Читать книгу The Golden Lord - Miranda Jarrett - Страница 9

F or the first few hazy moments when Jenny woke, she was convinced she’d gone directly to Heaven—especially if Heaven was filled with clouds as soft as feather beds to lie upon and as sweet-smelling as a field of lavender, and all of it wrapped up inside the snug, dark cocoon of heavy velvet bedcurtains. She was clean and warm and dressed in a comfortably too large nightshift, with her hair neatly braided into plaits over her shoulders. She was still too sleepy to question how she’d come to this state, but awake enough to relish the blissful peace of it.

She yawned happily, stretching her arms over her head. Happily, that is, until a sudden bolt of pain drilled into the side of her forehead, a pain that was very much the opposite of Heaven. Her yawn turned to a gasp as she pressed her hand to the spot and tried to recall exactly how she’d come by this hideous, throbbing lump.

She’d been riding with Rob in a hired chaise, and because they were being followed by an idiot grenadier—she remembered her brother’s description quite clearly—she’d jumped into the grass, meaning to hide and wait for Rob to return for her. That part of remembering was easy.

But from there, however, things became confused. Somehow she’d struck her head, or had it struck for her. After that, she’d awakened to see two black dogs and a handsome gentleman kneeling beside her, his face showing such concern that she’d almost laughed, or would have if her head hadn’t hurt so much.

But as soon as she’d felt the warmth of his kindness and the strong, sure way his arm had circled her waist to hold her steady—why, then laughing had been the last thing in her thoughts. Then, even as her head had throbbed, she’d found herself wondering what it would be like to lean forward and kiss him, from gratitude and curiosity but mostly because she’d wanted to, pure and simple.

Even the memory of it now made her flush with shame at her own lack of judgment. She’d been absolutely no better than Rob, perhaps even worse, and the man hadn’t even been a rich old codger. Wherever had her good sense fled? If longing to kiss a stranger just because he’d been nice to her wasn’t proof of how hard she’d struck her head, then nothing was.

She groaned again, this time with frustration. She knew there were more things that she should be remembering, important things, yet still they stayed stubbornly out of her grasp, hovering in a hazy fog. She’d have to remember, and soon, because she’d have to leave wherever she was to go find Rob, the way they’d planned, so that—

“Here she is, Dr. Gristead,” whispered an older woman’s voice outside the bedcurtains. “Poor little creature, she’s barely stirred since we put her to bed this morning.”

The poor little creature must be her, realized Jenny just as the bedcurtains were pulled back with a scrape of steel rings along the rod. After the darkness of the bed, her eyes were unaccustomed to even the single candle’s light, forcing her to squint up at the two strange faces staring solemnly down at her: a ruddy gentleman in spectacles and an oversize physician’s wig, and an older woman dressed in gray with a large ruffled housekeeper’s cap that was, in its way, the solemn equivalent to the man’s wig.

“Ah, miss, you’re awake at last,” said the woman, beaming happily at Jenny with her hands clasped over the front of her apron. “How pleased His Grace shall be to hear of your recovery!”

His Grace? Into exactly whose bedstead had she tumbled, anyway? Uneasily, Jenny pulled the sheet a little higher beneath her chin, as if a length of linen would be enough to protect her. The young gentleman beneath the trees must have brought her here—to his father, or uncle, or perhaps just the nearest local worthy known for charity. But “His Grace” meant a duke, and she’d no experience at all with dukes. Although she and her brother had brushed with their share of lesser aristocrats, trying to cozen a lord as high-born and powerful as a duke was more of a challenge than they’d ever attempted.

Now she looked from the doctor to the woman, and smiled faintly, too cautious and bewildered to answer their question. Silence was often the best friend that she and Rob had in a difficult spot, and this certainly qualified as that.

“She’s hardly recovered yet, Mrs. Lowe,” said the gentleman. He took Jenny’s wrist, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger, and frowned ominously. “The beat of her heart is still erratic, and the pallidity of her complexion indicates a continuing ill balance of the vital humors. Attacks to the cranium such as this can often prove fatal, Mrs. Lowe, especially to young females like this one.”

“Goodness,” exclaimed Mrs. Lowe, drawing back a step as if fearing contagion. “To my eyes, Dr. Gristead, she seemed much improved.”

“In medical matters, one cannot rely on sight alone,” said the physician sagely as he held the candlestick over Jenny’s face. He cleared his throat before he began to speak, raising his voice as if she’d trouble hearing, instead of remembering.

“Pray attend to me, young woman,” he said. “I am Dr. Gristead, and this is Mrs. Lowe, the keeper of this fine house. You have been struck insensible, and have lost your wits. You have, however, had the great good fortune in your infirmity to have been taken into the care of His Grace the Duke of Strachen. Are you properly grateful for his mercy?”

What Jenny was was properly dumbfounded. A little vagabond like her, fallen into the care of His Grace the Duke of Strachen! How Rob would marvel at such great good fortune, and how far this could surpass their last situation, there with Sir Wallace and his musty old books! Merciful gratitude might seem like a simple enough question to a man like Dr. Gristead, but Jenny wanted to be sure she said and did the right thing, especially where a generous old duke was concerned.

“Yes, sir,” she murmured at last, sinking lower on her pillows in a puddle of meekness. She was glad they’d braided her hair; the plaits would make her look younger and more innocently pitiful. “I am most grateful, Dr. Gristead.”

The doctor grunted, pleased with her response. “Very good. You are progressing, indeed. Perhaps now, young woman, you can recall your name and tell it to me, as well as the place of your home.”

“My name?” repeated Jenny hesitantly, stalling. Of course she knew her true name—Miss Jenny Dell—just as she knew that she’d been born in Dublin, not far from the theater where her parents had met and performed together. But neither she nor Rob were in the habit of telling their real names or history to anyone. For now, until Rob found her and decided what they should do next, it seemed wisest for her simply to…forget for a bit longer.

“Your name, young woman,” said the physician, his mouth growing more grim with each passing second that Jenny didn’t reply. “Even your given name will be an assistance to us.”

“But we know the young lady’s name already,” whispered Mrs. Lowe. “I told you before that—”

“She must tell us herself, Mrs. Lowe,” said Dr. Gristead sternly. “Otherwise it is meaningless.”

“What is meaningless, Gristead?”

At once Jenny recognized that voice: the gentleman who’d rescued her, and as he came to stand between Dr. Gristead and Mrs. Lowe, she willed herself to look even more languid and weak. He was dressed for dinner, doubtless with the duke himself, in a beautifully tailored dark suit and a red waistcoat with cut-steel buttons and embroidered dragons.

And, oh, my, he was handsome. She hadn’t forgotten that. The candlelight made gold of his hair and deepened the blue of his eyes to midnight. His features were regular, his nose straight and his chin squared, but to her disappointment she saw none of the warm kindness or concern in his blue eyes that she’d remembered. Instead, his smile now seemed distant, impersonal, almost aloof, as he gazed down at her.

“Are you feeling better, miss?” he asked. “If anyone can wrest you back among the living, then it’s Gristead here, though he’s hardly pleasant company while he does it.”

The physician’s frown deepened, as if to prove the gentleman’s words true. “She still does not appear to know her name or any details of her situation, Your Grace.”

Jenny gasped. “You—you are the Duke of Strachen?”

“Ah, Gristead, mark how she does know what’s important!” exclaimed the gentleman she now realized must be the very duke himself, his gaze still so intent on Jenny that she felt her pale cheeks warm. “You should know who I am because I told you myself, there under the trees this morning.”

Her flush deepened. Already she’d misstepped, and all she’d spoken was a single sentence to the duke. The duke. How had this man become a duke, anyway? Oh, her head still hurt far too much for sorting out puzzles like this one! Dukes were supposed to be old and gray and dozing in their places in the House of Lords. They weren’t supposed to be young and appallingly handsome and wear dashing silk waistcoats with Chinese dragons.

“I wish to thank you for your largesse, Your Grace,” she said finally with a wan smile. “Largesse” was one of those words that Rob always made sure to use: it was fulsomely French, and sounded much more impressive and flattering to the largesse’s possessor. “You have been most kind to me, and I promise not to take advantage of your hospitality any longer than is necessary.”

“You shall remain here at Claremont Hall as long as is necessary,” he declared with a lordly sweep of his hand. “You’ll stay until you are quite recovered or your friends or family have fetched you away.”

“Or until you tire of me, Your Grace.” She sighed sadly, taking her hands away from her forehead to better display her bruise—which, if it looked even half as hideous as it felt, would be an undeniable way to prove she’d no business going anywhere. “I won’t burden you, Your Grace. I’ll leave myself rather than do that. I’m not your prisoner, and you can’t keep me here against my will.”

Most gentlemen—especially the gentleman she remembered rescuing her this morning—would have made a gallant protest against her even considering leaving, but not this duke.

“You’re not my prisoner, sweetheart, no,” he said evenly, his expression not changing even a fraction. “But since you met your misfortune on my land, you are my responsibility, until someone else comes forward to claim it, and you.”

“But to be a mere tedious responsibility!” She sighed dramatically. She hoped he wasn’t truly as chilly and arrogant as he seemed. Chilly gentlemen were never generous, and again she wondered sadly what had become of the kind gentleman with the dogs.

“Tell me for yourself, Your Grace,” she continued, striving to sound pitiable enough to rekindle that well-hidden kindness. “How should you like being deemed no more than a charitable obligation?”

“Consider before you speak to His Grace, young woman!” scolded the physician, his brows bristling severely beneath the front of his wig. “You are unwell, true, but that is no excuse for such…such familiarity. His Grace would be perfectly within his rights to send you to the almshouse!”

But the duke himself did not seem to agree. Instead, for the first time, his smile seemed genuinely amused as he studied her with new interest—interest enough that Jenny felt her cheeks blushing all over again.

“Oh, don’t frighten the lady, Gristead,” he said softly. “And you don’t listen to him, Miss—Miss—now whatever am I to call you if we don’t know who you are?”

“But indeed we do know her name, Your Grace,” said Mrs. Lowe, eager to help. “This was tucked in her shift when we undressed her earlier.”

Jenny let out a little sigh of relief as the attention shifted away from her, even if only for a moment. The woman was holding a folded handkerchief out to the duke, and she’d turned it so the letters stitched in red thread in one corner were neatly facing toward him for his convenience. But the duke was far too important to bother to read the name for himself, brushing the handkerchief back toward the housekeeper with an impatient flick of his hand as he looked once again at Jenny.

“Tell us all, Mrs. Lowe,” he said with that same smile seemingly for Jenny alone, as if the request were more of a secret jest between the two of them. “Enlighten us as to the lady’s name.”

“Corinthia, Your Grace,” volunteered Mrs. Lowe promptly. “It’s stitched right there, plain as can be. A lady’s name on a lady’s handkerchief. It’s next to new, likely from her having so many of the same, the way ladies do. You can see how fine the linen is, Your Grace, and this lace trimming—that’s the kind the French nuns used to make in the convents over there, what can’t be bought now for love or coin.”

“All that knowledge from a single scrap of linen, Mrs. Lowe?” The duke studied the handkerchief and shook his head with wry amazement. “I must take care with my own belongings, lest you begin spinning tales about my cravats. But if ‘Corinthia’ marks her linen, then Corinthia her name must be. Would you agree, Miss Corinthia?”

“I—I suppose it must be so, Your Grace,” said Jenny, marveling at how much the housekeeper had concluded from the single handkerchief. None of it was right, of course, but every wrong guess helped build her credibility as a true-born lady. “My name must be Corinthia.”

“It’s a start, Miss Corinthia,” said the duke as he idly smoothed the ruffled cuff on his shirt. “Or perhaps I should rather address you as Lady Corinthia, the way Mrs. Lowe so desperately desires?”

“The given name is sufficient to begin inquiries, Your Grace,” said Mrs. Lowe firmly. “Discreetly, so as not to upset her family any further. Although a lady’s name must not be made common, surely there cannot be too many Corinthias gone missing in Sussex last night.”

“That would be most kind of you, Your Grace,” murmured Jenny. To the best of her knowledge, there hadn’t been any Corinthias gone missing last night, but Mrs. Lowe’s discreet inquiries would serve to let Rob know where she was, and that she was safe. For that matter, she wished she knew if and how he’d escaped the jealous grenadier, and as she thought of her brother, the sum of her family, she felt a single and quite genuine tear slide down her cheek to splat upon the sheet.

“There now, Your Grace, you’ve made her unhappy,” said Mrs. Lowe, reaching over to blot away the tear with Corinthia’s handkerchief. “The poor creature might not be able to recall her home or family, but she still can pine for them.”

Not that the duke cared.

“Tell me, Miss Corinthia,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

“You cannot, Your Grace!” sputtered Gristead indignantly before Jenny could answer. “Given this young woman’s perilous condition, it is not wise for her even to consider eating!”

“And I say it is unwise for her not to,” said the duke with the easy assurance of someone accustomed to always having his own way. “Especially when I’m so hungry myself. Mrs. Lowe, have a table brought, so I might dine in here with the lady. What would you like, Miss Corinthia?”

“Tea, if you please,” she said, realizing she was in fact very hungry, indeed. “And toast, with jam, if that is possible.”

“Anything is possible at Claremont Hall,” declared the duke. “You’ve only to ask. Isn’t that so, Mrs. Lowe?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” said the housekeeper, already backing from the room to begin fulfilling his orders.

“But, Your Grace,” protested the physician again, his chins quivering over the top of his neckcloth. “The young woman is my patient and—”

“Clearly she is out of danger, Gristead,” answered the duke, “and I’m sure you have other patients to see, as well. You can be sure we shall send for you if there is any change.”

After such an obvious dismissal, Gristead could only bow a red-faced farewell and follow the housekeeper from the room.

And leave Jenny alone with the duke.

“So,” he said, pulling a chair closer to the bed. “Here we are, Miss Corinthia.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” she said softly. “Here we are, indeed.”

Indeed, indeed, she thought glumly. It wasn’t just the setting, or the fact that they were alone together, for her unconventional life often tossed her in and out of riskier situations than this. No, what worried her now was how she’d become so acutely aware of the man beside her, of each gesture and word he made. Every detail of him fascinated her, from the way his light hair slipped across his forehead, to the small wavy scar along his jaw, to how his fingers rested lightly on the arm of the chair. He hadn’t so much as hinted at touching her, yet still her heart was racing and her palms were damp, merely from being here with him, and that—that was what put her at such risk and made her feel so uncharacteristically vulnerable.

“You are improved, aren’t you?” he asked with concern, misreading her silence. “I can call Gristead back if you need him.”

“Oh, no, Your Grace,” she said quickly. “I am much better, truly.”

“I’m glad.” He leaned back in the chair with his legs stretched comfortably before him, his elbows on the arms of the chair and his fingertips pressed lightly together in a little tent over the red waistcoat. “But you’re anxious about being here alone with me, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps.” She smiled, ordering herself to put aside her giddiness and concentrate, concentrate. If she didn’t, she could very well find herself in that county almshouse or even the gaol. “My position is not an enviable one, Your Grace. I’ve no sense of who I am, my head aches abominably, and I am undressed and lying in a strange bed, unchaperoned, with a strange man beside me. Isn’t that just cause for anxiety?”

He grinned, clearly pleased by her answer in ways she hadn’t intended. “Not if you trust me as a gentleman.”

“Which is exactly what I keep telling myself, Your Grace.” She slid her shoulders up higher against the pillows until she was almost sitting, being sure to keep the sheets tucked modestly under her arms. “You are a gentleman, a great lord, a man of honor and integrity, and therefore worthy of my trust. Besides, if you’d wished to take advantage of my position, you would have done so already.”

“Ha,” he said, still smiling. “That doesn’t sound like you trust me at all.”

“But I do,” she insisted, though there was something to his smile that warned her against trusting him at all. “I must. What other choice do I have, being that I’m a charitable obligation?”

“I thought we’d already agreed that you were my guest,” he said. He swept his arm through the air, encompassing the entire room. “A lowly charitable obligation would not be put into a bedchamber such as this. My guests, however, are.”

She seized on that. “Have you many guests, Your Grace?”

“Almost none,” he said with a careless shrug. “My brothers, their wives and children. That’s all.”

“All?” she asked, surprised. Most people with grand houses in the country entertained an unending stream of guests for their own amusement as well as for hospitality’s sake. “I should think a lord like you would have an enormous acquaintance!”

“Oh, I do,” he said easily. “But I prefer to see them in London, where they are more manageable and less demanding. I would rather keep Claremont Hall just for me, not them. Here I must please only myself.”

It was very hard for Jenny to imagine a gentleman as elegant as this one living alone among the Sussex fields as a veritable hermit. “Then you must be the prize of every squire’s daughter in the county.”

He grimaced. “Which is precisely why I avoid all contact with the local gentry. I’m certain my neighbors judge me the worst kind of inhospitable recluse and spoilsport. I don’t care. I have more than my fill of society when I am in London.”

Jenny’s smile widened, this time with unabashed relief. She couldn’t begin to guess how far Claremont Hall was from the inn she and Rob had fled in Bamfleigh, or from poor, abandoned Sir Wallace and his library, either. But if the duke didn’t believe in speaking to his country neighbors, then she should be safe enough here, hiding in plain—or rather, grand—sight.

“You are amused that I am a recluse?” he asked dryly.

“No, Your Grace,” she said, twisting the end of one of her braids through her fingers. “I simply do not believe it.”

She meant it as lighthearted teasing to relieve the tension between them, no more, but he didn’t laugh the way she’d expected. Far from it.

“No?” he asked, the edge to his voice a warning that made no sense. “Would you rather believe my interest in this estate is mere country playacting, like the French queen with her beribboned dairy cows before the Bastille fell?”

“No, no,” she answered quickly. She didn’t want to offend him, especially over something as foolish as this. “I only meant that no matter how much any of us pretends to be someone else, in the end we always are what we are.”

“Ah.” For whatever reason, he relaxed. “Then you are a fatalist? You believe that we can never change from what we’re born? That our destiny remains always the same, with no hope of growth or improvement?”

“No, no, no!” She shook her head, then winced and pressed her fingers to the bruise again. “It’s not so complicated as that, Your Grace. I only meant that no matter how many changes you may make for the world to see, you are still at heart, or in your soul, the same creature you were born. That’s all.”

He nodded solemnly. “Then you are a fatalist, if that’s what you believe.”

“That’s what I know,” she said with conviction. She did believe it, too. How could she not, when so much of her life was unabashed deception? If she didn’t believe in herself—Miss Jenny Dell!—independent of whatever new identity Rob had concocted for her, why, then, she’d have nothing at all. “But you don’t agree, do you?”

“On some days I would,” he said lightly, “and other days I wouldn’t. Look, here’s our dinner at last.”

Mrs. Lowe reappeared, leading a little parade of servants. Two footmen came first, carrying a narrow dining table already set with a pressed cloth, followed by more footmen and maidservants bearing cutlery, candlesticks, napkins, even a porcelain bowl full of pink and white flowers, as well as a silver tea service and several covered dishes, each fragrant with wisps of steam.

The table was placed between Jenny’s bed and the duke’s chair, and as one of the footmen lit additional candles, she was able to see more of the details of how well His Grace treated his infrequent guests. She made such appraisals automatically, almost without thinking, for her father had trained both her and Rob in how much such niceties could reveal about their owners’ personalities as well as the depth of their fortunes.

The bedchamber was large and square in the old-fashioned way of country houses, but the furnishings were in the latest London style, delicate and airy, fit for any fine lady. So was the table being set before her: costly new porcelain rimmed with gold, damask linens so spotless she doubted they’d ever been used, and double-weight sterling for the spoons and forks, also so new that the ducal crest engraved upon each one was still crisp and sharp.

In fact, to Jenny’s surprise, everything seemed new. In her experience, titled folk tended to surround themselves with ancient bric-a-brac and gewgaws that had been in their family since at least the days of the Conqueror, another way they separated themselves from jumped-up merchants and mill owners. She’d never expected to see so much that was fresh from the shops in the house of a peer.

But because of the quality of these belongings, new or old, Jenny could come to a most cheerful conclusion: that the handsome Duke of Strachen must be rich as Creoseus, and, even better, that he didn’t mind spending the fortune he so obviously had.

Yet at once she reached a second conclusion, less cheerful, more startling, and terribly disloyal to Rob. As pleasing as her brother would find the duke’s title and wealth, she herself would selfishly trade it all for the return of the smiling country gentleman and his two black dogs.

Clearly the bruise to her head must be more serious than it felt.

“Here you are, miss,” said Mrs. Lowe, plumping Jenny’s pillows herself. One maidservant poured her tea and handed her the cup, while another solemnly buttered triangles of toast and spread strawberry jam exactly to the crusts. The duke’s fare was considerably more substantial, and while Jenny’s toast and tea were just what she’d asked for, she still looked longingly at his dinner: a ragoo of oysters, veal Florentine, roasted artichokes and forced mushrooms, with the wines to go with it all.

Yet though everything was perfectly presented, the servants did not remain to attend while she and the duke dined, the way servants in most such households did, but once again left them alone together. Had this been pre-arranged for her sake, wondered Jenny uneasily, or was it simply another way that His Grace chose to reinforce his solitude here in the country?

“The toast agrees with you, Corinthia?” he asked at last, sipping at his wine. “You feel more fortified, in spite of what Gristead predicted?”

Jenny smiled, and nodded, prepared to watch every word she spoke. Most gentlemen that she and Rob met were elderly and too enchanted with her youth and beauty to ask inconvenient questions. She could hardly expect the duke to be like that. “Much better, thank you, Your Grace.”

“I am glad to hear it,” he said, his eyes too serious to match his smile. “Do you think now you can speak of the grenadier who did this to you?”

“The—the grenadier?” she stammered, confused. “I do not recall any such man, Your Grace.”

“You did,” he said, swirling the red wine in his glass. “When I found you this morning, that was one of the first things you asked. Was I the idiot grenadier?”

Abruptly, Jenny set her saucer down on the table before her. “I told you, Your Grace. I have no memory of such a question, or of any such man, either.”

He tapped his fingertips lightly against the glass. “I’m not asking this to shame you, Corinthia. Pray note that for your sake, I waited until we were alone before I did. You certainly wouldn’t be the first lady led astray by some villain in regimentals.”

“But I wasn’t,” she insisted, trying not to panic as she wondered what else she might have mumbled in those first confused minutes this morning. If she’d spoken of Rob as well as the grenadier, or perhaps worse, climbing from the window of inn, then this ruse was done before it had begun. “I would know if I had.”

“Why, when you cannot recall so much as your own name with any certainty?” he asked with unquestionable logic. “Someone brought you to that remote corner of my land, Corinthia. You didn’t walk there, at least not in the kidskin slippers you were wearing this morning.”

“Is that more of Mrs. Lowe’s deciphering, Your Grace?” asked Jenny, her chin tucked defensively low against her chest. “Or did you determine the state of my slippers for yourself?”

“Be reasonable, my dear,” he said. “If this scoundrel is still prowling somewhere nearby, I need to know, not only for your sake, but for that of the wives and daughters of my tenants. He must be prevented from doing this again.”

She looked down, dodging his scrutiny, her hands betraying her nervousness as her fingers pleated the edge of the sheet into a tight little fan.

Think, think, think! You don’t need Rob to tell you what to do here. Be your own lass, Jen. You know what chances to take, how to turn this inside out and around to your own advantage. When this blue-eyed lord asks you to remember, remember first that you’re clever, too, Jen, every bit as clever as he!

She took a deep sigh, soft and breathy, then began her gamble.

“You have two dogs,” she said softly, still not meeting his gaze. “I remember them finding me. Gus and Jetty, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said with such gruff pride that he might have been another dog himself, instead of their master. “Gus and Jetty, the greatest pair of canine rascals in Chrisendon.”

“Oh, but they weren’t rascals to me,” she said, now looking up from under the fringe of her lashes. “Not at all. They’re large, lovely, black dogs who licked my hands to rouse me where I lay, and made little worried noises over me until you came, too.”

“Rascals,” he murmured again, but the way his expression warmed with affection proved she knew she’d made him forget about the grenadier. Here, at last, was the man she’d remembered.

“Not rascals,” she said, that warmth in his face giving her the courage to go on. Now it wasn’t a game or a ruse. Now it was the truth, and infinitely more risky.

“They were gentle and kind to me, your dogs were,” she continued, more wistfully than she realized, and for the first time her smile was genuine, as warm as his own. “Rather like you were then yourself, Your Grace.”

But, instead of returning her smile, the warmth vanished from his eyes and, beneath the elegant clothes, his whole body tensed warily against her. She recognized uncertainty when she saw it, just as she recognized the defensiveness that went with it; but why should either be in a man like this, a peer whose entire world bowed to his wishes?

“Who are you?” he demanded hoarsely, as if she were the one threatening him.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, stunned by his reaction. “Who do you wish me to be?”

“No.” He shoved back his chair and rose, and in three long strides was already at the door. “Damnation, no.”

And before she could ask him to explain, he was gone.