What a Duke Wants Read Free Page A

questions and then not wait for the answers?” The man’s voice spoke out of the darkness.
    Pins and needles, she’d forgotten him again. If she didn’t get sleep soon she’d forget her own name—Miss Isabella Hermione Masters. She should have used her middle name once she’d run from her brother’s home, but somehow she’d never been able to see herself as a Hermione. She could even have taken a new name. Mary Smith. That would have raised no questions, brought no curiosity.
    “Are you even listening?” The man spoke again.
    She slowed her pacing and turned toward him. Joey’s head was limp against her bosom and it seemed he’d finally drifted off again. “I am sorry.”
    “You’re sorry? We’ve been acquainted for all of five minutes and already I’ve the feeling those words don’t pass your lips very often.”
    Isabella would have commented on his rudeness if she hadn’t been so aware of her own. “I fear I am just a bit tired from watching Joey—not on my best form at all.”
    The man nodded. That much she could see.
    “So do you want to know?” he said.
    “Know what?”
    “My name. You did ask.”
    She wanted to sag against the building and close her eyes for a week—that was what she wanted. She wanted not to worry anymore. She was so tired of worrying. “Yes, of course.”
    “It’s Mark Smythe. That’s why I was surprised by your name.”
    “I never thought you could hear the Y but when you say it I know it’s there. Why is that?” Gads, she was rambling. Tired, and rude, and rambling. It was amazing the man hadn’t just turned and left. Of course he still needed to cover the rooster. He might have implied he found the matter as unnecessary as she, but it was his job.
    She bobbed her hip a bit, feeling Joey settle even more comfortably against her.
    “I suppose I was brought up to say it that way. I’ve never thought about it, but I’ve always been taught the importance of that Y.”
    “I can’t believe we’re standing in the yard in the middle of the night discussing whether Smith sounds different than Smythe .”
    “I would admit it was not how I imagined I’d be spending my evening either—none of the possibilities I considered came close to this.” He stepped forward and she could feel his glance upon her. She shivered at the intensity of that gaze, automatically dropping her chin into the folds of her cloak. She didn’t know him. There was no way he could recognize her. So why did he stare so intently?
    She hadn’t feared being recognized in nearly a year. It was seeing her pursuers again that had her in such a state. She’d thought she’d lost them in Norwich when she’d taken the position with the Wattingtons. And she was drawing nearer to London. She had promised she would never go back.
    Still, Mr. Smythe was a servant—just like her. There was no reason to be afraid.
    She peeked up at him.
    His hair was dark, very dark. She’d assumed it was the shadows that had kept him hidden, but as he moved into the moonlight she could see that almost everything about him was dark—his hair, his eyes, his clothes. His skin was less so, but still of a deeper hue than she was accustomed to. Few men had skin the sun had so clearly touched, but then ever since she’d been in service she’d dealt only with footmen, butlers, and porters. The grooms and laborers hardly ever came up to the nursery floors, and she rarely ate in the kitchens with the rest of the servants. She wondered how far the color extended.
    “You’re staring.” His voice drew her from her reverie.
    “It’s simply hard to see. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a long conversation with a man I couldn’t see.”
    “Will it disturb the child if I light the lamp?” He gestured to a tin lamp hanging from the eaves above the door. “I would admit to my own curiosity about you. It’s not often a women comes to me speaking of cocks, particularly not one with a babe in arms.”
    “A cock.” She