Page 25 of An Innocent Maid for the Duke
He gave her a startled glance. Clearly he had not expected her to give in so quickly. She smiled sweetly. ‘Is something wrong?’ Like the drab gown she was wearing? Or her rough work-reddened hands?
‘Not a thing,’ he said more cheerfully than she expected. ‘While we walk, I will explain a few of the niceties of meeting a duchess, if I may.’ He gave her a piercing blue stare. ‘You do plan to give this a good shot, I hope.’
Fair was fair. ‘I will do my best.’
‘That is all I ask.’
As he escorted her down the stairs and out into the street, she had the feeling he was smirking as if he thought he had won, though his face showed nothing. Hah. One look at her servant’s garb and his grandmother would show her the door. And that would be that. Life would go back to the way it was before.
The thought gave her a queer little pang in the centre of her chest.
* * *
At the sight of his own front door, Jake breathed a sigh of relief. All during their long walk, he’d half-expected Rose to bolt again. If she had, he had no doubt she’d do everything in her power to make sure he didn’t find her a second time. And then how would he ever be free of his irrational worry for her safety.
He still couldn’t stop thinking about what might have happened to her if some other man had caught her waltzing around in that particular dress with that particular look on her face.
It was a sight no red-blooded male could have resisted. He certainly hadn’t had the strength of will. He couldn’t help thinking about what had almost happened to her athishands because he had completely misread who and what she was. He’d not had a clue she was an employee.
It had been pounded into his head by his father from an early age that a gentleman never exploited a servant beneath his roof. It wasn’t done. Yet he’d come far closer to breaking that rule than he liked to think.
Of course, he could have ignored her once he did know and simply thanked his stars for a lucky escape. He would have, too, if she hadn’t seemed so damnably vulnerable.
Simply watching the sensual movement of her body while she was washing the floor had heated his blood to boiling. Sooner or later one of the coxcombs who haunted Vitium et Virtus would have spotted her and, rules or no rules, taken advantage.
Jake could not abide the thought. The tightness the idea caused in his gut was not jealousy, could not possibly be jealousy. It was merely the need to protect a good but naive young woman from harm.
When he’d gone to her lodging, he hadn’t quite known what he intended, but the moment he’d seen the bright scrap of fabric fluttering at the window of her shabby room, along with the worn bit of rug so neatly patched on the floor, every instinct within him rebelled at leaving her there.
He’d felt so strongly he’d ridden roughshod over her objections. Was still riding roughshod, truth to tell.
When a footman opened the door at the ducal mansion, Jake stifled a grin at the way the man hid his surprise at the sight of Rose who was also in for a surprise.
While his grandmother could be starchy, she had never considered herself above her fellow man—or woman. She was the direct descendent of a yeoman long-bowman who fought at Crécy, as she would tell anyone who cared to listen.
He waved the butler away when he stepped forward to take his hat and gloves and instead deposited them on the hall table. The less intimidating things seemed, the more likely he was to win this round.
Rose, who had no outer raiment to remove, kept her gaze fixed straight ahead, her chin up in brave defiance.
Yet tension stiffened her shoulders and a twinge of guilt at her discomfort assaulted Jake’s conscience. He pushed the notion aside. After all, she was the one who had issued the final challenge.
‘Her Grace?’ Jake enquired of the butler.
‘In her withdrawing room, Your Grace,’ the butler said.
Jake winged an elbow at Rose. ‘Shall we, Miss Nightingale?’
‘We shall,’ she said, her voice little more than a whisper and tinged with dread.
Damn it all. She was far more nervous than she appeared on the outside. ‘She doesn’t bite, you know.’
She didn’t relax.
They climbed the stairs up to the first floor and into the east wing. His rooms were in the west wing. Or rather that was where he still kept his things. The ducal chambers were also located here in the east wing. He never used them.
The first time he had entered his father’s bedroom he had felt like an intruder. Or an impostor. Or perhaps a very bad actor. The underserving villain in a play.
He opened the door to his grandmother’s suite and ushered Rose in with a light touch to the small of her back.
