A Duchess a Day (Awakened by a Kiss #1) - Charis Michaels Page 0,34

two days.

To his surprise, Lady Helena had departed the wet carriage after the party with a totally new regard. Strict heiress-groom protocol had, apparently, become the order of the day. Icy detachment, no eye contact, words only to issue an order.

Fetch this.

Yes, my lady.

Hold that.

Yes, my lady.

Declan had been given little choice but to bend and stoop and respond to her myriad whims. Her sidelong glances had stopped. Knowing looks and moments alone were no more. There were only orders about heavy trunks and forgotten parcels and walking her father’s dogs. She was a young heiress and he was a stable groom.

And now she would not even look at him?

No.

His voice was as hard as steel. “I do not recall our formulation of a plan.” He put his hands on his hips and cocked his head. “You and I.”

And now she finally looked up. Despite her new detachment, his reaction to her face was unchanged. Always. Every time. His breath caught, his heart seized, and the broken thing in his chest lost another piece.

She’d worn pale green today, the color of a caterpillar. Sun streamed through a window, reflecting light off the blackness of her hair.

Declan had taken up the useless habit of cataloging what she wore: the spring greens and ruby reds and pearlescent whites. Her canary-yellow cape. The black gloves. It was an intimacy he allowed himself because—

Well, actually, he deserved no intimacy.

What he deserved was to return to jail.

He’d been hired to contain her, and he’d kissed her within hours and began conspiring with her the next day.

Jail seemed more and more like an inevitability.

The night after Girdleston had locked him in the wet carriage with Helena, the old man had summoned him to his favorite room in Lusk House, the green salon. While Declan watched, Girdleston curated his prized collection of miniature cottages, buildings, and trees, a tiny toylike village arranged on a large table like a general’s model battle. While he formed little walkways with a tiny rake, he’d asked Declan about Lady Helena’s demeanor in the carriage.

It was the report and reckoning Declan had known would come. And what had he said?

“She was petulant and weepy but compliant. Sir.”

If he thought it would pain him to lie, he was wrong. The words rolled off his tongue like a song.

Girdleston had been pleased, but he punctuated the visit with an explicit reminder that the payout and his freedom would be waiting for Declan only at the end of a job well done.

Today he stared at the subject of the job—a job at which he would fail. “Perhaps my notes outlined more of my idea for our plan?” Helena said carefully. “But the schedule is set in stone. These will be my errands for the week. Or rather, my mother’s errands on which I will be dragged along. She never wavers once she’s decided. Changes interrupt her wardrobe.”

Declan considered this, trying to make sense of her expression, which had gone soft for the first time in two days. Her voice was light and familiar. She couldn’t know this, but he loathed fickleness, loathed it even more than flat-out betrayal. One of the many things about the army that had suited him had been the very straightforward nature of a command.

“I have your notes,” he said flatly, reaching into his pocket for the charred parchment.

Lady Helena’s “plan” involved her sneaking from Lusk House every afternoon. She would track down the potential duchesses on the streets of London after her schedule of morning errands with her mother. Declan’s role was to arrange mounts or hail hackneys, give advice about the route, and mind the horses.

Everything hinged on her mother’s need for a daily afternoon nap.

Doubtless, she’d laid out only an abbreviated version, but Declan had seen enough to know her “plan” was shortsighted, high risk, and doomed to fail. She would be easily found out, hauled back, and burdened with tighter security. Declan would return to prison. His father would die an early death in the heartless chaos of London.

If she would not reconsider the plan—and her behavior of the last two days suggested she would not—Declan would be given no choice but to renege on their agreement.

Declan kicked his leg back, closing the door with his boot.

“Oh,” piped Helena, raising up.

“Oh,” he repeated. He stalked to her. “Hello. Remember me?”

“What? Of course I remem—”

“I thought we were collaborating.”

“We are collaborating.”

“No. A note telling me what I will do is not a collaboration. It is you ordering me