COULD ONLY stare at the Duke’s book collection for so long before it became awkward. Or rather, a little too obvious that she was going out of her way to avoid looking at him directly.
She told herself she was simply appreciating the amount of literature he kept on his shelves and at hand at all times, that was all. The truth was she’d never lived in a place where she could keep more than her absolute most favorite books on what little shelf space she could spare. She wouldn’t have minded spending a few hours getting lost in this place.
But, of course, her employer had not called her into his library to offer her the chance to browse.
Pull yourself together, Eleanor, she chided herself.
She sat on the edge of a buttery soft leather chair, afraid to let herself sink back into it. Afraid she’d never pull herself out again. But when she was finally sure that her expression was nothing but serene and dared to look at him again, everything had gotten much worse.
Much, much worse.
Because while Hugo had removed that top hat and cloak that made him look like something out of the sort of fantasies Eleanor had never had before coming to Groves House, Hugo in nothing but exquisitely fitted dark trousers and a white shirt that opened at the neck was infinitely more dangerous.
And tempting in all kinds of ways she’d never experienced before in her life.
She could feel each and every temptation as if it was a separate strand of heat, swirling around inside of her and making her feel like a stranger to herself.
Hugo moved from the great desk where he’d carelessly tossed his coat and hat, and stalked across the room toward her. Of course he wasn’t stalking, Eleanor told herself sharply. The man was simply walking from one end of the library to the other. The way people did when they wished to cross a space.
There was no reason at all that she should find herself holding her breath the way she was. Or clenching tight every single muscle in her body as she perched on the edge of that heavy chair, until she thought she might snap in half.
Hugo dropped himself down into the leather chair across from hers. He did not exactly sit nicely. Instead, of course, he sprawled. He was bigger every time she looked at him, it seemed, and his solidly built body covered more than simply the chair. His legs were long and he thrust them out before him, eating up the thick rug that was all that sat between their chairs.
He wasn’t simply sitting there, Eleanor thought, with a mounting sense of unease. He seemed to claim the entire room with that offhanded masculine grace of his. As if he was the hazard, not the fire, which crackled away beside them and yet seemed to dim everything that wasn’t Hugo.
It would be a lot easier, Eleanor reflected with no little hysteria, if the man was as seedy and dissolute as he’d always seemed in the tabloids. Instead of finely chiseled everywhere and exuding entirely too much sheer, powerful certainty the way other men reeked of cologne.
“How fares my ward?” Hugo asked.
So politely, so mildly, that Eleanor thought she must have been imagining the strange currents that seemed to fill the room—and her—with such an odd, electric sensation. It was clearly her, she told herself sternly. She was the one who was having some kind of allergic reaction to being in this man’s presence. Or perhaps it was all those centuries of Grovesmoor influence and authority that he wore so easily when he was meant to be nothing but a layabout. Eleanor supposed it could even be the broad span of his shoulders, entirely too sculpted and athletic for a man so famously devoted to his own leisure.
But when she met his gaze, she understood that she wasn’t suffering from some allergy to the aristocracy. Or if she was, he was too. Because his dark eyes burned with a bright, intent fire Eleanor didn’t recognize, but could feel. Everywhere.
“Geraldine is very well,” she said before she forgot to respond. Which wouldn’t do at all.
Thinking about the little girl was the way to survive this, clearly. Eleanor made her spine as much of a straight line she could bear without actually hurting herself, and folded her hands neatly in her lap. She found that if she gazed at Hugo’s chin instead of directly into his overwhelming, challenging gaze, she could pretend to be looking at him without actually risking too much direct eye contact.
And that little disconnection made it possible for her to catch her breath. To keep her heart from beating entirely too fast. Or anyway, pretend that she had herself under control, which would have to be enough.
“She’s quite intelligent. And funny, it turns out. Not all little girls are funny, of course.” Eleanor felt herself flush slightly, because she sounded a great deal as if she was babbling. And she never babbled. “Not that I have vast experience with seven-year-old girls, but I was one.”
Hugo looked boneless and hungry, and the combination made Eleanor’s pulse dance.
“Some time ago, if I’m not mistaken,” he said.
“A lady does not discuss her age, Your Grace.”
“You’re a governess, are you not? Not a lady in the classic sense, if you will excuse the pedantry. But more to the point, you’re entirely too young to become missish and coy about your age. Surely that is the province of women significantly longer in the tooth than you.”
Eleanor found she was meeting his gaze, and had no idea when she’d given up the chin offensive. It was a mistake. She felt as if she’d sat out in the sun too long and was now a miserable prickle everywhere she had skin.
“I’m twenty-seven, if that’s what you’re asking. And I hope that you’re not asking that. Because that would be unpardonably rude.”
Hugo’s lips twitched. “The horror.”
“And I’m surprised that a duke of England should bother himself to pull rank. Surely in the absence of a Windsor lurking about, that’s a bit redundant.”
“You cannot be surprised, Miss Andrews.” The corner of Hugo’s mouth tipped up, but if that was a smile, it was entirely too dark. “I have yet to encounter a single story ever told about me that did not make it clear I am the worst kind of person. A stain upon the nation.”
“Are you suggesting that I believe everything I’ve read about you? My understanding—” culled entirely from books and television and supermarket checkout queues, which she did not plan to share with him “—was that most celebrities claim that the things that are written about them in places like the tabloids are lies.”
Something in his expression shifted. Eleanor couldn’t put her finger on it. It was as if he turned quietly to stone, everywhere, even as his gaze changed. Melted, she would have said, if she were the fanciful sort. Into a far more powerful spirit, more intense than his usual whiskey.
“And if I were to tell you that, indeed, nearly everything that has ever been written about me in the press is a lie, you would believe that?”
Hugo wasn’t exactly smirking, but there was no mistaking the challenge he’d thrown at her or the way he lounged there in the chair opposite her while he did it. His oddly intent gaze was taut on hers while one long finger tapped the side of his jaw, rough now instead of clean-shaven.
He looked decadent. Sinful.
Eleanor
