I Married the Duke by Katharine Ashe Page A

wearing only a blanket.
    “This is u-unwise,” she heard herself say.
    “Medicine is rarely easy to swallow.” His voice seemed a bit rough.
    She dragged her attention to her glass.
    “Why do you cover your hair?” he said abruptly.
    “Because I do n-not wish it to be seen by rapacious s-sea captains.” She took another sip of brandy. “Next question.”
    He laughed. She did not like it. She loved it—warm, rich, and confident. His laughter burrowed into her, into someplace deeply buried.
    “What thoughts had you so lost in bemusement atop that you did not notice even the rain, duchess?”
    “I have t-two sisters.” She could not tell him of her fear. “I have not seen them in an age. I m-miss them.”
    “Tell me about them.” The golden lamplight cast his features in light and shadows so that he did look mythical. It was not her imagination or the brandy. It was him.
    “Why?”
    “I have a brother.” He gestured to the framed drawing on the wall. “Common interest. And, given your earlier refusal of my bed, we’ve nothing better to do tonight.”
    “D-Do you speak to all women in this manner?”
    “Only governesses wearing little more than a blanket.”
    “Do you come across th-those often?”
    “Never before.”
    Over the rim of the glass she met his gaze. The brandy rushed down her throat. She sputtered.
    He reached into his pocket and withdrew a neatly pressed white kerchief. He set it on the table between them. She took it up and dabbed at her watering eyes, studying the charcoal drawing. The boy’s eyes were shadowed sockets of fear, his shoulders hunched, the lines of his face severe. Yet the skill of the artist had brought forth his natural beauty, despite the darkness.
    “That p-picture is of your brother?”
    “A self-portrait.”
    “At s-such a young age he is an artist?”
    “He is now six-and-twenty. He drew that from memory. Now tell me of your sisters.”
    She set down the handkerchief. “Eleanor is g-good and fair, with golden hair and golden-green eyes, and t-tall and slender like a Greek m-maiden of old.”
    “Athena, warrior goddess.”
    “Wise, but not a warrior. She would rather read than ride or walk or do j-just about anything else. She spends her days tr-translating texts for the Rev— for our father from Latin into English. No one knows. Others th-think it is his work. When I asked her once if she m-minded, she said she preferred it.”
    “She is modest.”
    “Perhaps.”
    He leaned forward to refill her glass, and she smelled clean sea and warmth upon him. What would it be like to be held in his muscular arms?
    She must be drunk already.
    She had been grabbed, groped, clutched. She had never been held by a man.
    He poured brandy into his glass and set the bottle on the table. “And your other sister?”
    “Ravenna is a Gypsy.”
    The glass halted halfway to his mouth.
    Arabella chewed the inside of her lip. “Dark eyes. D-Dark hair. Cannot be indoors. Cannot b-be still. Cannot be quelled.”
    “That last is like her sister, it seems.” He drank the contents of his glass in one swallow.
    “I am responsible for them.” The words tumbled from her tongue in a rush.
    He refilled the glasses. “You?”
    “It is why this p-position I go to now is so important. I must . . .” His glass was empty again. She swung her gaze up to him. “Why are you dr-drinking too? You are not chilled.”
    “A gentleman never allows a lady to drink alone.” He held the glass in the palm of his hand with ease. Except he was not at ease. Tension seemed to set his shoulders, and his jaw was hard with restraint.
    Restraint?
    “You are not a g-gentleman. Are you?” she said. “You did not seem so when you denied my request for passage in Plymouth.”
    “Which I then recanted.”
    “And teased me about your b-bed.”
    “A show of gracious generosity on my part.”
    “Not just now.”
    “That was to put you at ease.”
    “What sort of women d-do you usually speak with so that