What a Duke Wants Read Free Page B

whispered the word to herself. Is that what he’d thought? She felt a deep flush of color rise in her cheeks. She dropped her face back to Joey, deep in the folds of her cloak. “I meant that you were supposed to put something over the rooster’s head so that he wouldn’t know when the sun was up.”
    “Oh. I’d forgotten about that.”
    “You’d forgotten what you were sent out here to do?”
    “Yes—well, no. That wasn’t my task.”
    She glanced about, trying to see if there was somebody else in the yard. “Then who was supposed to do it?” It was a bit unsettling to realize she didn’t even know that much about who she was talking to. “You are one of the duke’s men, though, aren’t you? One of his men?”
    “I do travel with Strattington’s party.”
    That was not quite a straightforward answer, but she was simply too tired to make proper sense out of it.
    She glanced up at the lantern, considered. She didn’t know him—he couldn’t know her. She’d never met the Duke of Strattington, why would his servant recognize her? “Yes, you can light it. He’s well covered and once he’s asleep light doesn’t wake him—not as long as I keep moving. We could be under the noonday sun and he’d slumber on.” Unless some fool decided to pound on the door the moment he fell asleep.
    There was a brief spark and then a moment later the lantern glowed with light.
    Isabella stepped back, hoping her mouth had not fallen open. He was beautiful. Mr. Smythe was simply beautiful. It was not a word she normally applied to males above the age of six, but she could think of no other that fit as well.
    Perhaps magnificent . He was certainly that as well.
    Magnificent.
    That was a word you could use for a man.
    His dark hair lit golden at the ends under the flickering light and his shoulders— She couldn’t even think of a word to describe his shoulders. They were far broader than she had realized, and the close-cut tailoring of his coat left little to the imagination. If she hadn’t been holding Joey she was afraid she would have reached out and caressed the soft wool. Even with Joey her fingers longed to reach out and stroke it—stroke him.
    Trying to hide her response she turned away, bobbing Joey with more vigor than necessary.
    “Do you get tired of holding him? I imagine it must pull on your arms after a while.”
    M ark didn’t know why he’d said the words. He’d never thought about the weight of a baby before and wasn’t aware that he’d been thinking about it now. What he did know was that he wanted to see her face more closely. He should have thought about lighting the lantern sooner. He’d considered her face angelic in the moonlight, but in the full light of the lantern she was much more interesting. She still had the balanced purity of an angel, but there was something more, some flicker of life and fun that he couldn’t quite define. She was tired, her eyes shadowed and her shoulders drooping, but he knew with a deep certainty that if she smiled her whole demeanor would change, that she’d glow brighter than the lantern.
    He was being fanciful again. She was a woman, simply a woman. A pretty one. Perhaps even a beautiful one, but he’d had more beautiful women chasing him since his cousin’s death a few years ago, when he’d become his uncle’s heir, than he could even begin to count. The finest diamonds in London had allowed that they would receive his intentions—his honorable intentions—most favorably. And there’d been other women, older women, more experienced women who’d made it abundantly clear that they didn’t care if his intentions were honorable or not—in fact they often preferred the latter.
    “Yes, I must admit it can get tiring carrying Joey. He’s gained so much weight in the last few weeks that I can barely believe it. He weighed almost nothing when I first came to care for him two months ago.”
    That brought his head up. “He’s not yours then?”
    She