ear. Or something else. She stood, immobilized, trapped in a delicious tension. Touch me again. Wrap me in thunder.
And then, like the voice of an enraged goddess roaring down from Olympus when another god was threatening her favorite mortal, Lady Powlis shouted, “Hurry up, Harriet! It looks to be a rainy day all of a sudden. We’ll be soaked before we get in the carriage.”
“She’ll drive us both mad, I swear it,” the duke said, his eyes burning into hers. “No companion has ever stayed for long.”
Harriet sighed, her shoulders drooping. “I believe you.”
He stared at her. “Do you?”
“Yes, but I cannot help wondering-”
“Go on.”
She frowned, shaking off her fatigue. “No. It is not my place to wonder.”
“But it is my place to make you finish what you started to say. In fact, you may not go upstairs until you do. And then she’ll bellow at both of us.”