A Promise by Daylight. Alison DeLaine

and solitude,” he said shortly. “That is your prescription, is it not?”

      “Yes. Yes, it is.” And that was why he was here? For rest and solitude? “Although I seem to recall Your Grace referred to it as my strict regimen of boredom and frustration.”

      He grunted an unhappy acknowledgment.

      She clenched her jaw. Now he wanted to follow her advice? Now that her entire plan was in tatters? Bloody nobles and their whims—and she was the one to pay the price. Greece or England...what could it possibly matter to him?

      And now, looking around, she saw that his apartment was just as free from lewd knickknacks as the entrance hall had been. There wasn’t a breast or phallus to be seen. “Is this where you always come to withdraw from entertainment?”

      He looked at her. “Quite,” he drawled, and his lip curved a little in that semi-amused smile that made him look impossibly wicked. “I’ve always liked to think of Winston as my refuge from all things carnal.”

      * * *

      MOMENTS LATER, OUTSIDE Winston’s apartment, Millie found Harris and Sacks conferring tight-lipped at the top of the stairs.

      “Everything’s been put away,” Harris told her in an alarming tone when she joined them. He took a pinch of snuff and scowled down the staircase. “The paintings, the sculptures...I’m told a letter arrived from Paris only this morning, instructing that everything of a certain nature be put away in the attic.”

      Everything of a certain nature?

      “Even the portrait in ’is bedroom is gone,” Sacks grumbled. “Princess What’s-’er-Name from Prussia. I’ll miss that portrait,” he said, irritated. “She was a damned ripe one.”

      Refuge from all things carnal, indeed. And yet... “He instructed them put away?” Millie asked.

      Sacks took his turn at the snuff, sniffed, rubbed his nose and nodded. “The whole lot of it.”

      “When he decided to return to Winston,” Harris said, “I was convinced that all was finally becoming as it should be. After all...” He gestured lamely toward the staircase.

      “After all,” Sacks said, “there’s never any lack of sporting activities ’round here.”

      There wasn’t, was there?

      “So I am to understand,” Millie said slowly, “that His Grace normally entertains while he is in residence.”

      “Entertains!” Harris barked, then hushed his voice. “This house has seen routs that would redden a harlot’s cheeks.”

      Of course it had. Millie stared down the corridor toward the duke’s apartment. Rest and solitude. Apparently he had gone to great lengths to achieve it. Because of his health?

      If she’d realized that, she would have taken special care to emphasize the benefits of a warm climate.

      “It can’t be permanent, can it?” Harris asked her. “His Grace’s lack of interest?”

      “He seemed interested enough in Paris, didn’t he?” Millie snipped.

      “That?” Sacks lowered his voice. “He hasn’t interested himself with a single one—not since the accident.” Suddenly his monstrous dark brows knitted completely together. “The accident didn’t—” he gestured in front of his crotch “—damage his vitals...?”

      Oh, for heaven’s sake. “No.”

      “He spoke of nothing but Grecian orgies for weeks before we left for Paris,” Harris told her. “He spoke of little else in Paris, as well.”

      “Well, now he says he doesn’t want anything to do with Greece,” Millie said. “He says he wants rest and solitude.”

      “Rest and solitude.”

      She didn’t believe it for a minute. He was being flighty, making more out of his injuries than he needed to, and costing her the price of travel from England to the Mediterranean in the process.

      If he’d just gone to Greece, the trip would have cost her nothing, and she would have been collecting wages the entire time.

      “We ought to bring the whole bloody lot down from the attic while he’s sleeping,” Sacks grumbled. “Let ’im wake to that magnificent pair of Prussian breasts and see if it doesn’t restore ’im to full operation.”

      Millie looked at him.

      Sacks shifted his gaze to Harris, who frowned. “We couldn’t simply...” The idea hung in the air. “Couldn’t we?”

      “Indeed,” Millie said slowly, considering the possibilities. “In fact, I might even recommend it. As a restorative measure for his health.”

      As changeable as the duke clearly was, a bit of encouragement could be all it would take for him to abandon this plan and set out once more for Greece.

      “That is to say,” she went on, “it’s never a good sign when a person loses interest in his usual activities.” That much was true. And it wasn’t as if the duke weren’t capable of enjoying himself—hadn’t Paris proved that?

      It had.

      Now Sacks was nodding. Harris raised a considering brow. And Millie could not believe she was suggesting this, but if it would work...

      “A dose of his usual mode of living,” she said authoritatively, “could be just the curative he needs.”

      * * *

      WINSTON STOOD IN his library the next morning, staring at the empty spot above the fireplace where a carved wood panel from India used to hang, and contemplated ordering his bags packed for Greece, after all. Or at least Paris.

      What the devil was he doing here?

      He needed company. Women. In his bed, on top of his desk, against his bloody wall, and he needed them now.

      This was folly. Changing his entire existence because of a freak accident...

      Because it could have been you.

      But it wasn’t.

      And because of Cara and Edward.

      Devil take it. One incident fifteen years ago—something that couldn’t be changed—had no bearing on the present.

      He treaded lightly toward the windows, careful not to disturb his freshly bandaged leg. The empty house felt like a tomb. Looked like a bloody monastery. At the very least he could order all the adornments taken from the attic put back in place.

      He didn’t even know what to do with himself.

      One very particular activity leaped to mind, and God’s blood, this was what it had come to? Fantasizing about pleasuring himself?

      Reading, Miles had suggested. But all his favorite books had been stored away in the attic with the rest.

      He paced a few feet to the nearest bookcase, built between two windows, and pulled a book from the shelf. Flipped through its pages. Slammed it shut.

      He didn’t want to read. He wanted to do something very, very different from reading.

      His hands tightened around the book.

      He breathed deeply. Forced himself to remember the accident. The burial. The widow and her five children, standing in the gray drizzle while the priest tossed clumps of mud into the grave. The way those clumps had hit the coffin with a soft splat.

      He would do this. He would sit his arse down and read this goddamned book and he would not think about any of the things he wasn’t doing, because the man in that coffin wasn’t doing them, either.

      He sat. Opened the book cover. Fauna of the Tidal Flats of Devon.

      Perfect.

      He leafed through