A Duchess a Day (Awakened by a Kiss #1) - Charis Michaels Page 0,30
“You cannot seriously expect to ride in this carriage?”
“Me?” he asked, peeling off his wet hat and tossing it in a crystal dish. “Here?” He bit off a glove and ran a hand through his wet hair. “Yes. I can expect it.”
She made a nervous laugh. “You’re joking.”
“I’m joking?” he asked. “I’m joking? I’m not the one running down the street like a lunatic. I’m not searching a man’s body for a document that does not belong to me—”
“It does belong to me.”
“. . . while strangling him . . .”
“I wasn’t strangling you, I was—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You may have won this round, but the rules have changed.”
He began to shrug from his wet coat. His movements were irritated and jerky. He snagged his collar loose. He stomped mud from his boots.
Helena watched him, fascinated by the simple rituals. He was a giant in a carriage designed for a small man and his smaller uncle.
I want more of him, she thought.
More often.
I want more of him all the time.
She wanted him like a busy person who forgets to eat and realizes she’s starving to death.
It was wrong, she knew—this want. How had her very essential and very tenuous fight been waylaid by something so self-indulgent and impossible?
She glanced at him. How indeed?
Forcing herself to do anything productive, she felt around her for her soggy hat, jerking it free. She told him, “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘changed rules,’ but I don’t want to fight you.”
Shaw didn’t reply. The carriage lurched into motion and he nudged the curtain with a finger, studying the wet street outside.
“I assume Girdleston installed you in the carriage to restrict me?” she asked, taking up a handful of hair and squeezing it into a vase.
He let the curtain fall. “Behold: the new rules. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Look, it was not my initial goal to bind you to me, but you gave me no choice. I offered a simple truce and trade that would serve us both, but you would not cooperate.”
“I do not,” he said slowly, emphatically, “have the freedom to cooperate.” His voice was too loud for the small carriage. It should have frightened her. She should feel chastened and chagrined. Instead, she wanted to challenge him.
“Why?” she demanded. “Why can you not cooperate? You adore the Lusk dukedom? You detest me? What is it?”
He said something under his breath, an oath, a curse. He opened his mouth and then closed it, clearly choosing his words. Finally, he said, “I cannot cooperate because I need Girdleston’s money to provide for my family.”
“Your wife and children?” she asked, her heart drumming. Oh God, did Declan Shaw have a wife and children?
“No. My father and my two sisters. I am not married.”
Helena’s heart did another flip. She thought for a moment and asked, “Are they . . . destitute?”
“No, not destitute, but they rely on me for survival. Not the kind of survival you describe, which involves marrying a bloke you don’t fancy, and living in one mansion instead of another.”
“That is not—”
“I am not unsympathetic to what you want for yourself, but I must put my own family first. I must do the job I was hired to do. I cannot . . . cooperate with you.”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, the honest truth. She wanted to reach out, to make some physical connection, but she dared not. This was not the library or barn. They were not trading barbs about his inaccurate title of groom. He did not appear open to her touch.
She paused, hoping to diffuse the tension. It was her fault, of course. She’d pushed him, and marched him about, and forced him to drag her down the street. Now they were soaked to the bone and he was—
Well, the look of desperation on his face made a tear in her heart.
She’d wanted desperately to know what drove him. What of this father and the sisters? Was his mother deceased? And how had he come to work—
The carriage bounced to a stop. The clatter of cross traffic could be heard outside. Helena took a deep breath. “Why didn’t you tell me about your family?” she asked quietly. “I’ve wanted you to tell me thei—”
“Here’s the long and short of it, my lady,” he said curtly. “Girdleston’s money will be the difference between an easy life for my family or hardship. My father is old and frail. London is expensive and competitive and the smoke is damaging to