Duke of Midnight (Maiden Lane #6)(21)

Yet disgust was the exact opposite of his reaction.

“Did you build this?” Her voice was low and rather pleasing as she gestured to the tower folly they were approaching.

He shook his head. “My father. My mother saw something similar on a trip to Italy and was quite taken with the idea of a romantic ruin. Father had a tendency to indulge her.”

She glanced curiously at him, but continued walking.

He cleared his throat. “We spent a great deal of time here at Pelham House when they were alive.”

“But not afterward?”

His jaw tightened. “No. Cousin Bathilda preferred London for raising my sisters, and I thought I should remain with them as the head of the family.”

He caught her odd look out of the corner of his eye. “But… forgive me, but weren’t you a boy when the duke and duchess died?”

“Murdered.” He couldn’t quite keep the rasp from his voice.

She stopped. “What?”

Her naked toes were curled into the loam, white and soft and strangely erotic. He raised his eyes, looking at her plainly. It was useless to try and avoid pain. “My parents were murdered in St. Giles nineteen years ago, Miss Greaves.”

She didn’t give him any useless platitudes. “How old were you?”

“Fourteen.”

“That’s hardly old enough to become the head of a family.” Her gentleness made something bleed inside of him.

“It is when one is the Duke of Wakefield,” he said curtly. Odd that she bothered arguing with him over this now. No one had at the time—not after he’d started talking again—not even Cousin Bathilda.

“You must’ve been a very determined boy,” was all she said.

There was nothing to say to that, and for a minute they tramped through the woods companionably.

The greyhounds bounded ahead, while Percy flushed a frog and began a rather comical chase.

“What are their names?” she asked, nodding at the dogs.

“That’s Belle”—he pointed to the slightly taller greyhound bitch, her coat a lovely gold and russet—“and that’s Starling, Belle’s daughter. The spaniel is Percy.”

She nodded seriously. “Those are good dog names.”

He shrugged. “Phoebe names them for me.”

Her odd little half smile appeared at the mention of his sister. “I was glad to see she was here. She does so enjoy social events.”

He glanced at her swiftly. Her tone was neutral, but he felt the implied disapproval in her words. “She’s blind—or as near to as to make no difference. I’ll not see Phoebe hurt—either physically or emotionally. She’s vulnerable.”

“She might be blind, Your Grace, but I believe she’s stronger than you think.”

He looked away from her alluring bare toes. Who was she to tell him how to take care of his sister? Phoebe was barely twenty years of age. “Two years ago my sister fell because she didn’t see a step, Miss Greaves. She broke her arm.” His lips twisted at the memory of Phoebe’s face white with pain. “You may think me overprotective, but I assure you I do know what is best for my sister.”

She was silent at that, though he doubted she’d changed her mind over the matter. He frowned, irritated, almost as if he regretted his cold words.

The folly loomed in front of them and they stopped to look at it.

Miss Greaves cocked her head. “It’s rather like Rapunzel’s tower.”

Big blocks of artfully weathered dark gray stone made a round tower with a single, low arched opening.

He raised an eyebrow. “I’d always imagined Rapunzel’s tower taller.”

She tilted her head back to eye the top of the little building, and the long line of her pale throat was caught in a beam of sunlight. A pulse beat delicately in the soft juncture of her neck and collarbone.

He looked away. “Certainly this would be no obstacle for a fit man to climb.”

She glanced at him, and he thought he saw that tiny smile at the edge of her lips. “Are you saying you’d scale these walls for a damsel in distress, Your Grace?”

“No.” His mouth tightened. “Just that it’s possible.”

She hummed under her breath. Percy romped up and dropped a sadly mangled, dead frog at her feet, then backed away and sat proudly by his prize, looking at Miss Greaves as if expecting praise.

She absently ruffled the spaniel’s ears. “You’d leave poor Rapunzel to her fate?”

“If a lady were so silly as to get herself locked in a stone tower,” he said drily, “I’d break down the door and climb the stairs to help her from the building.”

“But Rapunzel’s tower had no door, Your Grace.”

He kicked aside the dead frog. “Then, yes, I suppose I would be forced to scale the tower walls.”

“But you certainly wouldn’t enjoy it,” she murmured.

He merely looked at her. Was she trying to make him into some romantic hero? She didn’t strike him as a silly chit. Her eyes were a dark, soft gray, lovely and alluring, but her gaze was as steady and bold as any man’s.

He glanced away first, his lips twisting. “Anyway, it’s not Rapunzel’s tower. It’s the Moon Maiden’s.”

“What?”