Lord Ruin by Carolyn Jewel Page B

home. And yet somehow she must find a way to manage. “Merchant?”
    “Madam?” He stopped at the door, his expression as starched and friendly as his cravat.
    “You must see I am hopelessly over my head with him.”
    Merchant’s face did not change, but she would have sworn his eyes softened in some indefinable way. She grimaced. She needed something to nibble on, something to ease her stomach, only there was nothing at hand. The biscuits had been left behind in the carriage.
    “I do not wish to embarrass him,” she said. “Will you at least help me to master the household?”
    “Madam.” He bowed and when he straightened, his expression was once again impassive.
    “Thank you.” She clenched her teeth and willed the nausea to vanish. If she did not succeed, there was always the washbasin. An entire room distant. “One more thing.”
    “Madam.”
    “Perhaps it would be wise to have several basins on hand. In different rooms.” She rose, her stomach now in full revolt. The washbasin would have to do.
    “Basins, Madam?”
    “I am not well. It is, I fear, unpredictable when I shall be ill.” She did not hear Merchant depart, nor see his pleased and knowing smile. Later, when there came a soft tapping on the door between her room and the duke’s, her heart beat just a little faster than it had been.

 
    Chapter Nine
      
    Ruan opened the door and found Anne standing midway between the door and her bed, a look of utter panic on her face. She wore another dreadful gown. Periwinkle muslin in a countrified style; no lace, only a wide gros-grain ribbon beneath her bosom and limp ruffles in two rows straining toward her chin. For all its lack of fashion, the color smoothed the pallor of her cheeks and lent her eyes a sultry lavender cast.
    That her figure was an excellent one could not be entirely concealed. Could he think of nothing but taking her to bed? She’d removed her hat, he could see the bedraggled thing sitting on a side table, and run a comb through her hair. Her shoes lay sideways on the floor, near the fireplace. Though her bare feet sank into the carpet, he saw her stockings nowhere. From the rumpled state of the bed, she’d only recently been sleeping. Her disarray appealed to him enormously.
    There was a knock on her door from the hallway side, and she jumped like a quail to wing after the hunter’s gunshot. “Our supper,” he said, walking in. He raised his voice so as to be heard from the hall. “Enter.”
    The door opened, and they waited in silence while servants set linens, china and silverware on the table and placed trays of food on a side table. She watched, twisting her hands in the folds of her drab skirt. An intimate arrangement, true. The table was, after all, in full sight of her bed, but he was damned if he was going to cater to any niceness about such matters. One of the footmen opened a French Bordeaux smuggled in from Calais by way of Sweden and Cornwall during the height of the war.
    “Thank you, we’ll serve ourselves,” he said when the plates and trays were arranged. The servants bowed or curtseyed as appropriate and vanished without a sound. He came around the table and pulled out a chair. Having helped her to sit, he found himself admiring the pale back of her neck while she did her best not to accidentally touch him. It was all he could do to stop himself from caressing that soft, white nape. He forced himself to release her chair and walk to the sideboard. “Shall I fetch you a plate?”
    “Just bread, please.”
    “You should eat more.” He uncovered a tureen, breathing in the scented steam. He felt unduly conscious of her sitting at the table, her back stiff, hands clenched on her lap. “Excellent. Jubert has sent up his lobster soup.”
    “Please, I can’t.” He knew it was early to be certain of her condition, but Ruan had no doubt she was with child. He knew with an absolute, terrifying and joyful certainty that he had made a child in her.
    He covered