More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress Read Online Free PDF Page B

RAISE HIS glass all the way to his eye, grotesquely magnifying it, while his other hand came to rest on top of the pile of letters in his lap. He was being enormously toplofty, of course, trying to frighten her. And half succeeding. But it would be certain suicide to show it.
    His servants, she had gathered at breakfast, were all terrified of him, especially when he was in one of his black moods, as he was this morning, according to his valet. And he looked rather formidable, even clad as he was now in dressing gown and slippers over a crisp white shirt and expertly tied neckcloth.
    He was a powerful-looking, dark-haired man with black eyes, prominent nose, and thin lips in a narrow face, whose habitual expression appeared to be both harsh and cynical. And arrogant.
    Of course, Jane conceded, this must not be one of his better days.
    She had approached the room with Mr. Quincy, the duke’s pleasant, gentle-mannered secretary, and had decided to be what she was supposed to be—a quiet, meek nurse who was fortunate to have this position even if only for three weeks.
    But it was difficult not to be herself—as she had discovered at great cost almost a month ago. Her stomachlurched and she withdrew her mind firmly from those particular memories.
    â€œI beg your pardon?” he said now, lowering his glass to his chest again.
    A rhetorical question. He did not, she guessed, suffer from defective hearing.
    â€œYou were told to stay in bed for at least three weeks and keep your leg elevated,” she reminded him. “Yet here you sit with your foot on the floor and obviously in pain. I can tell from the tension in your face.”
    â€œThe tension in my face,” he told her with an ominous narrowing of his eyes, “is the result of a giant headache and of your colossal impudence.”
    Jane ignored him. “Is it not foolish to take risks,” she asked, “merely because it would be tedious to lie abed?”
    Men really were foolish. She had known several just like him in her twenty years—men whose determination to be men made them reckless of their health and safety.
    He leaned back in his chair and regarded her in silence while despite herself she felt prickles of apprehension crawl up her spine. She would probably find herself out on the pavement with her pathetic bundle of belongings in ten minutes’ time, she thought. Perhaps without her bundle.
    â€œMiss Ingleby.”
He made her name sound like the foulest curse. “I am six and twenty years old. I have held my title and all the duties and responsibilities that go with it for nine years, since the death of my father. It is a long time since anyone spoke to me as if I were a naughty schoolboy in need of a scolding. It will be a long time before I will tolerate being spoken to thus again.”
    There was no answer to that. Jane ventured none. She folded her hands before her and looked steadily at him. He was not handsome, she decided. Not at all. But there was a raw masculinity about him that must make him impossibly attractive to any woman who liked to be bullied, dominated, or verbally abused. And there were many such women, she believed.
    She had had quite enough of such men. Her stomach churned uncomfortably again.
    â€œBut you are quite right in one thing, you will be pleased to know,” he admitted. “I am in pain, and not just from this infernal headache. Keeping my foot on the floor is clearly not the best thing to be doing. But I’ll be damned before I will lie prone on my bed for three weeks merely because my attention was distracted long enough during a duel for someone to put a hole in my leg. And I will be double damned before I will allow myself to be drugged into incoherence again merely so that the pain might be dulled. In the music room next door you will find a footstool beside the hearth. Fetch it.”
    She wondered again as she turned to leave the room what exactly her duties would be for