Page 16 of The Duke's Only Desire

“Do you need anything, ma’am?” he asked. “Extra rugs or anything from your travel bag?”

Another shake of her head, and she blinked hard as she stared past him at Shay’s back, afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop the tears this time. She blurted out in pain, “How can you stand to work for a man whose soul is so black that he would force a woman to marry him and ruin her life?”

Pearson’s large frame filled the doorway. Leave it to Shay to have a valet unlike any manservant she had ever seen before. He was as large as an ox with bulging muscles barely contained beneath his thick wool coat, and he behaved more like a bodyguard than a body man. But the expression on his face was one of compassion for her as he reached to pick up the rug that had slipped to the floor at her feet.

“He didn’t ruin your life, ma’am,” he corrected gently as he held out the rug to her. “He saved it.”

Her hand froze in mid-reach. “What do you mean?”

He began to speak, then hesitated and shook his head. “I’d be overstepping, and the colonel would have my hide.”

The colonel.That was why the valet was so commanding, she realized as she accepted the unwanted rug. They must have known each other in the wars, and Shay had hired him after the fighting ended to keep him from being another one of the oh-too-many former soldiers who couldn’t find employment. Not a bodyguard, she realized, but a battle ally. Shay must certainly have thought he needed one for his life post-accident.

“You’ll need to ask him yourself, ma’am.”

“I have,” she muttered, her shoulders slumping. “He won’t tell me.”

His mouth twisted with indecision as he cast a glance down the road at Shay. Then he lowered his voice. “Perhaps you should ask him to tell you about Clara LePaige.”

The name wasn’t familiar. Was she someone Shay loved? “Who is she?”

He shook his head, resolutely refusing to say more. But as he turned to leave, he confided, “I’ve known the colonel since the days when we fought side by side against the French, and his soul isn’t nearly as black as he thinks it is. Perhaps you can show him that.”

Then, with a parting tug to the brim of his hat, he left her to go to Shay, to find out if he could provide any assistance.

From the carriage, Sophie watched the two men, who said not one word to each other but simply stood shoulder to shoulder and stared together across the bucolic English countryside as if they half-expected Napoleon’s royal guard to jump out from behind the trees at any moment. To live life feeling as if you were constantly besieged… Sophie shuddered and pulled the rug over her legs. Such a life would be horrible. But it didn’t give him the right to make hers just as bad.

Finally, Shay slapped Pearson on the back in silent understanding as if the two men had just ended a long conversation when not one word had been uttered between them. He tugged at his gloves as he returned to the carriage while Pearson circled to the back to ride behind with the tiger.

“We’ll travel about another hour before reaching the inn where we’ll stay for the night,” Shay told her. “I’ll ride on top the rest of the way.”

Before she could protest, he closed the door, shutting her inside the compartment, and quickly turned away to climb up to the driver’s seat. The team started forward with a loud crack of the whip.

Within moments, the carriage was on its way again, once more moving toward the cold and icy north where the rest of her life awaited her.