Page 21 of A Duchess Bound
It was vexing either way. Gerard grimaced and raked his hand through his hair.
There was a knock at his study door. “Enter,” Gerard said, not looking up from the accursed ledger.
Maybe the sum was meant to be forty-nine, actually?
“You have a visitor, Your Grace.”
Gerard’s head snapped up. Nathanial Halls, Gerard’s butler, stood in the doorway. Gerard had never been particularly fond of Nathanial, but then, Gerard seldom felt genuinely fond of anyone. He kept Nathanial on his staff because the man possessed uncommon tact and dutifully ignored every conquest that Gerard brought into his townhouse.
“Who is it?”
The only person who might visit him was Pontoun, but he would simply enter. He did not wait for Nathanial to offer any formal introduction.
Gerard’s breath caught in his throat, and he craned his neck, vainly attempting to see around Nathanial’s broad figure. He hoped it washer, but he doubted it. A respectable spinster like Lady Dorothy would never come unaccompanied to his estate and certainly not so quickly.
“It is Lady Dorothy,” Nathanial said.
The words were like a spell. Gerard stood, eyes wildly and eagerly fixed upon the door. “I will see her at once.”
Nathanial bowed and stepped aside. After a heartbeat, Lady Dorothy entered. Gerard inhaled sharply. She wore a pale blue gown that matched her icy demeanor and brought out the roses over her cheeks. Beautiful.
He dared to consider the possibility that she had dressed like this with the thought ofhimseeing her. Gerard shivered. Ifhehad dressed Lady Dorothy, of course, she would be clad far more indecently than that.
She curtsied. “Your Grace.”
“My lady.” Gerard waved a dismissive hand. “Nathanial, you may go.”
A respectable butler would have likely protested or at least given him a warning look, for Gerard was now left alone with a lady. That was the height of impropriety. Nathanial simply did not care, though. All ladies were the same to him—fleeting occupants in Gerard’s townhouse and often the subject of his lord’s desires.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Gerard drawled, clasping his hands behind his back.
Color spread across Lady Dorothy’s face, and her fingers twitched, as though she was thinking of striking him. She looked as though she was torn between fighting him or doing something else entirely. Gerard could not quite say ifsomething elsemight involve the lady atop his desk with her skirts hitched past her waist, but he hoped it would.
He licked his lips. “No answer, my lady?” he asked, slowly stepping from behind his desk. “How disappointing. I seem to recall you being so articulate during our last encounter.”
Gerard crossed the room, giving her a wide berth. He quite enjoyed the sight of her standing on his rug, her eyes wary and her back straight. If she were his, he would make her stand there for no reason other than that it pleased him. A shiver traced the path of his spine.
“Brandy, my lady?” he asked, gesturing to the decanter.
“No thank you.”
“Ah, she speaks.”
Lady Dorothy smiled thinly. “I have come to speak to you about my sister.”
Hersister? Gerard might have scowled, but he remembered that he was playing a game. Instead, he arched an eyebrow and feigned a look of utter innocence. “I should think it is obvious, my lady.”
Lady Dorothy took a step forward. “I will not let you ruin my sister. I have made it abundantly apparent?—”
He laughed, and she stopped speaking with a vexed look. “My lady, I have no intention of ruining your sister. On the contrary, my designs for Lady Bridget are to bed her sister. That might harm her reputation a little, I will concede, but it would be a blow from which she would soon recover.”
Lady Dorothy blushed furiously, the color sweeping over her so suddenly that it took Gerard’s breath away. It was not a pretty sight, certainly nothing that the poets would write about. She looked nearly feverish.
But theforceof it! The passion of her emotions took his breath away and left him aching with need. It took all his restraint to remain a respectable distance away from the lady, and every beat of his heart made his restraint grow weaker and weaker.
“What do you mean?” Lady Dorothy asked, her voice somewhere between scandalized and confused. “You cannot—Catherine?—”
“Catherine?” He laughed. “My lady, you are not some blushing maiden who has only just blossomed. You must know what I mean. I want tobed Lady Bridget’s sister, but not the Duchess of Sarsen.”
