While the Duke Was Sleeping (The Rogue Files #1)(10)

Something flickered in his eyes . . . a brief flash of surprise. “On the contrary. Why would I wish him dead? He is my brother—”

“Who clearly cannot abide you.”

He shrugged a big shoulder. Her gaze skimmed the solid outline of his physique. Did he lift boulders in his spare time? Clearly this was no dandified gentleman who required additional padding in his jacket. “A minor misunderstanding. It happens among brothers.”

She scoffed and looked back at the duke asleep on the bed. “No brothers I’ve ever known.”

“And you have great experience with brothers?”

She didn’t reply, simply turned and fixed her gaze on Autenberry, and tried to ignore the sense that there was something vulgar underlying that question.

Mackenzie’s boots slid closer behind her, a whisper on the carpet and a reminder that he was still there. Not that his presence was exactly forgettable. Her nape prickled and she resisted the urge to brush her hands there and chase away the sensation. “How long have you known Autenberry?”

“We first met June seventeenth.” Her first day of employment at Barclay’s.

“You’ve committed the exact day to memory?” His tone rang with derision.

“Yes.” She would never forget it. The day had been a bitter thing to endure. She had thought she would live out her days in Toadston-on-Mersey as Edmond’s wife. Papa was supposed to be their neighbor and live to be an old white-haired man, bouncing her children on his knees. The duke had been the one bright light in that disappointing day.

“Six months,” he murmured. “That is a quick engagement.”

Thankfully he could not see her face. She was certain it bloomed a fiery red at the enormity of such a lie. “Yes,” she murmured, her voice surprisingly even. She was not about to confess to him, of all people, that she was not the duke’s fiancée—that she was merely a humble shopgirl. He hardly struck her as the understanding sort. He’d denounce her as a fraud.

She would straighten this mess out later—after the physician arrived. There was no telling what Mackenzie would do to her. She already knew he possessed a propensity to violence. He could very well strike her. Or he could send for the Watch and have her thrown into prison. She couldn’t risk that kind of trouble. If something happened to her, no one would be there to take care of Bryony.

“Yes, it was quick,” she agreed. “Love is like that.” Or so she’d been told. Papa ran away with her mother after a fortnight and her mother had left everything behind—her life of privilege, fancy dresses and parties—all for him.

“You must have really swept him off his feet.”

She risked an uneasy look at him again, trying to gauge his sincerity. “I don’t know about that,” she hedged.

He closed the last few inches separating them, his moss green eyes gleaming with a mocking light, and she knew he doubted her. Naturally. He did not consider her capable of evoking that level of passion in a man. She herself doubted it. Edmond’s rejection stood as proof of that.

“Or was it the other way around, then? My dear brother swept you off your feet? He just couldn’t resist you, is that it?” He was definitely smirking at her now. And she wanted to slap him.

He wasn’t saying it, but he might as well have been.

He didn’t think Autenberry would have anything to do with someone like her. He was a duke. She was Poppy Fairchurch late of Toadston-on-Mersey, a plain, impoverished shopgirl who could scarcely afford to feed herself and her sister.

And she was a fool for fantasizing that he might think she was The One.

A fool for believing in impossible dreams.

Anger flashed through her. “Is it so very hard to believe—”

“That he fell in love with you?” Again with the smirk.

Righteous anger burned through her. “That does happen, you know.” Just not to her. Not yet at least. “People meet. They have feelings . . . they fall in love.” She waved her hand in a little circle as if that somehow illustrated her point. “Is love a sentiment you’ve never felt before?” She flicked her gaze over him. He was handsome as sin, for certain, but he did not strike her as the lovable sort. “Never mind.”

He arched an eyebrow several shades darker than his golden hair. “What?”

“It’s not so shocking, I suppose, that you haven’t any experience with that sentiment.”

His gaze raked her in turn, and she knew he was thinking something ugly and best left unsaid. In fact, she was beginning to think that ugliness was the only thing that existed inside this man. “And you do, then, Miss Fairchurch? Have a great deal of experience?”

She did not mistake the insult. He was implying that she was no better than a strumpet—that she had enticed the duke. Seduced him. That she was a woman with loose morals.

She inhaled thinly through her nose. She didn’t know what was stronger—her sense of indignation or the flutter of gratification in her chest. He might not think her capable of winning the duke’s heart but he thought her capable of seducing him. That was . . . something.

She was no great beauty. Did he actually think her alluring enough to trap a man like the duke into marriage? Her throat tightened. No, he likely thought Autenberry’s sense of honor was at work here.

Fortunately, the physician chose that moment to arrive and she was saved from further conversation with the boorish man.