on the table. An elegant hand, with long, elegant fingers. It could have belonged to a man who’d mastered a classical instrument. On its pinky, the dark blue sapphire on the ducal signet ring seemed to swallow the light like a tiny ocean.
She felt his eyes on her, felt him noticing that she was noticing him.
“That’s the Manchester Guardian,” she said quickly, nodding at the paper he had put aside.
Montgomery gave her a wry look. “I take it you took me for a Times reader.”
“The Morning Post, actually.” A paper even more stuffy than the Times. Suffragists read the Guardian.
“Right on all accounts,” he said, and lifted the copy of the Guardian to reveal the Times. Then the Morning Post.
“That’s very thorough, Your Grace.”
“Not really. When you want to understand what is happening in the country at large, you read all sides.”
She remembered that this was the man the queen had put in charge of leading the Tory party to victory. He would want to know all that was happening in the country, the better to steer it.
Ah, she had sensed it already on Parliament Square when they had locked eyes, had sensed it like any creature recognized one of its kind: Montgomery was a clever, clever man. It was as unsettling as the intimate knowledge that his silky waistcoat concealed a well-muscled body.
She reached for the teacup, and the delicate china rattled and tea sloshed over the rim.
“Apologies,” she murmured.
Montgomery’s gaze narrowed at her.
A footman swooped, picked up cup and flooded saucer, and carried it off.
She tried to stretch, to get more air into her lungs. It didn’t help; a boulder seemed to crush her chest.
“I beg your pardon,” she whispered. “I have to excuse myself.”
The duke said something, but she couldn’t quite make sense of it. Her legs were heavy; she all but struggled to her feet. One step, another step, away from the table . . . her vision dimmed.
Oh, lord no.
A chair scraped across the floor, and she fell headlong into a black tunnel.
* * *
She came to flat on her back, her body buzzing as if swarmed by a million bees. She was on a settee, with her feet propped up and the acrid stench of smelling salts in her nose. Faces were hovering above her. Mrs. Beecham the housekeeper, the butler, and Montgomery.
The duke’s expression was grim. “So you were not fine,” he said.
She glowered at him, he who had practically compelled her to become ill with his doom-say prophecy on the fields yesterday.
“I’m fine enough, Your Grace.”
He went down on one knee beside her, his eyes hard. “You would have cracked your head on the floor had I not caught you.”
Damsel on his horse, damsel fainting into his arms. She was gripped by the insane impulse to laugh, and it came out as an awful choking sound. Mrs. Beecham clasped a worried hand over her mouth.
“My physician will be here shortly,” Montgomery said.
A doctor? She made to sit up. “I can’t—”
His hand closed over her shoulder and pushed her back down, gently but firm.
“She might be delirious,” the butler said to Mrs. Beecham, as if she couldn’t hear him.
“You don’t understand,” she said, hating the desperation in her voice. She hadn’t been ill since she had been a girl. She couldn’t be, there was always something that needed doing. Now it was her coursework . . . her pupils . . .
“Whom may I notify?” Montgomery asked.
The words rolled through her head sluggishly. “Professor Jenkins,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll finish the translation on time.”
“Definitely delirious,” Mrs. Beecham said, “the poor thing.”
“I meant a next of kin, miss,” Montgomery said impatiently.
“Oh,” she said. “There’s no one.”
What good would it do to tell Gilbert? She was the one taking care of them; he’d only become flustered. Tears stung hotly in her nose. If she fell behind in her coursework, she’d jeopardize her stipend . . . her future . . . “There’s no one,” she repeated, “so I can’t . . . I can’t be ill.”
There was a pause.
“I see,” Montgomery said. She glanced at him, for his tone had softened suspiciously.
“You will be in good hands here,” he said. She realized his hand was still on her shoulder, its weight anchoring her body, which seemed to have turned to hot steam.
“I cannot afford—” A doctor, she wanted to say, but he shook his head.
“You will be safe here.”
Safe.
A promise of a tall order. But he sounded so calm, there was no question