Romancing the Duke

Page 20

Izzy rushed to kneel by his side. A fresh bump was already swelling, and a small patch of his skin was scraped raw. It was on the unscarred side of his brow. She didn’t know whether that made things better or worse.
It was almost funny when she considered it. She’d been rescued from ruination by . . . ruins.
She picked up her forgotten shawl and pressed the folded edge to his brow. “Are you all right? Are you dizzy? Look at me, and tell me how many—”
She bit off the absurd question. Of course he couldn’t tell how many fingers she was holding up.
Unless . . .
Unless he’d experienced some sudden cure. She’d heard it could happen. Soldiers blinded in battle, having their vision returned to them after one good knock on the head.
“Do you have all your usual faculties?” she asked cautiously.
He clenched his jaw. “My ears are ringing, and my head is a throbbing knot of pain. But I can’t see any more or less than I could ten minutes ago. If that’s your question.”
“Oh. Good. I mean, not good, of course. I just hope you’re not too hurt, that’s all.”
Izzy sighed. She was a horrible, horrible person. He told her he hadn’t experienced a miraculous restoration of his vision, and her first, instinctive reaction was relief? What kind of person would actually wish for a man’s continued blindness?
A plain kind of person. One who was enjoying feeling attractive for the first time in her life.
But that was no excuse.
In an attempt to atone for her selfishness, she brushed aside his overlong hair and began dabbing at the bloody scrape on his head.
He shied away. “You’re always fussing over me.”
“I’m not fussing,” she said. “I’m blotting. If you like, I can disparage you while I do it. How about this: Ungrateful man.”
“Bewitching she-devil.”
She smiled wryly. It would seem his personality was intact, and she was glad of it. No member of the Moranglian Army would ever call her “temptress” or “bewitching.” And coming from lips so finely formed, she didn’t even mind “she-devil.”
He took the wadded shawl from her grasp and applied to his own head. “First weasels, now stoning. Are you working from a list of archaic torture methods?”
“I must admit, you are bleeding through my supply of clean linen at an alarming rate.”
“My face is already a wreck. Another lump can only improve it.” He lowered the cloth. “How bad is it?”
She tested his bruise with her fingertips. “There’s a bit of a bump, but the swelling isn’t too awful.”
“No, not that.” He turned his head, giving her his profile—and a full view of his twisting scar. “The rest. How bad is it? Tell me honestly.”
Izzy fell quiet, stunned by his sudden earnestness. He was anxious about his looks?
“I can’t see it for myself,” he said. “I’ve wondered where I rank in the spectrum between flawed Adonis and ghastly horror. Clearly, I can’t judge by these silly chits’ reactions, addled as they are by your father’s writing. It will have to be you.”
Her heart twisted in her chest. How could he doubt himself? In full daylight, he was magnificent. His skin seemed to be bronzing by the moment, soaking up every bit of the day’s warmth. The sunlight caught the golden streaks in his hair—hair that was overlong, sprawling over his brow in a rakish fashion. She wondered now at the reason. Was it that he simply couldn’t be bothered to let Duncan cut it, or did he purposely grow it long to obscure his scarred face?
Reaching forward, she brushed the sweep of tawny hair from his brow. “Will you tell me how it happened?”
“I was struck. With something big and sharp.”
Izzy supposed that was what she deserved. Ask a straightforward question, receive a straightforward answer.
She traced the scar with her fingertip, all the way from his brow to his cheekbone, then let her touch linger on his unshaven cheek. How ironic that the blow had just missed his right eye but taken the sight from both.
“Well?” he prompted.
“Well,” she said, “it’s plain to see that you were once a devastatingly handsome man.”
“And now?”
“Now . . .” She sighed. “I really hate to say it. Don’t make me say it.”
His hand caught her wrist. “Just say it.”
“Now you are a devastatingly handsome man with an impressive scar. That is the unhappy truth. I wish I could tell you otherwise. You will be impossible now.”
“But . . .” He released her, looking bewildered. “But that first day. When you saw me, you swooned.”
She laughed a little. “Your face did not make me swoon. I was already feeling faint. I hadn’t eaten anything but a few crusts of bread for days.”
“So the scars don’t frighten you?”
“Not at all.”
The words were a lie. The truth was, his scars did frighten her—but only a little, and only because they tempted her to care. Even now, her heart was softening in her chest, faster than a lump of butter left in the sun.
She couldn’t let this happen. It was all well and good to say “no expectations,” but Izzy knew how her affection-starved heart worked. She was so desperate to love and be loved, she could sprout tender feelings toward a rock. And rocks didn’t call her “bewitching” or “temptress.” Rocks didn’t have touchable golden brown hair.
But rocks and Ransom did have something in common.
Neither one would love her back.
“We should go,” she said. “It’s been at least one hundred counts, and the girls are waiting.”
He stood and brushed dust from his breeches and coat. “I’ll make my own way back.”
“By yourself?” The moment the words left her lips, Izzy cringed, regretting how they sounded. Of course he was able to walk back on his own. “It’s just that the handmaidens are waiting for their hero to find them.”
“Then they’d best keep waiting for some other man.” He moved past her. “I’m no one’s hero, Miss Goodnight. You’d do well to remember it.”
Chapter Fourteen
Miss Goodnight. Is that you?”
Izzy froze, perched on tiptoe.
Drat.
After several hours of walking, talking, counting wild roses, and fending off questions about two Ulrics, Izzy had finally bid a warm farewell to the handmaidens and the Knights of Moranglia. She’d been hoping to sneak back into the castle unnoticed. So much for that plan.
At least it wasn’t the duke who’d caught her.
“Yes, Duncan?”
“What is that in your hands, Miss Goodnight?”
Izzy glanced down at her wadded, soiled shawl. She’d been carrying it around ever since her interlude with Ransom that morning.
Embarrassed, she thrust the thing behind her back. “Oh, it’s nothing.”
“Is that your shawl?”
The man had a marksman’s eye when it came to laundry.
She sighed, drawing it out again. “Yes. I . . . You see, there was a bit of a mishap.”
Lord, how did she begin to describe what had happened to the thing? She ought to have pitched it in the moat. It wasn’t as though it could be salvaged.
“Give it here.” The valet took it from her hand. He shook out the frail, tissue-thin fabric and examined it, clucking his tongue. “Dirt . . . grass . . . My word. Are these bloodstains? On silk embroidery?”
She bit her lip, praying that he wouldn’t be angry with her for the duke’s recent injury. Or worse, demand a full explanation of how it had occurred.
“Miss Goodnight, I don’t know what to say. This . . .” He shook his head. “This is marvelous.”
“Marvelous?”
“Yes.” He gripped the fabric in both hands. “This is what a valet lives for. Removing stubborn stains from quality fabric. It’s been months since I had a challenge like this one. I must away to the laundry, at once. If the stains have any longer to set, I’ll never get them out.”
Amused, Izzy followed him down to the room designated as a laundry. He stoked the fire, put a kettle on to boil, and gathered soap, an iron, and pressing cloths.
“These grass stains will be the most stubborn.” He laid the shawl out on the worktable, assessing every little spot and stain. “Lemon juice and a cool rinse first. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try a paste of soda.”
“Can I help at all?”
“No, Miss Goodnight.” He looked faintly horrified. “You’d spoil my amusement. But you’d be most welcome to keep me company.”
Izzy took a seat and watched, quite amused herself by his careful campaign to attack the stains. He scraped them first with a knife. Then rubbed them with a soft-bristled brush. Only then did he reach for his small, brown-glass bottles of spirits and salts. She felt as though she were watching a surgeon at work.
“Duncan, how did it happen? The duke’s accident.”
The valet paused in the act of dabbing vinegar on a grass stain. “Miss Goodnight,” he said slowly, “I know we discussed this. A good manservant does not gossip about his employer.”
“I know. I know, and I’m sorry to pry, but . . . now I work for him, too. Isn’t this what employed people do? Gossip about their employer?”
He arched one brow in silent censure.
She hated seeming so petty, and she didn’t want to break her word to Ransom and disclose his headache the other night. Or mention the letter he’d crumpled and tossed in the grate.
“I’m just concerned, that’s all. The duke’s so . . .” Stubborn. Wounded. Maddeningly attractive. “So angry. At the world, it seems, but especially at me. He’s so determined to interpret everything in the worst possible way, and I don’t think it’s only his injury. I wish I understood it.”
Duncan took a break from his scrubbing to attend the whistling kettle. “Miss Goodnight, it wouldn’t be fitting for a valet to tell tales about his employer.”
Izzy nodded. She was disappointed, but she wouldn’t press him further. He was saving her best shawl, after all.
“But,” the silver-haired man continued, “seeing as you are Miss Izzy Goodnight, and so fond of a story, perhaps I could tell you a tale about . . . an entirely different man.”
“Oh, yes.” She straightened in her chair, trying not to betray her excitement. “A fictional man. One who isn’t Rothbury at all. I would so love to hear a story like that.”
The valet cast a wary glance around the room.
“I won’t tell anyone, I swear it,” she whispered. “Here, I’ll even start. Once there was a young nobleman named . . . Bransom Fayne, the Duke of Mothfairy.”
“Mothfairy?”
She shrugged. “Did you have something better?”
He set the kettle on the hob. “He can never hear of this.”
“Of course not,” she said. “How could he? This man we’re discussing doesn’t exist. But this is the tale of his tragic past. In his youth, the nonexistent Duke of Mothfairy . . .”
“Was alone. A great deal. His mother died in childbirth.”
She nodded. This much, she’d learned from the man himself.
“And his father might as well have died the same day. The old duke shut himself off from the world to grieve, and he treated his son very coldly. Once this ‘Bransom’ was old enough, he frequently sought out . . . company.” The valet’s face contorted as he searched for words. “The female kind of company.”
“He sewed his wild oats, you mean.”
“Entire plantations of them. Good heavens. He made oat-sewing an industry.”