Книга - Undone By The Billionaire Duke

Undone By The Billionaire Duke
CAITLIN CREWS


Can she tame the shameless duke?The brazen antics of Hugo, Duke of Grovesmoor and the string of women to grace his bed are tabloid gold. But Eleanor Andrews, newly hired to care for the duke’s young ward, refuses to see him as anything but her boss. She desperately needs this job. No matter how gorgeous Hugo is, the stakes are simply too high…Well acquainted with lies and betrayal, Hugo is jaded and cynical, unconcerned with dispelling the salacious rumours about him. But there’s something about Eleanor which fires his blood, and he can’t turn down the challenge to unbutton his uptight employee!







Can she tame the shameless duke?

The brazen antics of Hugo, Duke of Grovesmoor, and the string of women to grace his bed are tabloid gold. But Eleanor Andrews, newly hired to care for the duke’s young ward, refuses to see him as anything but her boss. She desperately needs this job. No matter how gorgeous Hugo is, the stakes are simply too high...

Well acquainted with lies and betrayal, Hugo is jaded and cynical, unconcerned with dispelling the salacious rumors about him. But there’s something about Eleanor that fires his blood, and he can’t turn down the challenge to unbutton his uptight employee!


“I am the boss, Miss Andrews,” Hugo reminded her from between his teeth. “You are the employee. Everything about the way you are speaking to me is disrespectful, not to mention foolish. Why would you try to antagonize the person who pays your spectacularly generous salary?”

Eleanor’s frown smoothed out a bit, though it didn’t precisely soften. And still Hugo wanted to taste that faint crease between her brows, where the edge of her fringe kissed her skin the way he wanted to do.

“In point of fact I won’t be paid for two weeks,” she said after a moment, as if she couldn’t help herself.

Maybe she really couldn’t. He couldn’t have said why that notion washed through him like a new sort of heat.

“A notable distinction,” Hugo murmured.

And then, because he loved nothing more than complicating any given situation beyond repair, the better to make it worse, he kissed her.

And then they were in real trouble, because she tasted like magic.


USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–nominated author CAITLIN CREWS loves writing romance. She teaches her favourite romance novels in creative writing classes at places like UCLA Extension’s prestigious Writers’ Program, where she finally gets to utilise the MA and PhD in English literature she received from the University of York in England. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest, with her very own hero and too many pets. Visit her at caitlincrews.com (http://www.caitlincrews.com/).

Books by Caitlin Crews

Mills & Boon Modern Romance

Castelli’s Virgin Widow

At the Count’s Bidding

Scandalous Royal Brides

The Prince’s Nine-Month Scandal

The Billionaire’s Secret Princess

Wedlocked!

Bride by Royal Decree

Expecting a Royal Scandal

One Night With Consequences

The Guardian’s Virgin Ward

The Billionaire’s Legacy

The Return of the Di Sione Wife

Secret Heirs of Billionaires

Unwrapping the Castelli Secret

Scandalous Sheikh Brides

Protecting the Desert Heir

Traded to the Desert Sheikh

Vows of Convenience

His for a Price

His for Revenge

Visit the Author Profile page

at www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk) for more titles.


Undone by the Billionaire Duke

Caitlin Crews






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


To Maisey Yates and Nicole Helm for encouraging my flights of fancy—like rearing horses and billowing cloaks...oh, my!


Contents

Cover (#ub9a77c84-e531-54e0-a49d-e3b41c9dd301)

Back Cover Text (#ub70b462f-a88b-5470-a69a-1e7bc9ef6eab)

Introduction (#u9038aa46-5516-5dde-8ebf-d5ee6e713dee)

About the Author (#u3c5a9f03-a294-5036-bd1d-64c557d3389d)

Title Page (#u0289475f-89a5-54bf-b786-cf00a805a30f)

Dedication (#u6c10d6ed-17d0-5307-900d-76cfe4559dff)

CHAPTER ONE (#u16e70154-bc8d-5254-b21c-8b500620e409)

CHAPTER TWO (#u6bfc64d1-d926-5dbc-9cad-83de83cc4320)

CHAPTER THREE (#ue46274f5-4605-5d72-9f0c-b2ebc7051484)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


CHAPTER ONE (#u450f2e33-46fe-5210-85cf-59dbb060dec6)

ELEANOR ANDREWS WAS certain that she could handle the likes of Hugo Grovesmoor, and no matter that no one had ever quite managed to do so before in living memory. As the papers shrieked daily, the Twelfth Duke of Grovesmoor was not only known to be a terrible villain in every salacious way imaginable, he was impossible. Too wealthy. Too full of himself. And worse still, so appallingly and egregiously handsome that he’d essentially been born spoilt through, and had only descended further from there.

Into pure, hedonistic, and ruinous devilry. Usually with pictures.

And Eleanor was delivering herself directly into his clutches.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” her younger sister Vivi said with a sigh, sending her long and lively brunette curls slithering this way and that every time she exhaled. When all Eleanor had done was express the tiniest hint of concern about her brand-new role as governess to the poor seven-year-old in notorious Hugo’s care.

As occasionally trying as Vivi was—and if Eleanor was honest with herself, it was more often than occasionally—Eleanor couldn’t help but love her. Desperately. Vivi was all she had left after their parents had been killed years ago in the tragic car accident that had nearly claimed young Vivi’s life, as well. Eleanor never forgot how close she’d come to losing Vivi, too.

“I don’t think I was being dramatic at all,” Eleanor replied. She chose not to point out that the opera heroine histrionics were usually Vivi’s department. Surely that went without saying.

Vivi was addressing Eleanor through the mirror in the bedroom of the tiny, crowded, so-called “one-bedroom” flat they shared in one of London’s less fashionable neighborhoods. The “one bedroom” in question being the space on the far side of a bookcase in the long room with a cramped kitchenette slung beneath the eaves on the other end. Vivi was applying a third, slick layer of mascara to her lashes, the better to emphasize the eyes one of her many boyfriends had once called as warm and bright as new gold. Eleanor had heard him—as had half the street in the village where they’d grown up as their distant cousin’s charity cases after their parents had been killed and Vivi had finally gotten out of the hospital—given that the poor sod had been shouting it toward Vivi’s window long after the pubs had closed, as pissed as he was poetic.

Vivi lowered the mascara wand and rolled said new gold eyes. “You won’t actually see Hugo. You’re going to be the governess of his ward who, let’s face it, he can’t possibly like that much. Given all that messy history. Why would he give either one of you the time of day?”

A dismissive wave of her hand encompassed all the salacious details everyone knew about Hugo Grovesmoor, thanks to the fascination the tabloids had always had with him.

Eleanor knew the three main points as well as anyone. The dramatic on-and-off relationship with beloved society darling Isobel Vanderhaven, whom everyone had been certain Hugo would ruin with his shocking brand of committed wickedness that even Isobel’s innate goodness couldn’t cure. The way Isobel had left him for good when pregnant with his best friend’s Torquil’s child, because, everyone agreed, love had finally triumphed over wickedness and Isobel deserved better. And Isobel’s celebrated marriage to and subsequent tragic boating accident with said former best friend, which had resulted in famously reluctant Hugo being named the legal guardian of the child whose very existence had wrecked his chances with the lovely Isobel forever.

All this while the nation jeered, applauded, and mourned in turn, as if they knew all of these people and their pain personally.

“A man as rich as Hugo is dripping in properties and can’t be expected to visit even half of them in the course of a year. Or even five years,” Vivi said with the same nonchalance, and Eleanor reminded herself that her sister would know.

After all, Vivi was the one who’d spent time with Hugo Grovesmoor’s sort of people. She was the one who’d attended the posh schools and while she hadn’t exactly distinguished herself academically, she’d certainly had a sparkling social calendar that had carried over to her life in London. It was all in service to the glittering marriage they were both certain Vivi would manage to score any day now.

Vivi was eighteen months younger than Eleanor and the beauty of the pair of them. She had the sort of slim-hipped, smoky-eyed, lush-mouthed prettiness that left men struck dumb when they beheld her. Literally. Her wild curls gave the impression she’d just rolled out of someone’s bed. Her just-wicked-enough smile hinted that she was up for any and all adventures and suggested that if a man played his cards right, that bed could be his.

And to think that after the accident, the doctors had doubted she’d ever walk again!

Vivi had proven herself to be more or less catnip for a certain sort of man. Usually one endowed with a great many estates and a bank account to match, even if, so far, she hadn’t quite managed to break out of the “potential mistress” box.

Eleanor, on the other hand, went to very few parties while working at least one job and sometimes more, when things got rough. Because while Vivi was the pretty one, Eleanor had always been the sensible one. And while she’d had her moments of wishing she, too, could have been as effortlessly charming and undeniably pretty as her sister, Eleanor was twenty-seven now and had come to a place of peace with her role in life. They’d lost their parents and Eleanor couldn’t bring them back. She couldn’t change the many years of hospitals and surgeries that Vivi had survived. But she could take on a bit of a parental role with Vivi. She could hold down decent jobs and pay their bills.

Well. Vivi’s bills. There was no point gussying up Eleanor in the sort of slinky, breathtakingly expensive clothes Vivi had to have to blend in with her highbrow friends—and that sort of thing required money. Money Eleanor had always made, one way or another.

This latest job—as governess to the most hated man in England—would be the most lucrative yet. It was why Eleanor had resigned from her current position as a front desk receptionist at a bustling architecture firm. Vivi had been the one to hear of the governess position through her high-flying set of friends, since men like the Duke did not exactly pin up adverts in the local pub. More important, she’d heard what the Duke intended to pay his governess. It was so much more than all the other jobs Eleanor had taken—combined—that she hardly dared do the math, lest it make her dizzy.

“The rumor is the Duke has dismissed all the governesses he’s been sent. Being a distraction is apparently the top reason for getting sacked and, well...”

Vivi had shrugged with a regret that had not struck Eleanor as being entirely sincere. Her small, perfect, perky breasts had moved enticingly behind the filmy little silk dress she’d worn to some or other desperately fashionable soirée that evening, as if in an approving chorus.

“But you might just be perfect!”

The sleek agency that had handled the interview had agreed, and here Eleanor was, packing up her case for the trip into the wilds of the Yorkshire moors to what had to be the most overwrought of all the ducal properties in England. Groves House, as the sprawling dark mansion was quaintly called as if it wasn’t large enough to merit its own postal code, had been looming over its vast swathe of the brooding moors for centuries.

“A governess is a lowly member of his household staff, Eleanor,” Vivi was saying now, with another eye roll. “Not a guest. It’s highly unlikely you’ll encounter Hugo Grovesmoor at all.”

That was more than fine with Eleanor. She was immune to star power and the sense of self-importance that went along with it. She told herself so all the way up on the train the next morning as it hurtled at high speeds toward deepest Yorkshire.

She hadn’t gone to the north of England since she was a child and their parents had still been alive. Eleanor had vague memories of traipsing about the walls that surrounded the ancient city of York in a chilly summer fog, with no idea, then, how quickly everything would change.

But there was no point heading down that sort of sentimental road now, she told herself sternly as she waited in the brisk October cold at the York rail station for one of the slower, more infrequent local trains out into the far reaches of the countryside. Life went on. That was just what it did, wholly heedless and uncaring.

No matter what anyone might have lost along the way.

When Eleanor arrived at the tiny little train station in remote Grovesmoor Village, she expected to be met as planned. But the train platform in the middle of nowhere was empty. There was nothing but Eleanor, the blustering October wind, and the remains of the morning’s fog. Not exactly an encouraging beginning.

Eleanor cast a bit of a grim eye at the case she’d packed with what she’d thought she’d need for the first six weeks she’d agreed to spend at Groves House without any break. It was only the one case. Vivi needed to travel with bags upon bags, but then again, she had a wardrobe. Eleanor had no such problems. And no excuses. It took a second or two to pull up a map on her mobile and find it was a twenty-to-thirty-minute walk to the only stately manor in the area. Groves House.

“Best set off, then,” she muttered to herself.

She heaved her heavy shoulder bag higher up on her shoulder, grabbed the handle of her roller bag and tugged on it, and strode off with every confidence in the world. Or every appearance of confidence, anyway, she amended when she walked for five minutes down the road only to realize she should have headed in the opposite direction, away from the quaint little town arranged on either side of a slow river.

Once headed in the right direction, Eleanor tried to channel Maria Von Trapp as she trudged along the lonely country road that wound further and further into the fog and the gloom. She marched on, aware of her breathing in the otherwise still afternoon and very little else. She’d lived so long in the hectic rush of London now that she’d almost forgotten the particular quiet of country lane, particularly one that seemed to be swallowed up by moors in all directions and peaks here and there that she expected would have names. If only she’d researched them.

She found the turnoff for Groves House between two stone pillars and started up the drive. It wound about just as much as the road had, and was only differentiated from the lane she’d left behind by its absence of hedges and proper stone walls. And its slight incline straddled by lines of stout and watchful trees. She’d lost track of how many turns she’d taken and how far she’d gone from the road when she looked out in front of her and saw the house at last.

Nothing could have prepared her.

The house loomed there on the far ridge. It was rambling, yes, a jumble of stone and self-importance, but none of the pictures she’d seen had done it justice. There was something about it that made a raw sort of lump catch there in her throat. There was something about the way its interior lights scraped at the gloomy afternoon that seemed to speak to her, though she couldn’t think why.

She found she couldn’t look away.

It was not a welcoming house. It was not a house at all, for that matter. It was much too large and starkly forbidding. And yet somehow, as it gleamed there against the fall night as if daring the dark to do its worst, the only word that echoed inside Eleanor’s head was perfect.

Something rang in her then, low and long, like a bell.

She didn’t know why she couldn’t seem to catch her breath when she started walking again, her case seeming heavier in her grip as she headed further up the hill.

And that was when she heard the thunder of hoof beats, bearing down on her.

Like fate.

* * *

His Grace the Duke of Grovesmoor, known to what few friends he had left and the overly familiar press as Hugo, found fewer and fewer things cleared his head these days. Drink made his skull hurt. Extreme sports had lost their thrill now that his death would mean the end of the Grovesmoor line of succession after untold centuries, tossing the whole dukedom into the hands of grasping, far-removed cousins who’d been salivating over the ducal properties and attendant income for perhaps the entire sweep of its history.

Even indiscriminate sex, once his favorite go-to for obliteration on a grand scale, had lost its charm now that his every so-called “indiscretion” went rabbiting off to the papers before the sheets had gone cold to tell further tales in the nation’s favorite narrative. Evil, soulless Hugo, despoiler of saints and heroes, etc. He was either glutting himself in excess to hide from his dark regrets or he was so extraordinarily shallow that a shag or two was all he was capable of. The stories were all the same and always so damned boring.

It galled him to admit it, but the tabloids might actually have won.

The particular horse he rode today—the pride of his stables, he’d been informed, as if he gave a toss—liked him as little as he liked it, which meant he found himself rampaging across the moors very much as if he’d sprung forth from a bloody eighteenth century novel.

All he needed was a billowing cloak.

But no matter how far he rode, there was no escaping himself. Or his head and all his attendant regrets.

The vicious creature he rode clearly knew it. They’d been playing a little domination game for weeks now, raging across the whole of Hugo’s Yorkshire estate.

So when Hugo saw the figure slinking along in the shadows up the drive to Groves House, all he could think was that it was something different in the middle of an otherwise indistinguishably gray afternoon.

God knew Hugo was desperate for anything different.

A different past. A different reputation—because who could have foreseen what his shrugging off all those early tabloid stories would lead to?

He wanted a different him, really, but that had never been on offer.

Hugo was the Twelfth Duke of Grovesmoor whether he liked it or did not, and the title was the important thing about him. The only important thing, his father had been at pains to impress upon him all his life. Unless he bankrupted his estates and rid himself of the title altogether, or died while engaged in some or other irresponsible pursuit, Hugo would simply be another notation in the endless long line of dukes bearing the same title and a healthy dollop of the same blood. His father had always claimed that knowledge had brought him solace. Peace.

Hugo was unfamiliar with either.

“If you’re a poacher, you’re doing a remarkably sad job of it,” he said when he drew close to the stranger on his property. “You really should at least try to sneak about, surely. Instead of marching up the front drive without the slightest attempt at subterfuge.”

He reined in the stroppy horse and enjoyed the dramatic way he then reared a bit right in front of the person creeping up his drive.

It was then that he realized his intruder was a woman.

And not just any woman.

Hugo was renowned for his women. Bloody Isobel, of course, like a stain across his life—but all the other ones, too. Before Isobel and after. But they all had the same things in common: they were considered beautiful by all and sundry and wanted, usually quite badly, to be photographed next to him. That meant fake breasts, whitened teeth, extensions to thicken their silky hair, varnished nails and careful lipstick and fake lashes and all the rest of it. So years had passed since he’d seen a real woman at all, unless she worked for him. His crotchety old housekeeper, for example, who he kept on because Mrs. Redding was always as deeply disappointed when he appeared in the tabloids as his father had been. It felt so comfortable, Hugo often thought. Like a lovely, well-worn hair shirt tucked up next to his skin.

The woman who stared up at him now, looking nowhere near as shocked or outright terrified as Hugo imagined he would be if he’d found himself on the underside of a rearing horse, was not in the least bit beautiful.

Or if she was, she’d gone to significant lengths to disguise it. Her hair was scraped back into a tight brown bun that made his own head ache just looking at it, without a single flyaway to suggest she was actually human. Even her fringe was ruthlessly cut across her forehead to military precision. She wore a bulky, puffy sort of jacket that covered her from chin to calf and made her look roughly the size of one of the grand, gnarled old oaks dotting the property. She clutched a large black bag over her shoulder and tugged a rolling case along behind her, and she had death grips on both. Her cheeks looked flushed with the cold and there was no denying she had a delicate nose a great many of his own ancestors would have envied, given the curse of what was known as The Grovesmoor Beak that seemed to afflict the females in the line unfairly.

But most of what struck him was the expression on her face.

Because it looked a great deal like a scowl.

Which was, of course, impossible, because he was Hugo Grovesmoor and the women who usually crept onto his various properties without invitation found the very idea of him—or to be more precise, of his net worth—so marvelously attractive that they never stopped smiling. Ever.

This woman looked as if she’d crack in half if she attempted the smallest grin.

“I’m not poaching, I’m a governess.” Her voice was cool, and something else that Hugo couldn’t identify. “My ride from the train station didn’t materialize or I assure you, I wouldn’t be marching anywhere, much less up this very long drive. Uphill.”

It dawned on him then. That “something else” in her voice he hadn’t been able to place. It was annoyance.

Hugo found it delightful. No one was annoyed with him. They might hate him and call him Satan and other such tedious things, but they were never annoyed.

“I should have introduced myself, I think,” he said merrily, as the bastard horse danced murderously beneath him. The woman did not appear to know her own danger, so close to sharp hooves and the thoroughbred’s temper tantrums. Or, more likely, she didn’t care, as she was too busy trying to win a staring contest with Hugo. “Since you’re lurking about the property.”

“It is not lurking to walk up the front drive,” she replied crisply. “By definition.”

“I am Hugo Grovesmoor,” he told her. “No need to curtsey. After all, I’m, widely held to be a great and terrible villain.”

“I had no intention of curtseying.”

“I prefer to think of myself as an antihero, of course. Surely that merits a bow. Or perhaps a small nod?”

“My name is Eleanor Andrews and I’m the latest in what I’ve been told is a long line of governesses,” the woman told him from the depths of that quilted monstrosity she wore. “I intend to be the last, and if I’m not very much mistaken, the way to ensure that happens is to keep my distance.”

Hugo was used to women making similar announcements. You’re terrible, they’d coo, lashes batting furiously. I’m keeping my distance from you. This usually led directly to the sort of indiscriminate evenings from which he was now abstaining.

He had the lowering realization that this woman—wrapped up in a hideous puffy coat with her chin jutting forth and a scowl across her face—might actually mean it.

“Your Grace,” he murmured.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You should address me as Your Grace, particularly when you imagine you are taking me to task. It adds that extra little touch of pointed disrespect which I find I cannot live without.”

If Eleanor Andrews was appropriately mortified by the fact she’d addressed a peer of the realm—who happened to also be her new boss—so inappropriately, she gave no sign. If anything she seemed to pull herself up straighter in her vast, quilted shroud, and made no attempt to wipe off that scowl.

“A thousand apologies, Your Grace,” she said crisply, as if she wasn’t in the least bit intimidated by him. It made something in Hugo...shift. “I was expecting a ride from the train station. Not a walk in the chilly countryside.”

“Exercise improves the mind as well as the body, I’m told,” he replied, merrily enough. “I myself was blessed with a high metabolism and a keen intelligence, so I’ve never had to put such things to the test. But we can’t all be so lucky.”

There was enough light that he could tell that there was a remarkable sort of honey in the brown of this woman’s eyes as they glittered furiously at him. He couldn’t imagine why that shocked him, but it did. That there should be anything soft about such a bristling, black-clad, evidently humorless female.

That he should notice it.

“Are you suggesting that I am not as lucky as you?” she asked, with exactly the sort of repressed fury Hugo would expect to hear from a woman he’d just obliquely called fat.

“That depends on whether or not you imagine that the storied life of a pampered duke is a matter of luck and circumstance. Rather than fate.”

“Which do you think it is?”

Hugo nearly smiled at that. He couldn’t have said why. It was something to do with the way her eyes gleamed and her surprisingly intriguing mouth was set, flashing more of that annoyance straight at him.

“I appreciate you thinking of my well-being,” she said with what he was forced to concede was admirable calm, all that flashing annoyance notwithstanding. “Your Grace.”

Hugo grinned down at her, hoping she found having to look so far up at him as irritating as he would have.

“I wasn’t aware that the last governess left, though I can’t say I’m surprised. She was a fragile little thing. All anime eyes and protracted spells of weeping in the east wing, or so I’m told. I’m allergic to female tears, you understand. I’ve developed a sixth sense. When a woman cries in my vicinity, I am instantly and automatically transported to the other side of the planet.”

Eleanor only gazed back at him. “I’m not much of a crier.”

Hugo waited.

“Your Grace,” he prodded her again when it was clear she had no intention of saying it. “I wouldn’t insist upon such formality but it does seem to chafe, doesn’t it? How republican of you. And really, Eleanor, you can’t expect to mold a young mind to your will and provide fodder for the therapy bills I’ll be expected to pay out from her trust if you can’t remember the courtesy of a simple form of address. It’s as if you’ve never met a duke before.”

She blinked. “I haven’t.”

“I’m not a particularly good representative. I’m far too scandalous, as mentioned. Perhaps you’ve heard.” He laughed when she did a terrible job of keeping her face blank. “I see you have. No doubt you’re an avid fan of the tabloids and their daily regurgitations of my many sins. I can only hope to be even half as colorful in person.”

“And it’s Miss Andrews.”

It was Hugo’s turn to blink. “Sorry?”

“I would prefer it if you call me Miss Andrews.” She nodded then, a faint inclination of her head, which he supposed was as close to any kind of recognition as he’d get. “Your Grace.”

Something moved in him then, far worse than a mere shift. It felt raw. Dangerous.

Impossible.

“Let me clear something up from the start, Miss Andrews,” he said, while his terrible horse tried to trick him into easing his hold on the reins. “I’m exactly as bad as they say. Worse. I ruin lives with a mere crook of my finger. Yours. The child’s. Random pedestrians minding their own business in the village square. I have so many victims it’s a bit of luck, really, that the country still stands. I’m my own blitzkrieg. If you have a problem with that, Mrs. Redding will be happy to replace you. You need only say the word.”

If that affected this maddening woman in any way, she hid it behind her mountainous coat and that equally dour gray scarf.

“I told you, I have no intention of being replaced.” He couldn’t say he liked the exaggerated note of patience in her voice then. “Certainly not of my own volition. Whether you wish to replace me or not is, of course, entirely up to you.”

“I might.” He arched a brow. “I do detest poachers.”

She eyed him as if he was her charge, not his ward. His ward. He hated even thinking those words. He hated even more the fact that Isobel had done exactly what she’d spitefully promised she’d do, time and again: kept her hooks in him even from beyond the grave.

“You should do as you please, Your Grace, and something tells me you will—”

“It is my gift. My expression of my best self.”

“—but I might suggest you see how I handle the child before you send me packing.”

The child. His ward.

Hugo hated that he was required to think about anyone’s welfare at all when he cared so little for his own. He had extensive staff in place, paid handsomely to think about the health and happiness of all his many tenants and other staff members and various employees, leaving him free to lounge about being as useless as he liked.

Which—he’d read in the papers and heard from a chorus of people who would know, like his own dearly departed father—was all he was good for.

The girl, however, was a different sort of responsibility than real estate in Central London or a selection of islands in the Pacific or a coffee plantation in Africa or whatever else was in his holdings.

To say Hugo bitterly resented this was putting it mildly.

“What an excellent idea,” he murmured. “I’ll see she’s waiting for you in the great hall when you finally make it to the house. It shouldn’t be long. Five minutes’ walk if you keep a good pace.”

“You must be joking.”

“Fair enough. Ten minutes’ walk if your legs are shorter than mine, I suppose. I’m afraid I can’t tell, as you appear to be wearing enough goosedown to leave the entire goose population of the United Kingdom shivering and bare. Assuming that’s what’s making you so...” He nodded at her voluminous black tent. “Puffy.”

“Your hospitality is truly inspiring, Your Grace,” she said after a moment, and the fact she managed to keep her face and voice smooth...poked at him.

He didn’t like it.

Just as he really, really didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t remember the last time anyone or anything had managed to get beneath his skin.

“That is, as ever, my only goal,” he replied.

And then, because he could—because he’d dedicated himself to being every bit as awful as he was expected to be, if not worse—Hugo spun the horse around, galloped off, and left the problematic Miss Eleanor Andrews there to find her own damned way to his house.

And his ward.

And this life of his that he’d never wanted, but had inherited anyway. Some would claim he’d earned it. That he deserved it and more.

That it really was fate, not luck, after all.

Hugo knew it didn’t matter. He was trapped in it all the same.


CHAPTER TWO (#u450f2e33-46fe-5210-85cf-59dbb060dec6)

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Eleanor trudged up to the front of the house at last.

The front door itself rose forbiddingly up over a circular area directly in front of it that was paved with smooth stones and accented by the remnants of a garden turning brown as winter approached.

It seemed like an omen. Though Eleanor did not permit herself to believe in such things, of course.

The closer she’d got to the house, the more she’d wondered exactly why she’d agreed to any of this in the first place. Was it truly necessary that she isolate herself in this creepy old manor house? Was all that lovely money really worth marooning herself in Yorkshire with a man she’d never imagined she’d meet face to face—and didn’t want to meet again, thank you?

And why couldn’t Vivi do something for herself for a change?

But such thoughts made her feel disloyal. A little bit sick to her stomach. It felt like an act of betrayal when Vivi had come so close to losing her own life in that terrible accident. And had fought so hard to stay here. And walk again. Eleanor had been the only one left unscathed.

Sometimes she felt the guilt of that as if it was her own scar, slashed bright and hot across her whole body.

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she told herself briskly, pulling herself together as best she could. “You already took the position.”

She rang the great and imposing bell that hung beside the door before she could think better of it, tugging on the slick old pull once. Then again.

It sounded long and low and deep, like some throwback to medieval times. She half expected knights in shining armor to come cantering up, wittering on about old King Arthur and ladies in lakes.

She was coming over all fanciful. That was what that man had done to her with his smirk and his amusement and his mouth when he was nothing but the same unsavory character she’d read about in the papers all these years. Only worse.

The fact that he was infinitely better-looking than any picture she’d ever seen of him didn’t help. Worse, he was not nearly as fatuous as she’d imagined and he’d been entirely too sardonic besides. Her knees hadn’t felt right since.

But as the door swung inward, she found herself staring not at a disgraceful duke in all his questionable glory, but down into the bright blue eyes and suspicious face of a little girl.

A little girl with silky red-gold hair plaited on either side of her head and a brace of adorable freckles across her nose. A little girl who made Eleanor’s breath catch, because it was impossible to look at her and not see her very famous, very dead mother. Isobel Vanderhaven of the sunny smile and titian hair, who’d looked like everybody’s best friend and the girl next door—if, that was, you happened to live next to one of her parents’ rolling vineyards in South Africa.

“I don’t need a governess,” the child announced at once. In a tone that could only be called challenging.

“Of course you don’t,” Eleanor agreed, and the girl blinked. “Who needs a governess? But you are lucky enough to have one anyway.”

The little girl considered her for a moment, as the October wind blustered and moaned, rushing in from the moors smelling of rain and winter.

“I’m Geraldine.” Her lower lip protruded just slightly, and made her look her age, suddenly. “But you probably know that. They always know that.”

“Of course I know your name,” Eleanor said briskly. “I couldn’t very well take a job if I didn’t know the name of my charge, could I?”

It was clear to Eleanor that this child would keep her standing on the doorstep until the end of time if she didn’t do something about it herself. So she pushed open the door with her free hand, and brushed straight past Geraldine, who watched her with a mixture of surprise and interest.

“They usually just stand in the drive, texting and whingeing,” she piped up.

“Who is ‘they’?” Eleanor reached past Geraldine once she’d stepped inside and shut the door, firmly, which took some doing because it outweighed her by approximately seven tons. And when she turned around to face the hall that had been waiting there behind her, she was glad the little girl didn’t appear to be paying strict attention to her.

Because she was standing in a bloody castle.

Or close enough, anyway. Groves House had looked so grim and brooding from the outside, but here in the spacious foyer, it gleamed. Eleanor couldn’t tell how it was doing that, precisely. Was there gold in the walls themselves? Was it the way the chandeliers hit all the paintings and the elegant furnishings and the rest of the things that seemed to clutter up rich people’s foyers, that she’d only ever seen before on episodes of Downton Abbey?

“Everyone knows my name,” Geraldine was saying with all the self-possession of the very young. “Sometimes they yell it at me in the village. You’re the fifteenth governess so far, did you know that?”

“I did not.”

“Mrs. Redding says I’m disobedient.”

“What do you think?” Eleanor asked. “Are you?”

Geraldine looked a bit thrown by the question. “Maybe.”

“Then you can stop, if you like.” Eleanor eyed the mutinous little face before her and didn’t see any disobedience. She saw a lonely little girl who’d lost her parents and had been sent off to live with a stranger. Eleanor could certainly relate. She ducked her chin so her face was closer to Geraldine’s and whispered the thing that no one had ever bothered to say to her when she’d been heartsick and orphaned, waiting to find out if Vivi would make it through her latest surgery. “It won’t matter either way, you know. Whether you’re good or bad. I can already tell we’ll be great friends and that means we always will. Friends don’t change their minds about each other when things get tough, after all.”

All Geraldine did was blink. Once, then again. But that was enough. Eleanor started unzipping her big coat.

“She’s not any more disobedient than any other small human creature,” came a male voice Eleanor wished she didn’t recognize, wafting down the length of the hall as if it, too, was made of gold. And was set to shine. “She’s seven. Let’s not put the child in a cage so quickly, shall we?”

It took her a moment to find Hugo in all the dizzy brilliance of the bright foyer. But then there he was, sauntering out of one of the connected rooms toward the front door as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

Because of course, he didn’t.

He looked nothing like a duke should, Eleanor thought darkly. No Hooray Henry red trousers or Barbour slung just so for the most hated man in all of England. Not for Hugo. He came towards her in an old, battered pair of jeans. He had his hands thrust into the pockets like some kind of slumming American celebrity. He wore a T-shirt, cleverly ripped here and there, like those Eleanor had seen in the posh shops that Vivi preferred. It was the sort of T-shirt that would’ve looked like a soiled tissue on a lesser man. But Hugo hadn’t been lying about his metabolism. Or anyway, that was how Eleanor tried to view the magnificent specimen of male beauty walking toward her then: in terms of his metabolism.

Because everything on Hugo Grovesmoor’s body was cut to perfection as if he was another piece of statuary in his own hall. His chest was ridiculous, broad at the top and narrow near his hips and stunningly ridged in between. He looked as if he should be racing about in a loincloth, banging on about Sparta. Instead, his dark eyes were the precise shade of a lazy glass of whiskey, his dark hair looked very much as if he’d been galloping around in a bedchamber instead of on horseback, and that little curl in the corner of his mouth was nothing short of disastrous.

Because Eleanor could feel it everywhere. Lighting her up in places she’d long since forgotten about.

She didn’t know what that dark, edgy thing was that wound around inside of her then. What she did know was that it was Hugo’s fault.

“The child is already in a cage,” Eleanor retorted before she could think better of it. She flicked a glance around the vast hall, which was even bigger and more magnificent at a second glance, and just as dizzying, from the plump chandeliers to the acrobatic sconces on the walls. “A large one, I grant you.”

Hugo kept moving toward her, eventually coming to a stop a few feet away. And then they were all three standing there in various degrees of awkwardness, right in front of the big front door.

It was worse when he was close, Eleanor was forced to admit. It made her feel raw and unsteady inside. It had been bad enough when he was up on the back of that giant horse, hooves flailing every which way and that mocking voice of his like a weapon, but Hugo even closer was confusing. Eleanor eyed him balefully, as if that might do something about that bright nonsense sloshing around inside of her and making her feel...things.

Way too many things.

In entirely too many places.

She told herself that it was only that she still had her big, heavy coat on. The coat was the reason she was flushed. Too warm. Almost itchy, somehow. It had nothing at all to do with him.

Next to her, Hugo did nothing to change the impression she’d had of him from across the hall. Or up on that horse, for that matter. And once the shock of his astonishing male beauty wore off—or, if she was more precise, dimmed a slight bit when she managed to breathe—she found that what really exuded from him like his own, very rich and unmistakable scent was all that arrogance.

That smile of his only deepened then. It was as if he could read her mind.

But he directed his attention to Geraldine. “Well?”

The little girl only shrugged, a sullen look on her cute little face.

“No point letting this one settle in like the others, if you’re only going to complain about it later.” Hugo’s voice was...different, Eleanor thought. Not exactly softer, but more careful.

She was so busy trying to figure out what the difference was that she almost missed what he’d said.

“I beg your pardon. Are we discussing my employment?”

Hugo slid that gaze of his back to her. Too lazy. Too hot. She could feel it in too many places. More than before, and hotter.

“We are.” He raised a dark brow. “It appears you’re doing nothing but eavesdropping.”

Eleanor’s teeth hurt, and she unclenched them. “It would be eavesdropping if I was hid behind one of the flower arrangements, blending into all this feverish decor.” She forced herself to smile, and the fact that it was difficult made her uneasy. More than uneasy, but she did it anyway. “I am not eavesdropping. But you are being remarkably inappropriate.”

“It’s a bit of bad form to hurl accusations like that at an innocent child, don’t you think?” Hugo asked lazily, and Eleanor had the strangest thought that he was teasing her.

But why would the Duke of Grovesmoor tease anyone, much less someone as insignificant as Eleanor, a governess he apparently no longer wished to hire? She thrust that aside and concentrated on the only part of this bizarre interaction that she could control. Or try to control, anyway.

“I think all three of us are perfectly aware who I’m speaking to.” Eleanor gazed down at Geraldine then, and this time her smile was genuine. “It won’t hurt my feelings if you’d like me to leave, Geraldine. And I don’t mind it if you say so to my face. But the Duke is very deliberately putting you in a position where you can act out his bad impulses, and that isn’t fair.”

“Life isn’t fair,” Hugo murmured, a bit too dark and smooth for Eleanor’s peace of mind.

Eleanor ignored that, wishing it was as easy to ignore him. “It’s also perfectly okay not to know,” she told the little girl. “We met all of five minutes ago. If you’d like to take a little bit longer to make up your mind, that’s fine.”

“You say that with such authority,” Hugo said. “Almost as if we stand in your house instead of mine.”

Then he looked around as if he’d never laid eyes on the hall before in his life, when Eleanor knew full well that he’d been born here. Apparently, the Duke liked a bit of theater. She filed that away.

“But no,” he continued, as if anyone had argued with him. “It’s the same hall I remember from the whole of my benighted childhood, when governesses far stricter than you failed entirely to make me into a decent man. Portraits of my dreary ancestors lining the walls. Pedigrees as far as the eye can see. Grovesmoors in every direction and back again. Which would suggest that the authority lies with me and not you, would it not?”

“Funny,” Eleanor said coolly, keeping her gaze fixed to his as if she wasn’t the least bit intimidated. Because she certainly shouldn’t have been, and why should it matter to her that his gaze felt as intoxicating as it looked? “The agency is under the impression that in this situation, Geraldine has the authority.”

“Do you think so?” Hugo asked with a dangerous sort of laziness in his voice, then.

She didn’t know what he might have said then. Something like temper stormed about in that gaze of his, making her breath feel heavy and tight in her chest.

But she knew, somehow, that it wasn’t temper. Not quite.

“I like her,” Geraldine chimed in then. “I want her to stay.”

The Duke didn’t shift his eyes from Eleanor’s.

“Your wish is my command, my favorite ward,” he said in that same careful tone, and maybe Eleanor was the only one who could hear all those undercurrents. Or feel them, anyway. Swishing around inside of her as if she’d had entirely too much to drink.

As if he was a new brand of spirit served in far more than the usual measures.

Everything felt hot. Entirely too sharp, as if there were some unseen hand clenched around them, gripping them tight. This close, Eleanor was sure that she could feel the heat of the Duke’s body, making that T-shirt of his seem sensible. Making her feel that much warmer and uncomfortable in her own skin.

It’s only the coat, she told herself desperately, but he was still so close. And much too tall. He towered over her the same way he had on that damned horse, and she assured herself there was no particular reason she should have the image of its flailing hooves, rearing up over her, when it was only a man standing in front of her in an entryway. Just a man. No dangerous animal in sight.

She was sure he almost said something, but he didn’t. Instead, he shifted. He pulled one hand out of his jeans pocket, and lifted it. That was all. If she’d seen a stranger do it on the street, she wouldn’t have thought of it as any kind of gesture. It seemed accidental.

But it wasn’t, she realized the next moment, because suddenly the hall was filled with people.

Geraldine was swept away in the care of two clucking nannies. Someone took Eleanor’s bags, another person took her coat, and then suddenly there was a very neatly dressed, efficient-looking older woman bearing down on her with a tight smile on her mouth and her steel gray hair tucked back in a bun that looked a great deal like Eleanor’s own.

“Mrs. Redding, I presume,” Eleanor said as the woman drew close.

“Miss Andrews.” The woman greeted her in the same briskly matter-of-fact tone Eleanor recognized from the telephone calls they’d had. “If you’ll come with me.”

As Eleanor followed her deeper into the depths of the great house, she realized that the Duke was nowhere to be seen. Then he’d disappeared in all the commotion.

She told herself she was relieved.

“I do apologize that there was no one waiting to collect you from the station,” the housekeeper said as she strode through the maze of halls, not pausing for an instant to give Eleanor a glimpse of the splendor closing in on all sides. Eleanor found she was grateful. She was afraid that if she stopped or stared for too long at any one thing, in any of the many beautiful rooms they hurried past, she’d be mesmerized for days. “It was an oversight.”

Eleanor doubted that, for some reason. Or she doubted that this woman made any oversights, perhaps. But this was her first day, and she had the distinct impression she’d already irritated her employer, so there was no reason to dig that ditch any deeper.

“I had a lovely walk,” she said instead. “It was a nice chance to take in the area. And quite atmospheric.”

“The moors are nothing if not filled with atmosphere,” the housekeeper said, an undercurrent in her voice that made Eleanor’s ears prick up. “You’ll want to be careful of the winds, however. They crop up out of nowhere and howl terribly wherever they go. They have a way of getting under your skin, you’ll find. Whether you’re aware of it or not.”

Eleanor didn’t think Mrs. Redding was talking about the Yorkshire wind. Or not only about the Yorkshire wind.

“I’ll be certain to dress appropriately for the elements, then,” Eleanor said after a moment, her tone even.

The woman led her down an endless hallway, then stopped at the far end.

“These are your rooms,” Mrs. Redding said, waving Eleanor into the waiting suite. “I hope it will be sufficient. I’m afraid it’s a bit less spacious than some of the previous governesses were hoping for.”

Eleanor wanted to tell the woman she had been expecting a closet, or perhaps a cot down in a basement. Wherever the servants were kept in a place like this.

But she couldn’t get the words out of her mouth, because she was too busy being overwhelmed. Again.

Mrs. Redding had said rooms not room, and she hadn’t misspoken.

The flat she shared with Vivi could easily have fit into one part of the large room she walked into first, and it took her long, stunned moments to realize that it was, in fact, her own sitting room. And Mrs. Redding was still going, straight into the next room, which it took Eleanor another long beat to realize was a great closet. For the grand wardrobe she didn’t possess.

The bedroom itself was on the far side of a huge bathroom that looked like a spa to Eleanor’s untutored eyes, and as she walked into it, trailing behind Mrs. Redding, Eleanor was certain that this was the biggest dwelling space she’d ever been in.

One side of the room was dominated by a massive four-poster bed with carved wood posts and more carved wood as a canopy over top, like some kind of queen’s bower. There was another fireplace, and more places to sit around it, as if the whole sitting room wasn’t enough.

Eleanor’s breathing had gone a bit shallow. But she pulled it together, and smiled serenely at Mrs. Redding.

“It will do,” she murmured, trying her best to sound dry and sophisticated and professional. Instead of like an overexcited child in a candy store.

After the older woman left her, with instructions about where and when Eleanor was to present herself later for a tour and a breakdown of her duties, Eleanor found herself standing in the middle of this bedroom she couldn’t imagine ever calling her own. If possible, she felt more out of place than she had downstairs, where somehow the Duke’s arrogance had made her forget herself and Geraldine’s fierce, obvious loneliness had caught at her.

But here in these sumptuous rooms, she had nothing to fight. No one to defend. Only elegant emptiness all around.

Nothing but herself.

Whoever the hell that was.


CHAPTER THREE (#u450f2e33-46fe-5210-85cf-59dbb060dec6)

HUGO HAD NO idea what had gotten into him.

He didn’t know what it was about starchy, overly puffy-coated Eleanor Andrews that scraped beneath his skin. But there was no denying the fact that he, Hugo Grovesmoor, who had never chased a woman in his entire life, had been lying in wait for this one.

It was extraordinary.

Hugo told himself he needed to see what on earth was hidden beneath that enormous coat of hers, that was all. That not knowing might keep him up at night. Was she a marshmallow creature like the monster in that old movie? Or had she hid her true, svelte form away in a billowy suit of armor?

And he knew when she didn’t back down in the foyer or unzip that great horror of a coat more than an inch or two that he needed to retreat back to his part of the house, carry on living the life of ease and leisure and loathing the whole of the world begrudged him these days, and forget all about his ward and the governess she’d decided to favor on sight. He knew it.

So he had no explanation for why he found himself lurking about in the wing he’d given over to Geraldine because he knew Mrs. Redding was giving Eleanor a tour and showing her where and how she’d be expected to do her work. The governess’s quarters were in this same wing, one floor above, right up the nearby stairs—a fact that there was absolutely no reason at all for Hugo to keep reciting to himself.

“I didn’t expect to see you, Your Grace,” Mrs. Redding said when she swept out of the nursery that was now a playroom and found Hugo inspecting the rather horrifying paintings hanging on the walls in the hall that he remembered from his own childhood.

“I can’t imagine why not, Mrs. Redding.” Hugo kept studying the garish painting in front of him as he spoke. “I do own the house and am known to be in residence. Surely I could be expected to turn up sooner or later.”

“In the child’s wing? Unlikely.” The older woman could still manage to infuse every syllable with genteel condemnation. A true skill, he’d always thought. “And yet here you are.”

Hugo turned then, smiling faintly at Mrs. Redding as he looked behind her to where Eleanor stood.

And he understood in an instant that he’d made a terrible mistake.

Because Eleanor was not as puffy and large as her coat had suggested. Nor was she as whipcord-skinny as a gazelle’s thigh, as many of her predecessors had been, eyes gleaming with avarice and ambition.

Quite the opposite, god help him.

The damned woman had the body of a goddess. A naughty fertility goddess. Eleanor had lush hips and generous breasts, sweetly separated by a tiny waist that made him hunger to test the span of it with his own hands. She was dressed in a perfectly conservative and appropriately opaque blouse over sensible trousers with a cardigan tossed on besides, and she still looked like an old pinup model. Her body was so markedly opulent that it made her harshly scraped back hair all the more intriguing—in that Hugo wanted to get his hands in it. Or feel it all over his naked body while she was engaged in other things, none of them involving any sort of harsh scraping at all.

Hugo knew he needed to stop. Now.

He needed to turn around this minute and get himself away from her, especially when she frowned at him from behind Mrs. Redding, and from beneath that fringe of hers. The legions of other women who had come this house and tried it on with him had pouted at him. They’d simpered and giggled. They’d made eyes at him over his ward’s head and had dressed in preposterously inappropriate clothing while supposedly out taking walks on the grounds in the middle of rainstorms in the hope of attracting his notice.

Eleanor Andrews, on the other hand, barreled about in the ugliest coat he’d ever beheld in his life as if she didn’t care whether or not she was found attractive, made no secret of the fact she held Hugo in rather low regard, and aimed disapproving frowns at him while she stood on his property as if she didn’t expect to receive her salary from his accounts.

It was almost as if she didn’t want anything from him.

That notion was so revolutionary it shook him a little. He found himself very nearly frowning himself, but caught it just in time. Hugo Grovesmoor did not frown. That might indicate he had thoughts, and that would never do. He was considered nothing more than a vessel of pointless and predatory evil, sent to earth to ruin every good thing in it at will.

He’d learned his place a long time ago.

And yet, “I’ll finish giving Miss Andrews her tour of the premises,” he heard himself say.

And then wondered if the rest of his admittedly impure thoughts were being broadcast on his face when both women stood there staring back at him. Then again, that was the benefit of owning half of England, wasn’t it? He could bloody well do as he liked.

“Was I unclear?” he asked softly.

Mrs. Redding huffed slightly at that, but excused herself in the next moment because bristle as she might, the woman knew her place. And that left Hugo exactly where he shouldn’t be, under any circumstances. Alone with Eleanor.

His ward’s latest governess who happened to have the kind of body that made him feel like an adolescent boy all over again, all cock and delicious promise.

“How remarkably kind of you to take time out of your busy schedule to welcome a lowly member of your staff, Your Grace,” Eleanor said as Mrs. Redding’s steps faded away, down the stairs and off into the busier parts of the house. Leaving them alone with nothing but the wind outside and the far-off sounds of Geraldine at her dinner on the other end of this hall, chattering away with her usual brace of nannies. “When I assume you must have any number of urgent ducal matters that require your attention.”

“Dozens at every moment,” Hugo agreed cheerfully, when what he actually had was the good sense to hire excellent people to handle such things. “And yet here I am, ready to wait on you hand and foot like a good host.”

She smiled. It was a frozen sort of smile that shouldn’t have hit him like that. Like a lick of heat in the place he was entirely too hard already.

“But I am not a guest, Your Grace,” Eleanor said stiffly, as if he’d insulted her by suggesting otherwise.

“I’m certain I heard explicit criticism regarding my hospitality, did I not? Outside, when there was some question as to whether or not you were poaching from the estate?”

“There was never any real question about whether or not I was poaching, surely.”

“And yet I felt as if I had many questions, none of which were answered. And many more of which were complicated by your performance in my foyer.”

She made no apparent attempt to keep herself from frowning at him all the more furiously. “My ‘performance’?”

Hugo waited, brows raised expectantly, and her frown deepened.

“Your Grace,” she managed to get out, sounding even stiffer than before.

Hugo tried as hard as he could to keep his mind free of any thoughts about Geraldine. Lest they stray from the girl he’d been called upon to care for, and end up on her mother instead.

And the less he thought about Isobel, the better.

The less anyone thought about Isobel, the better, in his opinion. Not that anyone had asked Hugo’s opinion on Isobel in quite some time.

But as was to be expected, thoughts of Isobel and the damage she’d done—and still did despite the fact she was dead and buried—only made him angrier.

Not that he was angry, of course.

Hugo Grovesmoor was never angry. Angry was for people who had emotions, and it had been established long ago that he lacked that particular human frailty. In every paper possible. Over and over again.

“I don’t know what else to call it but a performance.” He felt his gaze go narrow. “Perhaps you can explain to me why you gave a little girl such false hope. Is that your angle?”

“Geraldine is a lovely young girl,” Eleanor said in her prim way that made Hugo feel more of the sorts of things he was famous for never, ever feeling. In a great mad rush that made his fingers itch to touch her. “She does seem lonely and a bit lost, if I’m honest.” Eleanor’s startling gaze, frank and sturdy on his, made an interesting sort of heat pool inside of him. Hugo didn’t like it. But not liking it, it turned out, didn’t make it go away. “I look forward to being able to help her in some way. Assuming, of course, I’m allowed to do that.”

“Do you imagine I would prevent you from doing the job for which I hired you in the first place? You have the most curious notions, Miss Andrews. Quite a fanciful imagination, it appears. Are you entirely certain that you are the best choice for a little girl you consider lost and lonely?”

The unfathomable woman shrugged as if it was no matter. “Whether I’m a good choice or bad choice, it appears I’m the only governess here.”

“A circumstance that could change in an instant. On a whim. My whim.”

Another shrug. “There’s nothing I can do to control your whims, Your Grace. Is there? Best to muddle along and hope for the best, I think.”

“The best being today’s display? Telling a vulnerable child you’ll always be her friend before you’ve taken off your coat or unpacked? Without knowing if she even likes you?” He shook his head. “Most women in your position play their games with me, Miss Andrews. They tend to leave the girl alone.”

She stood there in her frumpy little outfit that should have made her look dumpy and instead made him think that he’d never seen a woman more magnetic. Especially since she didn’t seem to be the least bit aware of it.

“All the more reason that someone ought to pay attention to the poor thing,” she said briskly. “She’s thirsty for a little companionship, clearly.”

Eleanor was still eyeing him as if he was something distinctly unsavory as she spoke. And there was absolutely nothing new about that look. Hugo had seen that particular expression on more faces than he could begin to count. Friends, family members—or what few of each remained, anyway—and strangers on the street alike. He wasn’t usually a receptacle for friendly glances, a fact of his existence he’d become inured to long since.

But for some reason, seeing that same old look on this woman’s face dug into him. As if that you are judged and found wanting gaze she kept trained on him was attached to a sharp implement and she was raking it over his skin, if not jabbing it straight into his gut.

“Why do you want this job?” He didn’t know why he bothered asking when he already knew. There were two reasons women applied for this position and Eleanor clearly wasn’t thinking she’d angle her way into bed, which was a crying shame any way he looked at it. That left the money.

“Why wouldn’t I want this job?” she asked, very coolly, in reply. “Fourteen other women had this job before me. It’s obviously very popular.”

“That’s not an answer. And I can actually tell the difference between an answer and a nonanswer, which I accept may come as something of a surprise to you.” He smiled at her, and made sure to show all his teeth. “I’m not just a pretty face, Miss Andrews.”

If possible, her frown darkened even further. “I’m not following this conversation at all. Have you decided, now that I’ve actually moved into this house and have already met your ward, that it might be a good time to conduct a personal interview?”

“And if I am?”

“I think it’s a little late. Don’t you?”

“And I think, unless I’m very much mistaken or have succumbed to death without my knowledge—which should make this conversation significantly more upsetting than you seem to find it at present—that I am your employer. Or am I lost in some kind of dread fever dream, imagining myself the Duke of Grovesmoor?”

Hugo didn’t know exactly when he realized he’d moved a little too close to her. Or perhaps she’d moved to close to him, he couldn’t tell. All he knew was that they were no longer standing across from each other on different sides of the wide hallway. Instead they’d somehow closed the distance, and had met in the middle now.

Entirely too close to each other for Hugo’s peace of mind, or whatever passed for that state. Because when he was closer to her, he was even more fascinated by her. He’d entertained the notion that it was the novelty of that hideous coat she’d worn earlier that had intrigued him, but no. He was still intrigued now.

More so.

The goddess curves didn’t exactly help the situation, especially when she put her hands on her hips, which only made her lush figure that much more impossible to ignore.

“I don’t know if you’re imagining it or not,” Eleanor said in a tone that only just managed to qualify as polite, “but if you’re not the Duke of Grovesmoor, you’ve certainly managed to take on an identity with a remarkable amount of baggage.”

Even that little swipe at his history intrigued him, because it was so direct. She was unlike any woman he’d ever encountered, even without that eyesore of a coat. It was something about the way she stood, wholly unimpressed and unintimidated by him, hands on her hips and her brown gaze utterly clear of any attempt at feminine wiles. It was the belligerent tilt of her jaw and the way she was clearly endeavoring to look down her nose at him from beneath her razor-sharp fringe. He imagined she did the same with her charges when they got uppity, and it didn’t seem to matter to her that she was much shorter than he was.

And Hugo realized in that moment that he was perfectly content with being hated. He was used to being the focus of any number of dark feelings, vicious rumors, and random character assassinations. But he wasn’t used to outright defiance. And certainly not to his face. For a man who had always considered himself entirely too modern for his circumstances, Hugo found that there was more than a little Ancient Duke in him than he’d ever imagined before. Because he wanted to pull rank. Badly.

Except it was more than that. He didn’t want to crush her. The truth was, this woman made him hungry.

Hugo wanted a taste of her so badly that he could feel the need of it marching inside of him, as if his body was staging a full-scale mutiny. He didn’t think he’d ever felt anything like it in his life. Hell. He knew he hadn’t.

He was ravenous.

“I would suggest, Miss Andrews,” he said, very carefully and very deliberately, and he kept his damned hands to himself despite the fact it took a Herculean application of self-will, “that you endeavor to recall which one of us is the Duke and which one the governess.”

If Hugo expected her to be cowed by that, he was in for a surprise.

“I am not likely to forget that anytime soon,” Eleanor replied without appearing to take even a moment to pause or rethink a thing. Not her belligerence or the way she stood there and took him on, exactly as she had outside. And certainly not her position—here in this house, much less here, in his grasp. “I was promised very little interaction with the owner of the house, Your Grace. That you were not available, ever, was made abundantly clear in all of the interviews.”

“Most of the enterprising women who apply for the position want to see me, Miss Andrews. You must realize that it’s the primary reason they condescend to grace these halls with their presence. And the primary reason they are sacked shortly thereafter.”

She tilted her head slightly to one side. “And what did they do to get sacked?”

“I will leave that to your imagination.”

“Did you chase all of them down on the grounds of the estate, charging about on a great big horse?”

He almost laughed at that. And it might have been that which floored him the most.

“And I ask again, why do you want this job? Because you don’t seem to understand the usual boundaries that govern a woman in your position. Or have the faintest sense of self-preservation.”

“I beg your pardon, Your Grace,” she said in that same brisk tone, as if she thought she was managing him. As if both he and Geraldine were under her care, and he was the more difficult one by far. “All I’d like to do is start working. There’s a little girl having her tea at the other end of this hall and it would be nice to get to know her a bit before our lessons start. If there isn’t anything else...?”

“I am the boss, Miss Andrews,” he reminded her. From between his teeth. “You are the employee. Everything about the way you are speaking to me is disrespectful, not to mention foolish. Why would you try to antagonize the person who pays your spectacularly generous salary?”

Her frown smoothed out a bit, though she didn’t precisely soften. And still, Hugo wanted to taste that faint crease between her brows, where the edge of her fringe kissed her skin the way he wanted to do.

“In point of fact, I won’t be paid for two weeks,” she said after a moment, as if she couldn’t help herself. Maybe she really couldn’t.

He couldn’t have said why that notion washed through him like a new sort of heat.

“A notable distinction,” Hugo murmured.

And then, because he loved nothing more than complicating any given situation beyond repair, the better to make it worse, he kissed her.

They were standing so close that it seemed almost impossible to avoid for another second. Maybe that was his excuse. He slid his palm over her cheek, marveling at the sensation of such sweet, silken skin beneath his hand despite how severely she’d been regarding him all this time, and then it was the easiest thing in the world to hold her fast and claim her mouth with his.

And then they were in real trouble, because she tasted like magic.





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