Read Disciplining the Duchess for Free Online Page B

of a color she still couldn’t place. Green or blue? Dark greenish-blue. She did not know how to describe them, only knew that when he turned them on her she rather lost her ability to think.
    “Miss Barrett,” he said, placing her hand over his arm. “Will you walk with me around the lake before tea?”
    He couched it as a question but it was a command. She knew she ought to reply with some fluttery thing— Certainly, Your Grace. I would be honored, Your Grace —but she could not summon a word in her disarrayed mood. He sent a withering glance over his shoulder at her tormentors as he turned her toward the path. “If you will excuse us, gentlemen.”
    His acerbic tone implied they were anything but. The men shrank away like beaten dogs, slinking toward the house. Why couldn’t she command that type of respect? She hoped His Grace had not heard too much of their mockery, especially the part about her mooning after him. Of course, he probably heard worse things about her, wherever the men gathered and talked about the ladies. Her brother, who ought to stick up for her, probably spoke of her worst of all. Only this man, this near-stranger, had seen fit to come to her rescue—for the second time.
    It was both wonderful and infuriating. And embarrassing beyond belief.
    She looked away, at tree tops and blue sky, as a whirlwind of emotions assailed her. She didn’t realize until now how much she’d craved his notice, but why did it have to come at a time like this, when she felt so irritable and bleak? She scratched her cheek and fussed with her bonnet’s brim. “You needn’t stay and walk with me,” she said. “But thank you for sending those gentlemen away.”
    “I felt obliged to interfere.” He helped her cross from the lawn to a narrow walking path beside the lake. “You might have knocked out Lord Sheffield if I hadn’t.” His deep, sonorous voice held a note of reproach.
    “I did not— I would never—”
    “Plant a facer aside Sheffield’s crooked nose?” He patted her hand where it rested on his arm. “That’s a lie. I think you tell a lot of lies, Miss Barrett.”
    She gawked. “I most certainly do not.”
    “You do. Out of necessity, I’m sure, but you needn’t lie to me.”
    She stopped still and faced him. Beneath his handsome exterior, behind his intent gaze, she saw some spark of mayhem that unsettled her. She wasn’t sure anymore if he’d rescued her or only wished to toy with her in private. When she spoke, her voice trembled. “I am too stupid sometimes to tell lies from truth. To tell sincerity from cruelty.”
    “Are you too stupid to realize when a friend stands before you?”
    She had used the word stupid first. He said it with a touch of frustration that made it sound nastier perhaps than he meant. She glared at the burnished gold buttons of his waistcoat. “I can be eminently stupid, Your Grace.”
    He made a low, impatient sound. “Come, let us walk.” He guided her forward at the same desultory pace with which he did everything. “If you do not care to continue as an object of gossip and teasing, you must refrain from throwing punches at gentlemen. You are becoming the party’s entertainment and I doubt you wish to be.”
    She flushed hot at his words and tugged her bonnet again. “Are you trying to be gallant or to humiliate me?”
    “Humiliate you? What an outrageous thing to say.” His eyes were fixed on some distant point, his lips drawn down in what might have been a frown, except that he didn’t look angry. “Why did you not dismiss the gentlemen when they began to tease you?”
    “Dismiss them how?”
    “A glare, some sharp words. Ignore them if you must. Those young bucks are nobodies, annoying gnats. If you swat at them enough, they will go away.”
    On the heels of the gentlemen’s mockery, she must now endure this dressing down? Her throat worked with the effort of mastering her emotions. “The scene you witnessed was not the first nor the last