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have done. She’d heard that servants in some households were required to turn and face the wall when their masters appeared.
    Instead, the duke indulged in a look that would have been horribly rude for the liberty of it. If she’d had a daughter and a man looked at her that way, she would have called him out for the hot, fierce gaze that freely swept slowly over her breasts, the dip in her back, and the rise of her bottom. It was so brazen, so bold, that she could feel it.
    An hour later she was still feeling it—the heat of it, the shock of it, the mock outrage and secret pleasure.

Chapter 6
     
    In Which the Duke Curses His Fate
     
    The following evening
     
    W ycliff pulled a sip from his tankard of ale and muttered a stunning array of curses. “Oh damn. Oh bloody hell. Oh Lord above and Lucifer in the heavens. Shit.”
    Timbuktu had always been far away, but not far like this. He’d dreamed of being the first European to make it there—and back. It was a challenge that had stayed with him through the years as he ambled around the world, taking advantage of opportunities that came his way. He had been a reckless wanderer in the manner of a Wycliff, but the discipline he inherited from his mother— where else would it have come from?— was boldly asserting itself.
    Wycliff wanted to lead a proper expedition. He wanted to accomplish something—especially something that had nothing to do with the circumstances of his noble birth.
    He had a dream, a plan. He would have to let it go.
    He took another long sip of his drink.
    Beside him, Harlan appraised the serving wenches and barmaids of this pub just off St. James’s street and said, “Now there’s a fetching lass.”
    Wycliff followed his gaze and concluded that Harlan was very deep into his cups or utterly desperate after long, chaste months at sea. The chit was fine. But he wouldn’t have classified her as “a fetching lass” by any stretch.
    “Are you quite sure? Because you’ve had a few, and you only have one working eye,” he pointed out.
    Harlan adjusted his eye patch with his one good arm, the one that wasn’t wrapped in a sling made out of an old bedsheet.
    “Oh, I’m quite sure that I’ve had a few and have been at sea for a few months,” Harlan replied.
    To which Wycliff raised his glass and said, “Cheers.”
    She wasn’t a looker; Harlan could have her. Not like that maid, Eliza. Now she was a fetching chit. Every time he encountered her around the house, he noticed something about her, like the perfect, pert shape of her bum. Or her breasts, which promised to be a good handful. Or a figure that made a man ache and think extremely ungentlemanly thoughts.
    But it was her eyes that affected him most, and not because they reminded him of the sea and the sky and other lovely blue things. She really looked at him, searching, curious—when she ought to turn and face the wall whenever he passed.
    Wycliff had no interest in rebuking her for that. He was a terrible duke in that way. Mrs. Buxby ought to have, if she wasn’t so drunk all the time. But she’d been the housekeeper since before he was born, and he wasn’t about to reprimand her. Besides, the Wycliffs were never ones to keep a conventional household.
    He sipped his ale again. Like all the Wycliffs before him, he was hankering after the maid, when he had real problems to face. Bloody hell and damnation. He was thinking with the wrong organ.
    “I’ll be back shortly,” Harlan said. “Actually, I hope I’m not back for an hour at least. Maybe longer,” he added before downing his ale and sauntering across the room to chat up the barmaid who had caught his eye.
    They were drinking because Wycliff had received awful news that day. They were also drinking because he could not tolerate the confines of Wycliff House with that information looming over his every breath. And especially not with that housemaid, Eliza, sauntering from room to room, hips swaying, pink lips smiling and