She gave him a smile that drew the air from his body. “I do remember, Your Grace. But I’m willing to forgive and forget if you are.”
Chapter 7
The last thing she had expected was to be greeted by such a breathtaking man. It was his voice she recognized. The pitch sent ripples of forbidden delight straight to the toes of her ill-fitting shoes. It carried a command that she might have ignored in her garden, but in his domain, and in his captivating presence, there was no question of ignoring him.
He was a peer of the realm, a duke, even if he looked rather young and offhanded about his role, with his long coat unbuttoned and his shirtsleeves rolled up to his wrists.
A grin counterbalanced his brooding stare. “If you aren’t comfortable sitting before me, I insist you at least put aside the muff and reticule you’re holding like a battle shield. They appear rather awkward.” He reached to unhook the reticule from her wrist, lifting his teasing face to hers. “I thought you clanked against the door when you entered. Is there a dagger or gun on your person? Are young governesses so imperiled these days that they must carry weapons to their interviews?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said, miffed at his mockery and disconcerting charm.
“This is your first interview?”
His smoky eyes studied her intently; she wouldn’t dare lie when she needed this job. The newspaper notice promised good pay.
“Yes.” She lowered her reticule to the empty chair. The dragon and its accoutrements slid from her fur muff to the bare wooden floor. An embarrassing clunk echoed in the room. A governess, like the children in her care, should not draw the master’s attention. Yet the duke stared down in bemusement at the brass ring, dragon, and plate.
Quickly, she bent, aghast at her clumsiness. He looked down at the floor in astonishment. So much for the door knocker bringing her luck. The duke studied it a moment longer before looking up again. “That’s an unusual token to bring to an interview. Does it hold a personal meaning for you?”
She winced. “It’s our door knocker. The bolts severed when I closed the door this morning to come here. You saw the condition of the manor house.”
They went down on their knees at the same moment. Ivy swallowed; his hard chin brushed her head. She supposed it was too much to hope he would act as if it were completely normal for a potential governess to carry a heraldic door knocker to her first interview. Perhaps he’d excuse her as an eccentric, and not an impoverished lady who’d brought along evidence of her desperation on her person.
“It’s a sanctuary hold,” he said in surprise, “not a door knocker.”
Their fingers met across the ancient brass ring. Warmth suffused Ivy at the unexpected contact. “Yes,” she said, caught off-balance. “It belonged to the medieval monastery on the grounds behind the manor before it was built. Cromwell’s troops destroyed the priory during his reign, and my great-great-grandfather salvaged it from the ruins.”
“A dragon is the insignia of my regiment in the infantry.”
“The dragon is our Welsh talisman.”
She started to withdraw her hand; his fingers closed over her knuckles, a strong grip, alive, in contrast to the cold brass.
“In days past a fugitive had only to lift it once to receive sanctuary,” he said. “The question is—”
Ivy’s heart pounded. “What is it doing in my muff?”
He smiled. His eyes drifted over her inelegantly poised form. “That’s a good question, yes. But what I meant to ask is which of us at this moment is in greater need of sanctuary.”
The warmth turned to smoldering heat that reached deep inside her.
Sanctuary?
She wasn’t sure of that.
Never had she felt so drawn to a man, it was true. Although she didn’t know whether she should trust him. She needed this position. If he offered it to her, it should not be because his smile made her clumsy and . . . his attentions made her weak. Somehow it was almost as if she knew him.
His eyes shone as if they were keeping a secret, too. He probably thought her a fool for bringing a sanctuary hold to his house. “I might have been better off applying for a position at an alehouse,” she thought aloud.
“Does your dragon breathe fire?” he asked, grinning at her.
A little of her anxiety melted. “I suspect he does when no one is looking.”
He raised his other hand to her face. “Do you think he’s looking now?”
“Looking at what, Your Grace?” she asked blankly.
“At us,” he said, and stretched forward to kiss her with a sweet familiarity she did not understand.
She had been kissed only once before, just like this, and as romantic as she remembered the moment, her entire life had fallen apart afterward. She had attended a party in the hope of meeting a suitor who would make a good husband. Instead, a masked scapegrace had flustered her, as the duke was doing now.