her down.
“A thousand pardons, your grace,” he mumbled, helping to right her.
“Do not touch me, you impudent whelp,” the dowager duchess snapped. Her gaze flew past him to the portrait that had fascinated him so. Continuing in a tone that was laden with her obvious disdain, she added, “Dead twenty years and still she has the power to render men stupid!”
“I was only thinking she looked familiar, you grace,” Burney stated. “Again, my apologies for being so clumsy.”
“Familiar? You have seen someone who looks like her?” the dowager duchess demanded, her eyes flashing as she reached out and gripped his arm with rather surprising strength. Her nails, thick with age, dug into his flesh like the talons of a hawk.
“I don’t think so, your grace. Perhaps I saw her as a child. She was an actress, was she not?” Burney said.
The dowager duchess released him abruptly. “Indeed. It’s a filthy trade plied by filthy women. My son was a fool. That portrait remains here, in a place of honor, because he put it in his will that if we ever removed it, all his wealth should be given to charities. Can you believe the nerve?”
“No, your grace, I certainly cannot,” Burney replied. He wanted nothing more than to be away from her. He’d heard tales of haunted places in his life, where the presence of a ghost would render the room the ice cold. It appeared there were certain living people who possessed that ability, as well.
Her eyes narrowed and she looked at him as if he were something unpleasant she might have stepped in on the street. “What is your business here, young man?”
“I was speaking to his grace about a potential investment,” Burney lied.
She laughed bitterly. “Well, he has no money to invest unless I convince the trustees of the estate to release funds to him. You’d best talk to me about the investment.” There was a triumphant note in her voice, as if she enjoyed the power she held over her grandson.
“I would, your grace, but the duke has already declined,” Burney replied evenly. The woman made him terribly uncomfortable. She was, despite her diminutive stature, the most formidable woman he’d ever met. Her dress was somewhat old fashioned and she still wore her hair piled up in the intricate fashions popularized decades earlier. On some women, it might have looked ridiculous. On her, it simply made her more terrifying, as if time itself could hold no dominion over her. Certainly society could not. Such would never be permitted.
She harrumphed loudly before sailing past him. Over her shoulder, she tossed one parting insult. “Then you may go, sir… and please do not darken our door again. We’ve little patience for beggars here.”
Dismissed and chastened, Burney made his escape.
In his study, Averston let out a groan. He’d heard her before he saw her. His grandmother. The dragon. He pinched the bridge of his nose to stave off the headache that her presence always created. Retreating to his desk, he poured some of the brandy stashed there into a glass and quickly tossed it back. There was no time to savor the burn of the fiery liquid. He wasn’t drinking for the pleasure of it but as an anesthetic, after all.
He’d just managed to stash the glass and the brandy away when she entered, sailing toward him with a look of disapproval on her face.
“Who was that man who was just here?” she demanded.
“He had an investment proposition… I declined,” Averston stated. It wasn’t untrue, after all, just less than completely forthcoming.
She strode forward and seated herself before his desk. “I see. And is business the only proposition he had for you?”
He had no intention of discussing his sex life or his potential partners with her. “What are you doing here? I was under the impression we’d agreed to avoid one another as much as possible.”
“So we had… and in the interim you were supposed to seek a wife and start living a less… debauched life. Certainly a more natural one!” The last was uttered with a snap to her voice, her disapproval of him quite obvious.
“I will marry when I am ready and not before,” he retorted. “State your business and leave. We keep separate households for a reason. Namely that we cannot abide one another.”
“I’m no longer content to let you marry when you are ready to do so. Given your proclivities, it doesn’t suit me to allow you to continue living as an abomination… I also