Page 24 of An Innocent Maid for the Duke
She risked a glance at his face, ready to run or to defend her honour. Not easy when one was already sitting on the bed.
The stern, aloof Duke stared back at her. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said stiffly. ‘My behaviour led you to misconstrue my intentions.’
Misconstrue? She frowned. Not a familiar word.
‘Misunderstand,’ he said as if realising the source of her puzzlement, ‘from the Latinconstruere.’
‘What is to misunderstand?’ she asked, quelling her interest in his explanation.
He tugged at his neckcloth. ‘The position I was offering in my house was not as my...’ He pursed his lips as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. ‘It was as something else.’
An odd feeling pierced her chest. A feeling of hurt. Because she wasn’t good enough or pretty enough or something to be his mistress?
‘You want to hire me as a servant in your house?’ She felt queasy at the thought of making up the fire in his room as he slept, possibly not alone. Of cleaning and polishing his floors as he walked passed her, unseeing with his friends. Of said friends pinching her bottom. They were the sorts of things that had kept her moving from one job to another. It was also the reason why the V&V with its rules and regulations for servants and customers alike had been so perfect.
She shook her head. ‘I—’
‘I want to offer you the position of companion to my grandmother.’
As the words began to make sense, she couldn’t help a bitter laugh. ‘A companion to your grandmother? Is this some sort of jest?’
Even she knew such a position was well above her station. She wasn’t even good enough to be his mistress, for heaven’s sake.
‘She’s lonely. She doesn’t go out much. Normally such a position would fall to an indigent relative.’ He shuddered. ‘The only such females available are not those I would wish under my roof. You won’t find it onerous. Grandmama rarely leaves the house, but she needs someone to help write her letters, fetch and carry and make sure she eats. That sort of thing. My duties mean she is frequently without any company at all. Or any...supervision. My sister is busy with her young daughter, or I would ask her. I honestly think Grandmama would take to you. You are honest, kind and, Mrs Parker informs me, one of the few under her supervision who can read and write well.’
Mrs Parker. Of course, that was how he had discovered her whereabouts. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Still, she couldn’t help but approve of a man who so obviously cared about his grandmother. Cared about his family. How could she not? It was all she had ever longed for in the deepest regions of her heart. A home. A family who loved her.
For one blissful moment acceptance hovered on her tongue, then the enormity of what he was asking struck her. Yes, she could read and write, but she was nowhere near well enough educated to mix with her betters. ‘I’m sorry, it wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t know how.’
He gazed at her from beneath lowered brows, his jaw a determined jut.
This was a man to whom people did not usually say no. She steeled herself for an argument. ‘Truly, I cannot. Your grandmother needs a proper lady. I couldn’t possibly—’
‘Rose,’ he said, his voice deep and dark and delicious as he interrupted her speech. ‘You are every bit as much a lady as one who bears the title. You speak as well as any lady I know, act like a lady and no one would think otherwise unless they knew. I certainly didn’t.’
‘I don’t always speak like a lady. I don’t understand all those long words you use. And what if your grandmother learns I am one big fat lie. Wouldn’t she be angry?’
He shook his head. ‘Who will tell her? We shall say you were previously employed by a distant relative on my mother’s side.’
‘And what of your friends? Will you tell them that, too?’
‘What I do, who I employ, is no one’s business but mine.’
‘How arrogant,’ she muttered. Inwardly, she smiled at finding a use for the word she’d read in the newspaper that morning. When he pressed his lips together, she thought she might finally have annoyed him enough to make him leave her in peace.
But, no, he continued to view her with that intense gaze of his, as if he saw right through her. A look seemed to melt her from the inside out.
‘At least speak with my grandmama before turning it down. Who knows, she may not offer you the position. She can certainly be a bit difficult at times.’
The poor man looked...worried. She almost felt sorry for him. Fortunately, his grandmother would have more sense than he had and she would not look at Rose with such hopefulness, either. ‘And when she turns me away, you’ll leave me in peace? Never speak to me again?’
He inhaled a quick breath. ‘I will never speak to you first. However, should you speak to me, I will respond.’
Like that would ever happen. ‘And I will keep my position at the V&V if she does not decide in my favour?’
‘Naturally.’
Strangely, she had every faith he would keep his word. Which was odd, because she rarely trusted anyone. ‘Very well, then. Let us go and meet your grandmother.’
