A Promise by Daylight. Alison DeLaine

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      A footman opened the coach door. Winston stepped out, and Millie followed without being handed down, as any man in service would.

      The house seemed to extend as far as the eye could see in both directions, the farther reaches of it covered by the shadows of night. Beyond loomed great murky masses of trees. It seemed to have hundreds of windows, all framed by carved stone, many flickering with light. Nobody was counting candles here. Above, silhouetted against the sky, dozens of chimneys testified to an enormous number of rooms.

      Only imagine how many nude statues a building of this size could hold. The wild debauches that must take place here and that would no doubt begin immediately now that His Grace had returned.

      Indeed, Millie thought as she was swept through the grand entrance on a wave of activity in His Grace’s wake, Lord Winston’s country estate was everything a ducal residence should be.

      There was only one thing it wasn’t.

      Greece.

      Inside, Harris began giving instructions to half-a-dozen servants, and footmen carried trunks up a massive red marble staircase that curved in two directions. Winston exchanged a few words with Sacks, and then with a woman who looked like she must be in charge of the house.

      The entrance hall alone was so vast one could probably build a ship inside it.

      The walls were deep red, the ceiling covered with murals and edged with gold plasterwork. Five chandeliers blazed with candles.

      And that was when Millie realized there wasn’t a nude to be seen save for the paintings on the ceiling. There was hardly any artwork at all. Few statues—a bronze horseman in a corner of the entrance hall, and through a doorway she could see the bust of a man on one side of a hall that looked as if it was made of gold and extended for a mile.

      There were no paintings, few sculptures.

      After what she’d seen in Paris, it didn’t seem possible.

      And then Winston was climbing the stairs, and Harris came to tell her that she would be taking a room on the same floor and in the same wing as Winston’s so that she could properly attend him, and soon Millie was shown to another apartment, this one twice as grand as the one she’d been given in Paris, and ten times larger.

      Footmen brought her trunk plus another that held all the medical supplies she’d collected in Paris and carried for the trip.

      And still the question remained: What were they doing here? She never should have said a word to his guests that night. If only she hadn’t opened her bloody mouth and sent everyone away, giving him the opportunity to think. With all that distraction, he would never have considered returning to his estate.

      If she’d known it was a choice between his ribald entertainments or this monumental setback...

      She’d barely unlatched her trunk when the duke’s sharp bark shot faintly down the corridor.

      “Mr. Germain!”

      Devil take the man, anyway. She’d never known a person to change their mind as erratically as he did. And now here she was. In England.

      She went down the hallway to the duke’s bedchamber and found him seated on the edge of a chair with his breeches around his knees and blood seeping through the bandage on his thigh.

      “Oh, for God’s sake,” she muttered.

      “You say that as if it’s my fault.”

      “It is your fault. This never would have happened if we’d gone to Greece.” It was the kind of statement that could get her dismissed, but after crossing the channel and riding nonstop over rutted roads deep into the night, she was too aggravated to care.

      “I don’t want to hear another word about Greece,” he said as she crouched in front of him and began unwinding the bandage. “Do I make myself clear?”

      “Polú.”

      “And I do not want to be spoken to in Greek.”

      “Bene.”

      “Or Italian. Or any foreign tongue.”

      She tucked the bandage back in place for the moment. “I’ll have to bring more lint and fresh bandages. Lie down and elevate the leg on a pillow, and I shall return momentarily.”

      There was no reason he could not have continued to recover in Paris. No reason at all.

      Within a quarter of an hour, she’d stopped the bleeding, applied fresh dressings and bandages, and the duke was resting comfortably.

      Except that he wasn’t.

      “Devil take this blasted sling.” He shifted, reaching behind his shoulder, tugging on the strap. “I can’t quite seem to...”

      “Stop fussing and let me do it,” she said, and leaned across him.

      “I’m not fussing.” His voice feathered her jaw as if he spoke against her skin, even though he was inches away.

      The front of her coat grazed his chest as she adjusted the sling.

      Her hip pressed against his arm.

      And it didn’t matter how many times she’d done this for him... Little sensations shot through her, tickling her lungs and tripping through her belly.

      He stopped struggling—seemed to stop everything, even breathing, while she worked at the strap.

      And then it was finished, and she stepped back. “Better?”

      “Yes.”

      She turned to her medical supplies even though there was nothing she needed.

      “What in God’s name am I supposed to do now?” he muttered behind her, as if it wasn’t the wee hours of the morning.

      “May I suggest sleeping?”

      “That’s not what I meant.”

      She turned back to find his gaze shifting about the room as if he’d never seen the place before. “I’m sure there will be no need for that question once your company arrives,” she said.

      “There isn’t going to be any company.”

      She looked at him. “No company?”

      “Rest and solitude,” he said shortly. “That is your prescription, is it not?”

      “Yes. Yes, it is.” And that was why he was here? For rest and solitude? “Although I seem to recall Your Grace referred to it as my strict regimen of boredom and frustration.”

      He grunted an unhappy acknowledgment.

      She clenched her jaw. Now he wanted to follow her advice? Now that her entire plan was in tatters? Bloody nobles and their whims—and she was the one to pay the price. Greece or England...what could it possibly matter to him?

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