But he was not going to read the damned book. Poetry made his head hurt. He dealt in fact. The aesthetic was beyond him. His was not a soul given to note the beauty of a country sky or the verdant blades of summer grass. He did not find higher meaning in the petals of flowers or the lips of a woman.
At least, he had not. Not until Isabella.
“Is Your Grace certain I cannot fetch you tea?”
The question from the threshold, at least the fifth time the query had been offered, had him snatching back his hand as if the poetry volume had singed him. Or as if he had been caught about to steal. Perhaps neither was far from the truth.
“No, madam,” he told the servant. “Thank you.”
She curtsied deeply, then emitted a nervous giggle he knew had everything to do with the distinction of a duke paying her mistress a call and nothing to do with true humor. An odd creature, this Betsy, to be sure. As he watched her disappear, he wondered if Isabella did not have anyone else to aid her here. Surely the running of a household of this size could not be managed with Isabella and a lone maid?
And who was here to protect her? The street was safe enough. Certainly, it was a far cry from the rookeries. However, he had never in his life seen a woman living on her own. It was strange. Unsettling. As was the realization that he was worrying about Isabella Hilgrove. That he cared.
He was not meant to care.
Still, his fingers wandered back to the poetry volume by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Giving in to temptation, he snatched it up. But as he flipped it open, he made a discovery he had not expected. An inscription written in bold scrawl.
Miss Isabella Hilgrove
From her most ardent and affectionate friend
Lambert
Instantly, his mind traveled to the Lord Lambert he knew, a viscount, the only man who would sign his name as a title. Heir to the Earl of Denton. They were old Etonian chums, though Lambert had turned into something of a useless fribble with age. Benedict recalled a pale, quiet youth who had been inclined to philosophy. Later, a sallow-faced fop who was always fawning over the latest artist or writer to arrive from Paris. He had married some years ago at the behest of the earl, who ruled his family with the iron fist of a true tyrant.
Surely this Lambert and the Lambert who was Isabella’s ardent and affectionate friend were not the same? It made no logical sense that her path would have crossed with a viscount’s, or that Lord Lambert would have inscribed a volume of poetry in such personal and romantic fashion.
And yet, for all her claims that she was of a different social strata, her speech, conduct, intelligence, and the surprising signs of prosperity in her home all suggested a woman of means. Perhaps not a lady, but not a costermonger’s daughter, either. The scrawl seemed to mock him, so jarring and unexpected.
Well, what had he thought? Had he truly believed a woman as lush and sensual in nature as Isabella Hilgrove would have never been appreciated by a man before him? Good God, the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Lord Lambert and the swain who had professed himself Isabella’s most ardent and affectionate friend were the same. And if the positioning of the book suggested what he thought it did, that she had been recently reading it…
After he had kissed her and made her come in his orangery, or before, damn it?
He knew a surge of jealousy so sudden and virulent, his hands shook and his gut clenched. Lambert and Isabella?
“Your Grace.”
Her cool voice interrupted his inner torment. He had been so mired in the depths of his thoughts that he had somehow failed to sense her presence. He drank her in now. She was dressed in her weeds once more, hair pulled tightly into a modest chignon at her crown, a few loose tendrils curling round her face. How had he failed to hear the door? Failed to note the way the very air seemed to change whenever she entered a chamber?
He was holding the evidence of his invasion of her privacy in his hand, but it was too late now to hide his curiosity. He snapped the book closed and bowed. “Isabella.”
He could not bear to refer to her formally after what they had shared in that orangery. By God, she had shown him a richness of ecstasy he had never imagined existed. For the past two nights, he had lain awake in his bed, her phantom scent on the air, thoughts of her as impossible to remove as an ink stain, blotting out all else. When she had walked away from him, he had been unable to resist lifting the fingers he had used to pleasure her to his lips. He knew her taste now, musky and sweet, like honey.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him coldly. “And need I remind you to call me Miss Hilgrove?”
If he had expected a warm welcome or even an acknowledgement of what had passed between them, he knew better now. Fair enough. If she intended to pretend she had never unraveled in his arms or spent against his fingers, he would allow her to cling to her falsehoods.
He inclined his head. “I need to speak with you.”
But he would be damned if he called her Miss Hilgrove.
“I am not at home,” she told him, and then she spun on her heel and quit the room.
What the hell?
How quickly their positions had changed. Not long ago, he had denied
