Page 24 of The Scottish Duke
“I’m not trying to tell you anything, except that you’re not welcome here. Please leave.”
“I don’t believe you. It can’t be mine.”
“I didn’t say it was,” she said, giving him that look again. As if he’d marched into her spartan room with outrageous demands. “Please leave. Take yourself off. Go back to Blackhall. Forget me. Forget you and I ever met.”
“We engaged in intercourse, MissGordon, but we never actually met.”
She stared at a spot to his left. It took him a moment to realize she was trying to calm herself. The frantic beat of her pulse at her neck was clue enough that she was agitated.
“Then there’s no reason for us to do so now,” she finally said. “I shall pretend ignorance of your existence and I pray you’ll do the same. Please leave. Get out of my life, Your Grace.”
The last was said between clenched teeth.
He heard a noise and glanced at the door, certain that the slattern of a landlady was listening to them.
“What do you want? Money?”
Her eyes widened. “Is that all you can think, Your Grace? That people want something from you? I would think that would be a terrible way to live, always expecting someone to treat you abominably.”
“That isn’t an answer, MissGordon.”
“What do I want? For you to leave. For you never to return. For you to forget that night as I have. For you to scrub your mind free of my name, my face, and anything else about me.”
She’d called him a mouse. He’d never been able to forget the insult. A prancing mouse who’d been afraid someone would step on his tail.
“You wrote my mother.”
“I did not.”
The words were too emphatic to be a lie.
“Then who did?”
“It was a mistake. Accept that and forget it, Your Grace. Go away.”
Even if he was able to forget her, there was the matter of his mother. She was not going to ignore Lorna’s presence.
She stood quickly, grabbed the back of the chair and steadied herself.
“Please, leave. I want nothing from you but your absence.”
He studied her and had the curious thought that she was telling the truth.
Her heart was thumping loud enough to wake her child, who used his heels to punch at her from the inside. She pressed a hand reassuringly against her stomach and received another kick.
Sitting again, she stared up at the duke.
She’d never seen him anything but perfectly turned out. Never a hint of stubble. A wrinkle wouldn’t dare appear on his person. Now he commanded her room in his severe black suit. His black hair was brushed back from a face that had always been clean shaven. His blue-green eyes sparkled with annoyance.
If she’d had watercolors she would have tried to replicate the exact color of his eyes, but all she had were her charcoal pencils. Her imagination always furnished the exact hue, however. Even as an old, old woman she’d be able to remember the Duke of Kinross.
He stood motionless, studying her. Even the curtains on the window stilled, the cold draft subdued by his presence.
Did he expect her to swoon because he was in her cold, dark room? Well, she wasn’t. He hadn’t been invited here. She could live for an eon without seeing him again.
Why was he staring at her belly? Hadn’t he ever seen a woman carrying a child before today? No doubt the women of his acquaintance hid themselves away in the latter months of their pregnancy.
One thing she did know: why she’d been so fascinated with him. He hadn’t lost any of his good looks in the intervening months. If anything, he was more handsome than she remembered.
