Straightening to her full height—which put the top of her head nearly level with his chin—she replied with equal terseness. “I am sure I shouldn’t know. From your attire, you might have been anyone from blacksmith to chimney sweep to dungeon-dwelling troll. I’ve heard of you, of course. A bachelor duke, but one who rarely enters society. And clearly that is for everyone’s benefit,” she added beneath her breath as she watched him attempt to clean his lenses against the sleeve covered in a black sooty substance. “And let us not forget the fanciful stories of your lineage’s connection to the legend of King Arthur. Well, I half pictured the Duke of Merleton as an old man with stooped shoulders and a long white beard.”
And perhaps with several members of your family kept in the attic.
He paused his circular buffing motions of the lenses against sleeve and squinted at her. “Are you accusing me of having lunacy in the family?”
“If it’s any consolation, I did not intend to say that last part aloud.”
His brows flattened. “Since you are refusing to answer my questions, I’m left with no alternative than to escort you—”
His speech stopped abruptly as he thrust the now thoroughly blackened spectacles onto his nose, only to growl “Merlin’s teeth” under his breath, then rip them off again.
A giggle escaped Meg. She clapped a hand over her mouth. That shouldn’t have slipped out either. However, seeing this censorious man struggle over such a rudimentary task struck her as humorous.
The duke cocked his head in curious assessment as if he didn’t know what to make of the sound. Perhaps no one had dared laugh in his presence before.
Taking pity on the confounded and untidy duke, she withdrew a clean handkerchief from her sleeve. Then she reached for the spectacles.
He held fast. “What are you doing?”
“Allow me,” she insisted, tightening her grip.
They engaged in a small tug-of-war, a give-and-take in increments of inches. The ridiculous episode had the unforeseen result of drawing him a step nearer.
Those river-stone eyes stared down at her with wordless intensity. She felt a jolt deep inside—a strange cinctured sensation that wrapped around her middle and made it difficult to breathe again.
“You called me a bachelor duke,” he said, his accusatory tone penetrating the peculiar fog that kept enshrouding her. “That’s why you’re here. You’re a husband-hunter.”
She scoffed. “I am, most definitely, not. As a matter of fact, I have absolutely no interest in marriage at all and for reasons that are . . . well, none of your concern. But you can rest assured that, should I ever change my mind, yours would be the last threshold I’d cross.”
“And yet, you’ve crossed it, nonetheless. But for what purpose?”
Only then did his long blunt fingers release the spectacles. Even so, he did not retreat to a more socially acceptable distance. Instead, he studied her ministrations carefully as if he thought she’d hidden something nefarious in the folds of her handkerchief.
It wouldn’t have bothered her, if only he wasn’t so terribly tall and dark. He made her feel as if she were on the verge of becoming eclipsed by his form. As if, were he to take one more step, she’d become absorbed in his shadow.
Though, more than likely, he was trying to intimidate her into revealing all her secrets.
“You have quite the suspicious nature. Did it ever occur to you that the answer of my being here could be as simple as happenstance?” she asked, issuing a sniff of haughty indignance as if she didn’t have a pilfered slip of paper beneath the sole of her shoe.
“Happenstance does not exist,” he said. “Men and women make choices. We are not automatons. We are not fitted with gears and springs but with a complex system of nerves and muscles that react to the brain’s command to place one foot in front of the other and, in your case, venture into places where you do not belong.”
Splendid. If there was one thing worse than a lunatic, it was an educated lunatic.
“I am not insane,” he said evenly as her cheeks colored in embarrassment at another slip of the tongue. “If I were, I can assure you that I would not be exerting the utmost patience toward a trespasser who has stolen into my house for purposes yet to be determined. Were I a madman, madam, I would have already dragged you through the halls, tossed you outside and bolted the door.
“Then again,” he added, taking a half step closer, his eyes darker still, “perhaps, I would have locked you in the attic with all the others.”
She caught that underlying fragrance again. This time, instead of merely making her lungs cinch, her skin seemed to draw tighter over her frame, too. Not unpleasant, but disconcerting, all the same.
“Fine,” she said relenting, pressing her shoulder blades against the wall. “My party and I merely came to tour the grounds. Which are lovely, by the way. It isn’t often one encounters pink swans and a moat. Or a drawbridge or gated portcullis for that matter. And in such a setting, it was only natural that one would stop for a picnic, a perfectly harmless endeavor . . .”
She realized she was rambling when she heard him expel an impatient hiss through his teeth. Yes, she was stalling. And not because she was so high in her morals that she couldn’t tell a lie. No, indeed. After all, she had an overprotective elder brother and, as long as dire consequences weren’t involved, she saw no harm in telling a small fib or two. But, for some unknown reason, lying to this man was proving unaccountably difficult.
And besides, it made her nose itch.
She wiggled it in an effort to alleviate the discomfort, then cleared her throat to continue. “So I’m certain you could imagine that my party expressed an interest in touring inside your grand estate.”
“There are no tours inside the walls of Caliburn Keep. Ever.”
“As we were informed after we rapped on your gargantuan door.”
“You should be grateful you were allowed to tour the grounds at all. I’d only recently reopened the gates. Much to my current regret.”
In that instant, she decided that this man wasn’t a lunatic. He was just rude and arrogant. And suddenly it wasn’t all that difficult to lie to him. In fact, she wished she had stolen all his recipes.
“Since my traveling companions and I have a lengthy journey ahead of us, we inquired if we might be directed to a repairing chamber.”
The tip of her nose prickled. Ignoring it, she stripped off her glove and applied her thumbnail to a particularly stubborn speck of dirt on his lenses, all the while wishing he could feel the abrasion.
“Which is also not in this older portion of the keep.”
“Well, obviously, I became turned around at some point and found myself here, subject to your delightful company.”
Finished with her task, she looked up to see that one of his brows was arched higher than the other as if he expected her to apologize for her sarcasm. Not likely, Duke of Disdain.
With an unconcerned shrug, she offered up his glasses. However, seeing that his hands were still covered in soot, she tsked wearily. “Better allow me. You’ll only smear them all over again. Now bend forward a bit. You’re far too tall.”
He obliged, those brows drawing together, puckering over the bridge of his nose in a fan of three vertical furrows.