Page 51 of Fit for a Duke
‘Do I?’ Unsure why she felt the need to fight with him, Clio forced herself to relax and felt the tension recede from her rigid shoulders. ‘Why do you describe him as desperate? Well, obviously I know the answer to that. He requires my fortune in order to keep Lady Walder in the style she has come to expect.’
‘Very likely, but producing a letter from your father shows a degree of planning—which in turn implies that he’d considered the possibility of rejection and prepared for it.’
‘You don’t think that my father wrote the letter?’ She turned to face him, giving him her full attention for the first time since he had entered her room uninvited. ‘It is his handwriting, there’s no question of that.’
‘And yet he didn’t see fit to mention his plans to you?’
‘I don’t suppose he expected to die before he had an opportunity to do so.’
‘And yet he died at home. You nursed him, I am told, and he knew the end was close.’
Clio shrugged one shoulder. ‘True, but I don’t suppose he took my feelings into account. He would simply have assumed…’
Ezra cupped her chin in the palm of one capable hand, stroking it between his fingers as he smiled provocatively into her eyes. ‘He didn’t understand your character at all, did he?’ he asked softly.
Clio swallowed, understanding better now why she had instinctively tried to fight with him when he’d first invaded her privacy. She could keep her wits about her when they were at odds with one another, after a fashion, but whenever he looked at her with such glowing concern, her thoughts turned in all sorts of inappropriate directions.
‘I was not a boy, so why would he bother getting to know me?’ she asked, snatching her chin from his grasp and looking away again.
‘May I see the letter?’
Without saying a word, Clio handed it to him and Ezra walked over to the still-lit candle so that he could scan the contents. ‘It doesn’t mention you by name,’ he said, casting it aside with a dismissive flip of his wrist. ‘Your father could have been referring to the disposition of his estate as easily as he could be referring to your future. He doesn’t even address Salford by name. The letter starts off “Dear Sir”.It could have been to his steward.’
‘It might surprise you to learn that I had reached that conclusion for myself,’ she said archly. ‘It is beyond insulting that the captain would assume I don’t have the wits to see through such an obvious ruse, or that I would comply with my father’s so-called wishes even if it was genuine.’ She grunted indignantly. ‘He really is desperate. We both know what drives that desperation and it is most certainly not a desire to fulfil my father’s fictitious wishes. Nor is it a passionate affection for me.’
‘He was attempting to impress upon you the duty that you owed to your father.’ Ezra tapped the letter against his fingers.
‘Then he will be disappointed in that respect. I had lost respect for my father long before he died.’ She sent him a defiant smile. ‘There! I have said it. Make of it what you will.’
‘I respected the man as an intelligent strategist and leader of men on the battlefield,’ Ezra replied. ‘I did not know him well personally, and I cannot approve of his neglect of you. He may have regretted the fact that you were not the son he desired.’ Ezra paused, fixing her with a deep, probing look so intense that it caused her to blush and turn away. ‘I on the other hand am so very glad that you are not.’
‘You said you had news.’ Clio continued to look away from him and cleared her throat. She could stand up to Ezra when they were at odds, but she had absolutely no idea how to respond to a compliment that seemed genuine. God’s beard, the man was an enigma and she couldn’t make him out at all.
‘Ah, so I did.’
Clio listened as he explained about his mother’s destination that evening.
‘Brennan must be the mastermind!’ she said, leaning towards him in her anxiety for his wellbeing and only realising that the sudden movement had caused her robe to gape open when his gaze fastened on her bosom. She sat back again and tightened her belt. ‘There can be no other explanation, and your mother is playing into his hands. She must be warned.’
‘Out of the question! She may not be the most maternal woman in England, but she still has feelings. She has already lost two sons as well as a husband and will never believe our wild theories, especially if I accuse her lover of orchestrating her family’s demise.’
‘No, I suppose when you put it like that…’ She nibbled the end of her index finger as she thought the matter through and then turned to face him again, in command of herself, after a fashion. ‘Then what shall we do about it?’
‘Weshall do nothing. I shall handle it.’
Clio tossed her head, too irritated to worry about the growing attraction that she found it harder by the minute to fight when in such close and secluded company with her fiercely attractive yet unattainable duke. She found his magnetic allure harder to resist with every meeting.
Especially this one.
‘That is precisely the annoyingly protective response I anticipated. Really, your grace, if you do not require my help and suggestions, what are you really doing here in my bedchamber?’
Ezra was in trouble, the like of which he had never been in before, not even in the heat of battle. And this latest conflict truly terrified him. It had nothing to do with the threat to his life and everything to do with the charms of the siren seated beside him in her night attire, her eyes flashing with irritation. He was now fighting a war of a very different kind—against his own emotions, his instincts, his desires.
She was right to ask why he had made excuses to come to her room. He must be a candidate for Bedlam, he decided. He had convinced himself that he would be able to harness his passions. Ha! It just went to show that a body was capable of convincing itself of anything when the desire was strong enough. And his desire for this wild, impractical, unconventional and so very young female was in danger of running out of control. He hadn’t allowed himself to consider that she might well be in a state of undress when he accosted her, but of course he had known on a visceral level that she might well be. Or he would have, had he allowed his mind to dwell upon the possibility.
He was paying a heavy price for his lunacy, finding the temptation to be a living hell. Ezra had to be overly fond of punishing himself, he thought. It was the only explanation that made sense of the torture he’d sought out through choice. When she leaned forward and her robe had fallen open, his physical reaction had been difficult to conceal. How he had resisted taking matters further he still could not have said.
‘I admire your courage. You are your father’s daughter in that respect, no question,’ he told her, focusing his attention upon the picture on the wall facing him. There wasn’t much chance of a harmless landscape sending his mind on a sensual detour. ‘However, I must ask you to consider. If I am right then my father, and then his successor, my older brother, have both been ruthlessly murdered, and no one other than me suspects that there was anything suspicious about their deaths.’
