The Duke's Men [1] What the Duke Desires by Sabrina Jeffries Page A

again.
    “Forgive me, Mr. Kale,” she asked, “but what does a land agent do, exactly?”
    Holding her breath, Lisette waited to see how the duke would manage this. He’d been
     stubborn about taking up her choice of profession, and now she couldn’t even help him with his choice without
     giving up her pretense of sleep.
    “He collects the rents,” Lyons answered handily, to her surprise. “He makes inventories.
     He surveys the farms, keeps a terrier of the common lands . . .”
    As he continued to list an impressive number of duties, Lisette marveled at his knowledge.
     She could not have helped him with this, to be sure. Papa had always just said that
     his land agent “managed the estate,” indifferent to what the man actually did. And
     Papa had only been a viscount. She’d assumed that a wealthy duke with vast properties
     would have even less need ofsuch knowledge and would know little about the inner workings of his estates.
    In Lyons’s case, she’d been wrong. Mr. Greasley asked more questions, and the duke
     answered every one easily. Astonishing.
    As the two men began to talk of leases and enclosures and things that were far beyond
     her ken, the rumble of Lyons’s voice and the swaying of the carriage began to lull
     her into a doze. She had been up very late and had risen very early. And they wouldn’t reach Brighton for
     some time . . .
    She came slowly awake a while later to find the coach dark and the duke’s arm about
     her shoulders. Her head had slid down to the center of his chest, and her hand was
     on his waist.
    Horrified, she jerked herself upright, embarrassment filling her cheeks with heat
     as he pulled his arm from around her shoulders. “Where are we?” she asked, trying
     to get her bearings.
    “On the outskirts of Brighton,” he said in that low timbre that did something unseemly
     to her insides.
    She couldn’t look at him. She’d been practically on his lap! How mortifying. He must
     think her the most vulgar creature imaginable.
    “You were sleeping very sound,” Mrs. Greasley offered. “You must have been tired,
     dearie.”
    It was said so kindly that Lisette winced. She felt a little guilty about how her
     fake tiff with her “husband” had led to a very real tiff between Mr. and Mrs. Greasley.
     Still, they seemed to have patched it up. The womanwas leaning companionably against him, and he didn’t seem to mind.
    Lisette turned her face to the window. Thank God this nightmare stretch of the trip
     was almost over. The incident with the Greasleys had proved only too well that she
     couldn’t necessarily travel with impunity.
    The duke had known it, too, and tried to take advantage. She couldn’t fool herself
     that she’d gained the upper hand with her little performance. She’d just gained a
     reprieve, that’s all. He could have chosen to drop the facade the moment he realized
     he might get the truth out of the Greasleys. He could have revealed that she was not married to him and asked them flat out what he wished to know. And in one fell swoop,
     he would have ruined her and possibly Dom’s business.
    Why hadn’t he? Because he was a gentleman?
    More likely it was because he could tell that the Greasleys didn’t know enough to
     help him. Thank God she’d mentioned both Toulon and Paris to them in the past, and
     thank God the two cities were in very different parts of France. Otherwise, she was
     almost certain Lofty Lyons would have abandoned her in Brighton to hunt down Tristan
     in whichever one they’d named definitively.
    She’d made a narrow escape. Too narrow.
    Fortunately, she had little chance of encountering more neighbors. So once they parted
     from the Greasleys she ought to be safe from discovery, at least until they were on
     their way to Paris.
    Surely Lyons would never abandon her in France.That would be most ungentlemanly, and he was nothing if not a gentleman.
    Most of the time.
    A shiver skittered down her spine as she