The Duke's Guide to Correct Behavior Read Free Page B

forgetting all about needing . . . “References. I regret to say I hastened to assist you without pausing to collect them.” She had been too busy yelping to remember anything she might actually require. “I will certainly rectify that at a later date. Please know, for now, that I am skilled in the charge of girls, and if I could just meet the young lady in question, I would be able to prove my mettle.”
    His eyebrows lowered as he seemed to consider her words. “Prove your mettle in some sort of governess competition?”
    She replied before she thought. “It is not as though the teaching of girls is something one can be competitive about. Either they learn or they do not. I assure you, I am quite competent.”
    Oh, stupid, stupid Lily . Wasn’t it an absolute rule that one did not talk back to a duke? Particularly when said duke had your future employment in his hands? Plus the future of the agency, the one she and her partners had worked so very hard to make a success?
    She clamped her mouth shut before she could say anything else.
    But he hadn’t yet thrown her out, so . . . She held her breath, seeing how the corner of his mouth had lifted into what might nearly be a smile, how
one eyebrow had arched up—honestly, his eyebrows were miraculously nimble—as though he were amused.
    And exhaled as he nodded. “You will suit,” he said.
    Hearing that, she had much more admiration for the unfortunate women who came to the agency.
    Without saying anything more, he leaned over the surface of the escritoire and lifted a tiny pink bell from the far corner. He glared at it—and really, who could blame him?—and shook it.
    Not unexpectedly, it had a tiny, light tinkling sound, and Lily held her breath, wondering if anyone could possibly have heard it. Moments later, however, the butler opened the door.
    â€œEscort Miss Rose here now.” No please, no softening of his voice, but to Lily it was as though an angel had burst from the heavens and was promising her cream cakes and chocolate sauce.
    Which reminded her, she hadn’t eaten for a while. What would she do if her stomach growled? Was stomach-growling a cause for not hiring a person?
    She hoped she wouldn’t have to find out.
    The duke did not ask her to sit, of course; she was a servant being interviewed for a position, not a guest visiting for tea. Once he’d sent the butler off to fetch Rose, he barely even glanced in her direction. Although she couldn’t stop looking at him. It was really unfair that he was a duke, and lived in the Mansion with Many Rooms, and looked as he did.
    Now, for example, he was examining some papers on the execrable escritoire, his long, elegant, yet still ridiculously virile fingers shuffling them while his other hand raked through his hair, making it both more disheveled and more dangerously attractive.
    His nose—and really, when had she ever noticed the shape of a person’s nose before?—was straight and sharp, and nearly too big, but was, again, dangerously attractive.
    An attractive nose. She was engrossed by the study of his nose.
    At least he didn’t have a wart or anything. That would be no less engrossing, but definitely less handsome.
    At last she heard the door swing open behind her, and she turned around to see a small, slight child wearing a shabby gown and clutching the remnants of some sort of pastry, crumbs of which were falling to the floor.
    And her expression—she looked as anxious and terrified as Lily felt, and Lily immediately felt a bond to this little girl who probably couldn’t even count as high as all the rooms in the duke’s house. Perhaps that would be one of their first lessons. If she got the job.
    â€œMiss Rose, this lady has come to discuss taking a position as your governess.” His voice as he addressed the little girl was gentle, as though he knew just how intimidating he likely appeared to this tiny,