recall making a fuss about my naptime the day of Mother’s wedding to Maurice. And I remember my grandmother a bit, since she took charge of me at the wedding reception. I have a few vague memories of playing in the garden at Thornstock Castle. I fell and split my chin open on a paving stone.” He lifted his chin to show her. “There’s a scar that’s too faint to see. But you can feel it. Here, I’ll show you.”
He halted so he could tuck the leashes under his arm and take her hand to draw off her glove. Then he pressed her fingers to his chin in an act so intimate that she caught her breath.
But it wasn’t a trick or a sneaky way to catch a look down her gown or press against her chest. Grey was a gentleman. Nothing like her sly uncle.
She could tell because he kept his eyes, now green in the muted forest light, on her. “I do . . . feel a bit of a scar.” She also felt the faint roughness of his shaved whiskers and the tautening of his jaw at her touch.
Oh, Lord. This was unwise.
Hastily she dropped her hand, retrieved her glove, and donned it once more. Then she walked on, her pulse doing a mad dance.
When he followed her and began to speak again, his voice sounded ragged. “Anyway, I guess my nursemaid was woolgathering that day.”
“She must have been, to allow the little duke to hurt himself.”
He continued beside her a few moments in a silence only punctured by the crackle of leaves beneath their feet and the snuffling of the dogs as they examined every inch of the trail.
“It’s odd, but I don’t remember the nursemaid at all.” Then he lightened his tone. “Though I do remember our nanny in Berlin. She was a stout German widow who enjoyed sweets . . . and loved sharing them with us. We adored her.”
She matched his light tone. “Who wouldn’t adore a steady supply of sweets?”
He snorted. “When Mother found out, she was apoplectic and made Father admonish Nanny to not give us so many.”
She pounced on that. “So you do call Uncle Maurice ‘Father’ sometimes.”
“I suppose I do,” he said ruefully. “I always did when I was a boy. I just . . . After they sent me away, I . . .”
“Resented them for doing so. I can only imagine. Berlin was your home.”
A soft smile crossed his lips. “Exactly.”
“And I take it you didn’t like your aunt and uncle here very much?”
The smile faded. “No.”
When he offered nothing else, she took pity on him and picked up the thread of conversation. “I understand. As I’m sure you deduced from the other night, I was the same age as you when my father died. It’s a difficult age to lose a parent. Or both parents, in your case.”
Still, he said nothing. Apparently, his tales of being a child in Berlin were over.
“But I did have my grandparents,” she went on, “whom I adored every bit as much as you did your nanny. Although sadly they weren’t as generous with the sweets.”
That seemed to crack his reserve. “A grievous fault in any guardian of children, to be sure.” He slanted a glance at her. “What about your brother? How did he feel about your grandparents?”
She shrugged. “He liked them well enough, I suppose. But he never really lived with them. Joshua is five years older than I, so Grandfather bought him a commission in the Royal Marines after he turned sixteen, then packed him off to the Continent.”
“You lost your brother and father in one fell swoop?” he asked, sympathy in his voice.
“Pretty much.” She searched his face. “Rather like your losing your entire family in one fell swoop, only to have them supplanted by strangers.”
He merely nodded, then quickened his pace. “So, how far is this bridge, anyway?”
The man could be decidedly uncommunicative. Perhaps it was a characteristic of dukes. Uncle Armie had never spoken to her of anything except how he liked her gown, how it made her breasts look bigger and her behind smaller . . . intimate statements that had invariably embarrassed her.
Somehow she couldn’t imagine Greycourt saying such rude things. Though he could be officious, that was a different sort of rude. It wasn’t vulgar.
They’d walked a few more steps in silence when she felt something give way in her half-boot. One of her laces had broken.