Never Deceive a Duke by Liz Carlyle Page A

strode toward the door that he recalled that there had been no bed involved, and precious little warmth. No, he had backed Antonia up against a cold, damp wall and taken her like some Covent Garden tart. And now she did not want to remember. Rather than ponder the meaning of that, however, it was easier to just throw open the door and storm out. To his chagrin, a pair of housemaids went skittering off into the shadows, and he caught the tail end of what looked like a footman vanishing round one corner.
    Perfect . Now the servants would have something to gossip about besides his mongrel bloodlines and whether or not their mistress was a murderess. Gareth held up his head despite his anger, and set off in the direction of his study. He needed a place of solitude in which to lick his wounds.
    But his solitude was not long-lived. After wearing a tread into the carpet, he had just decided on a tentative course of action when an ill wind burst into the room in the form of the duchess’s ruddy-faced maid. He pushed away the paper he’d been scratching on, then stood, though why the devil he should have done that was beyond him.
    “Now you see here, sir,” said the maid, marching up to the desk. “I want to know what you’ve done to her ladyship, and I want to know now.”
    “I beg your pardon?” said Gareth. “ You wish what? ”
    The maid had two beefy hands set high on her hips. “You got no cause wheresoever to go about bullying and sharp-talking her ladyship, sir,” she went on. “You’re neither her husband—”
    “Thank God for that small mercy.”
    “—nor her father, and you have no right, do you hear?”
    “Madam, what, pray, is your name?”
    That caught her up short for an instant. “Nellie Waters.”
    “Miss Waters, do you value your employment?” he snapped. “I will have you dismissed for your insolence.”
    “It’s Mrs . Waters, Your Grace, and I do not work for you,” said the woman. “I work for Her Grace, as I did for her mother before her, and her aunt before that—and I will thank you to leave that poor, sad woman alone. Hasn’t she suffered enough but what you must come in here talking ugly to her and making her cry?”
    “She hadn’t shed so much as a tear when last I saw her,” he snarled across his desk.
    “Why, she’s beside herself!” charged the maid, who had begun to wring her hands most affectedly. “Can’t get a straight word out o’ her—”
    “Nor could I,” he said.
    “—and her just lying there across the bed sobbing like her heart be broken all over again. And for what? So you can let off a little temper? I hope it was worth it to you, sir, I truly do.”
    “You know nothing of it,” he snapped. “Furthermore, it is none of your business. Your mistress seems a stranger to the truth, Mrs . Waters.”
    “The truth ?” demanded the maid. “What’s that to do with anything? Do you think this is easy for her, sir? To have people whispering that she’s mad, per’aps even a murderess? To have to live here in what was once her home, under your thumb—a man she does not even know?” And does not wish to know, Gareth mentally added.
    “She’s buried two husbands, Your Grace, and it goes hard on a woman, I’ll tell you it does. A man just picks up and marries him another, and what’s the difference? Not much. But a woman—it’s not like that.”
    But Gareth was so enraged that he was barely listening. “You don’t know a damned thing about it,” he retorted. “Ask your mistress what the trouble is when her tantrum is done. And don’t be so quick to paint every man with your broad brush. She’s enough to drive a good man mad.”
    The woman’s face fell like soft dough. “But she’s never had a good man, Your Grace.” Her voice had gone quiet now. “Wouldn’t know one from a dead trout, I daresay. Me, I had a good husband. The kind a woman don’t have but once—and I’ll never have another. But she can’t make that choice. She can’t