Page 47 of Beneath the Beastly Duke's Mask
“May I pour for you?” she offered.
“No, let me do it,” he said, rising to pour the drinks. “As a thank you for your company. It's not often that I get to converse with anyone for much of the day. Usually, it's always about the estate, so today was a treat.”
“The renovations are about the estate,” she pointed out.
“Yes, but you make it sound exciting,” he said, handing her lemonade. “You make everything sound exciting. It fascinates me.”
“It does?” she said, widening her eyes.
“Of course!” he exclaimed. “You have to know how lively the estate has become since you arrived. It's refreshing to not have someone look at me and cringe. My servants respect me and do their best to hide their revulsion for my scars, but you look at me and do not mind the scars. I have never seen fear or revulsion in your eyes, not even when we first met. I have become so used to it that I would hate to lose your presence in this home.”
He looked away. “A master probably shouldn't be saying these things to his servant, but it's the truth. You needn't ever regret being yourself around me.”
“Goodness,” said Arabella, drawing his attention to her. She appeared taken aback. “I was worried I wasn't behaving as a servant should. I admit I do not have any experience as a maid, but it seemed that I kept making mistakes and stepping out of line.”
"You can step out of line as much as you wish," Henry eagerly told her. "Well, not so much that the other servants think I favor you above them, but they do not understand how I have yearned for conversation and interaction with someone from beyond the estate. How can they? They only know to serve me, but you're different. Which leads me to wonder why you decided to become a servant in my house."
Arabella immediately averted her eyes, drinking half of her lemonade in several gulps. There was a story there—he could feel it. He sipped his beverage, patiently waiting for her to respond. Finally, she put the glass down and turned to him.
"Curiosity brought me here, Your Grace," she revealed. She shifted in her seat, looking uncomfortable. "I needed a distraction after losing my parents, and I didn't want to live with my family in Somerset just yet."
Henry frowned, not sure if he understood. “So, your distraction was to become a maid on my estate? Why a maid and why my estate?”
Arabella meshed her lips together, uncertainty clouding her lovely features. “Not precisely,” she said, looking at her lap. “When I was younger, I used to hear stories about you. People called you the Beastly Duke, and I didn't understand why. What on earth possessed people to be so unkind? It didn't make any sense.”
Henry frowned. It sounded like she was saying she came to work for him because she wanted to see him, like he was some kind of spectacle. It left a bitter taste in his mouth.
“My grandfather used to treat your parents,” she continued.
“And one day, he mentioned a terrible fire while inebriated. He didn't get tipsy often, but when he did, he often rambled all sorts of things that didn't make sense. When he mentioned the fire and your parents, it increased my interest in the Beastly Duke. I also learned you didn't publicly appear as the duke's son until after the fire, as though you had been hidden away. It all seemed so strange to me."
Henry's breath caught, worried Arabella had discovered his secret. No one was supposed to know how he came to be the duke's son.
Arabella raised her head. "You must think the worst of me, Your Grace," she said, looking regretful.
"But I promise I didn't come here to hurt you. I know it seems odd, but I needed a distraction and picked the first thing that came to mind. I can be rather impulsive at times, you see. Aunt Beatrice kept urging me to go home with her and eventually find a good man to marry, and I knew I couldn't live on my own in the house, not without my parents."
She looked away again, lifting her glass to drain the rest of its contents. Henry had to wonder why she decided to reveal this to him when she could have just lied.
"Your distraction was discovering the truth behind my scars?" he asked.
“Partly,” Arabella admitted, wounding him. “I also wanted an adventure filled with mystery, so it was also about the process more than the result. I thought it would be a starting point before I moved on to something else. I hoped by the time I solved the mystery that I would have decided what I wanted to do with my life.”
So, Euston had merely been a stopping point to the next part of her life. She always intended to leave him. The truth sat like bile in his throat.
“Have you satisfied your curiosity?” he asked, his voice lacking emotion.
Henry didn't want Arabella to know how much her confession hurt him. He almost wished he hadn't asked, but she could have hurt him far worse once she left and dusted her feet of her curiosity. He wouldn't even have understood why she left.
“The night I was in your room during your nightmare, you cried about a fire,” she revealed.
Henry stilled. He knew he had said something to her, but he hadn't been certain. He had hoped his ramblings had been in his dream rather than out loud, but now he knew otherwise. It worried him. Arabella could ruin everything if she knew the truth, yet he couldn’t ignore one glaring fact. If she had somehow unearthed the truth, she could have used it against him long ago.
That nightmare had been weeks ago, but he hadn't heard anything remotely pertaining to the fire and his identity. It could be that she hadn't put two and two together. However, she said that her grandfather had treated the old duke and duchess, and if Henry really thought about it, he vaguely recalled the physician who had sometimes come to the house.
It was the very same man who had treated him for his burns. Henry knew the old duke had sworn everybody aware of the situation into silence, but that didn't mean Arabella's grandfather had not said more than he should during his drunken ramblings.
“You sounded like you were in pain,” Arabella continued, drawing him out of his thoughts.
