Duke of Midnight

Miss Greaves merely looked a little curious. “Your Grace.”

Percy, who had been investigating the tall reeds by the edge of the pond, lifted his head at the sound of her voice and appeared to take it as invitation to run to her and attempt to hurl himself against her legs.

Miss Greaves gave the dog a stern look before he’d even reached her, and said simply, “Off.”

Percy collapsed at her feet, his tongue hanging out the side of his jaws, ears back as he gazed up at her adoringly.

Maximus shot the dog an irritated look as he turned and began walking back around the ornamental pond. Miss Greaves fell into step beside him.

“I trust that you rested well last night, Miss Greaves?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” she replied.

“Good.”

He nodded, unable to think of anything else to say. Usually he disliked company on his morning walk, but for some reason, Miss Greaves’s presence was almost… soothing. He glanced sideways at her and noticed for the first time that her feet were bare. Long, elegant toes flexed against the ground as she walked. They were quite dirty from the forest floor and the sight, if anything, should’ve filled him with disgust for such a shocking display of impropriety.

Yet disgust was the exact opposite of his reaction.

“Did you build this?” Her voice was low and rather pleasing as she gestured to the tower folly they were approaching.

He shook his head. “My father. My mother saw something similar on a trip to Italy and was quite taken with the idea of a romantic ruin. Father had a tendency to indulge her.”

She glanced curiously at him, but continued walking.

He cleared his throat. “We spent a great deal of time here at Pelham House when they were alive.”

“But not afterward?”

His jaw tightened. “No. Cousin Bathilda preferred London for raising my sisters, and I thought I should remain with them as the head of the family.”

He caught her odd look out of the corner of his eye. “But… forgive me, but weren’t you a boy when the duke and duchess died?”

“Murdered.” He couldn’t quite keep the rasp from his voice.

She stopped. “What?”

Her naked toes were curled into the loam, white and soft and strangely erotic. He raised his eyes, looking at her plainly. It was useless to try and avoid pain. “My parents were murdered in St. Giles nineteen years ago, Miss Greaves.”

She didn’t give him any useless platitudes. “How old were you?”

“Fourteen.”

“That’s hardly old enough to become the head of a family.” Her gentleness made something bleed inside of him.

“It is when one is the Duke of Wakefield,” he said curtly. Odd that she bothered arguing with him over this now. No one had at the time—not after he’d started talking again—not even Cousin Bathilda.

“You must’ve been a very determined boy,” was all she said.

There was nothing to say to that, and for a minute they tramped through the woods companionably.

The greyhounds bounded ahead, while Percy flushed a frog and began a rather comical chase.

“What are their names?” she asked, nodding at the dogs.

“That’s Belle”—he pointed to the slightly taller greyhound bitch, her coat a lovely gold and russet—“and that’s Starling, Belle’s daughter. The spaniel is Percy.”

She nodded seriously. “Those are good dog names.”

He shrugged. “Phoebe names them for me.”

Her odd little half smile appeared at the mention of his sister. “I was glad to see she was here. She does so enjoy social events.”

He glanced at her swiftly. Her tone was neutral, but he felt the implied disapproval in her words. “She’s blind—or as near to as to make no difference. I’ll not see Phoebe hurt—either physically or emotionally. She’s vulnerable.”

“She might be blind, Your Grace, but I believe she’s stronger than you think.”

He looked away from her alluring bare toes. Who was she to tell him how to take care of his sister? Phoebe was barely twenty years of age. “Two years ago my sister fell because she didn’t see a step, Miss Greaves. She broke her arm.” His lips twisted at the memory of Phoebe’s face white with pain. “You may think me overprotective, but I assure you I do know what is best for my sister.”

She was silent at that, though he doubted she’d changed her mind over the matter. He frowned, irritated, almost as if he regretted his cold words.

The folly loomed in front of them and they stopped to look at it.

Miss Greaves cocked her head. “It’s rather like Rapunzel’s tower.”

Big blocks of artfully weathered dark gray stone made a round tower with a single, low arched opening.

He raised an eyebrow. “I’d always imagined Rapunzel’s tower taller.”

She tilted her head back to eye the top of the little building, and the long line of her pale throat was caught in a beam of sunlight. A pulse beat delicately in the soft juncture of her neck and collarbone.

He looked away. “Certainly this would be no obstacle for a fit man to climb.”

She glanced at him, and he thought he saw that tiny smile at the edge of her lips. “Are you saying you’d scale these walls for a damsel in distress, Your Grace?”

“No.” His mouth tightened. “Just that it’s possible.”

She hummed under her breath. Percy romped up and dropped a sadly mangled, dead frog at her feet, then backed away and sat proudly by his prize, looking at Miss Greaves as if expecting praise.

She absently ruffled the spaniel’s ears. “You’d leave poor Rapunzel to her fate?”

“If a lady were so silly as to get herself locked in a stone tower,” he said drily, “I’d break down the door and climb the stairs to help her from the building.”

“But Rapunzel’s tower had no door, Your Grace.”

He kicked aside the dead frog. “Then, yes, I suppose I would be forced to scale the tower walls.”

“But you certainly wouldn’t enjoy it,” she murmured.

He merely looked at her. Was she trying to make him into some romantic hero? She didn’t strike him as a silly chit. Her eyes were a dark, soft gray, lovely and alluring, but her gaze was as steady and bold as any man’s.

He glanced away first, his lips twisting. “Anyway, it’s not Rapunzel’s tower. It’s the Moon Maiden’s.”

“What?”

He cleared his throat. What had possessed him to tell her that? “Mother always said that this was the Moon Maiden’s tower.”

She looked at him with those bold gray eyes. “Well, there must be a story in that.”

He shrugged. “She used to tell it to me when I was very young. Something about a sorcerer who fell in love with the Moon Maiden. He built a tower to try and be closer to her and walled himself inside.”

She stared at him for a moment as if waiting for something. “And?”

He glanced at her, puzzled. “And, what?”

She widened her eyes. “How does the story end? Did the sorcerer win his Moon Maiden?”

“Of course not,” he said irritably. “She lived on the moon and was quite unattainable. I suppose he must’ve starved or pined away or fallen off the wall at some point.”

She sighed. “That’s the least romantic story I’ve ever heard.”

“Well it wasn’t my favorite,” he said, sounding defensive to even his own ears. “I liked the ones about giant killers much better.”

“Hmm,” she answered noncommittally. “Can one go inside?”

Instead of answering he strode to the arched entryway, a bit hidden by briars. Ruthlessly, he pulled them aside, ignoring the scrapes on his fingers, then gestured for her to walk in ahead.

She glanced at his hands, but made no comment as she passed him.

There was a spiral staircase immediately inside, and he watched as she lifted her skirts to climb it. A bare ankle flashed and then the dogs pushed past him to follow her eagerly.

He followed her as well, but naturally not as eagerly as the dogs. At least that was what he told himself.

The staircase opened onto a small stone platform. He made the last step and joined her by the low wall, which was crenellated like a medieval castle’s battlements.

She braced her hands straight-armed on the wall and leaned over to look. The folly wasn’t high—no more than a single story—yet one had a nice view of the pond and the surrounding woods. Belle reared up on her hind legs beside her to look as well, while Percy whined and paced, unable to see. A gentle breeze teased a few strands of hair at Miss Greaves’s temple, and he couldn’t help but think she looked like a ship’s figurehead—proud and somewhat wild and ready for adventure.

What an extraordinarily foolish thought.

“It’s quite silly, isn’t it?” she said after a moment, almost as if speaking to herself.

He shrugged. “A folly.”

She cocked her head, looking at him. “Was your father a man given to amusements?”

He remembered the strong hands, the kind but somber eyes. “No, not much.”

She nodded. “Then he loved your mother quite a lot, didn’t he?”

He caught his breath at her words, the loss as bleak and frozen as if it’d happened yesterday. “Yes.”

“You’re lucky.”

“Lucky” wasn’t an attribute most people assigned to him. “Why?”

She closed her eyes and tilted her face to the sun. “My father was mad.”

He looked at her sharply. Craven had made his report last night. The late Viscount Kilbourne had been estranged from his own father, the Earl of Ashridge, and the rest of his family, and had been known for making wild, unfortunate investments—and, at his worst, raving in public.

He supposed the normal thing to do would be to offer some word of sympathy, but he’d long ago used up all his tolerance for polite, meaningless phrases. Besides. She’d been brave enough to forgo the usual false comfort when he’d told her of his own loss. It seemed only just to offer her the same dignity.

Still, he couldn’t help a small frown as he thought of her as a small girl, living with an unpredictable sire. “Were you frightened?”

She glanced at him curiously. “No. One always thinks one’s upbringing—one’s family—is perfectly normal, don’t you think?”

He’d never considered the matter: dukes weren’t, generally speaking, considered normal. “In what way?”

She shrugged, her faced tilted toward the sun again. “One’s own family and situation are all one knows as a child. Therefore they are, by default, normal. I thought everyone had a papa who sometimes stayed awake all night writing philosophical papers, only to burn them all in a rage in the morning. It was only when I was old enough to notice that other fathers didn’t act like my own that I realized the truth.”

He swallowed, oddly perturbed by her recitation. “And your mother?”

“My mother was an invalid,” she said, her voice precise, unemotional. “I rarely remember them in the same room together.”

“You have a brother,” he replied, testing.

Her brow clouded. “Yes. My twin, Apollo. He’s in Bedlam.” She turned to look at him, her eyes wide open and sharp. “But then you already know that. My brother is notorious and you’re the type of man to find out all he can about a prospective wife.”

There was no reason to feel shame so he neither denied nor confirmed that he’d had her investigated along with her cousin. He simply held her gaze, waiting.

She sighed, turning away from the wall. “Lady Penelope will want me soon.”

He followed her down the short staircase, watching her level shoulders, the vulnerable angle of her nape as she bent her head to watch her steps, the companionable bump of Percy against her skirts. It would be the height of idiocy for the Duke of Wakefield to pursue the cousin of the woman he wanted as wife. And yet, for the first time in his life, Maximus wanted to let the man rule him instead of the title.