In Harriet’s dream, as in her worldly experiences, not even a duke was hallowed. Nor did he seem to be entirely human. “I can’t find my heart,” he said, as she huddled deeper into his cloak and they ascended into his dark abode. “Do you happen to have a chisel on you, Harriet? I know they come in handy for housebreaking…”

She sat up in bed, the callused hand that shook her arm bringing her crashing straight back to earth. “His grace wishes to see you in the library, miss,” the chambermaid, Charity, hissed in her ear.

Harriet was quick. She’d woken to worse. She had grabbed her dead-drunk father by the ears and shoved him to his feet, the pair of them pounding through hidden alleys with the peelers at their heels. But she was properly employed now, if subject to the demands of a duke. She stretched her arms and legs, wiggling her toes under the bedcovers. Who did he think he was to order a body half dressed out of bed at this hour of the day? “I haven’t done my hair or had tea. What’s the hurry?”

Charity shook her harder. “He said now. And he’s in one of those moods, if you know what I mean.”

“Is he?”

The last Harriet had seen of him, he was studying Lady Constance in complete absorption. Well, he could wait. She donned her morning frock, washed her face, and rinsed her mouth with rosemary water. But her hair-dear God. What a monstrous fright the looking glass reflected. Tangles of blazing red hair that took a good hour or so to tame before she could appear in polite company. Most of the time she braided it before bed. But last night she hadn’t bothered. The duke had half seduced her in the hall and then danced the last dance, right afterward, with the woman the ton expected him to marry.

Let him see her looking as though she’d been struck by lightning. Harriet took grim pleasure in the thought.

“Come on,” Charity urged, hauling her to the door. “Never mind your hair.”

“It looks that bad?”

“I’ve never seen the likes of it. But at least you still got your head and we still got jobs.”

Harriet lifted her chin. “I work for Lady Powlis.”

Charity pushed her through the door. “And who’s to say he won’t put that fussy old thing out to pasture once he takes a wife?”

He sat, unspeaking, as she entered the library and stood before him. Harriet knew the trick. She’d waited often enough before the magistrates to glean that when silence built, the person who wielded the least power-usually her-would break down. In this case, she was too annoyed to give him the satisfaction. She might have forgotten in time that he had danced with another woman last night. But she would never forgive him for insisting she appear before him with her hair as unruly as a gorse bush.

He drummed his fingers on the desk. “You took an inordinate amount of time responding to my call.”

“Sorry if your grace had to wait,” she said, breathless and annoyed. “I-”

A knock at the door saved further explanation. The duke snapped, “Enter,” and a footman wheeled in a tray that bore a porcelain teapot with steam rising from its spout, a single cup, a single plate, and three covered silver serving dishes. The savory aroma of fried bacon and hot buttered toast wafted in the air.

Harriet’s stomach gave a loud rumble in the silence. Was the self-indulgent so-and-so going to stuff his handsome face while she stood here, half fainting from lack of nourishment and the aftereffects of the previous evening’s impropriety?

He leaned back in his chair. “What happened to your hair?”

She counted to ten. Then to twenty. She clasped her hands before her and thought of her former life. She thought of her newborn nephew and her half brothers, trapped by their own ignorance in the squalor of St. Giles. She resurrected long-buried images of intimidation, abuse, of hunger, and shame. But even after all that mental palaver, she was hard-pressed not to fly across the duke’s cluttered desk and smack him a good one.

Instead, she bobbed an insolent curtsy and backed like a sleepwalker to the door. A voice-it sounded more like a toad croaking his last than her own-quoted the etiquette manual’s advice on how one properly disengaged from a perilous situation.

“Excuse me for such a discourteous departure, your grace. But I feel a sudden spell of giddiness calling me to the chaise-”

He stood abruptly.

She groped behind her for the doorknob, her other hand fluttering to her eyes. “If you are going to apologize for last night-”

“Apologize?”

She peeked at him through her fingers.

What had she been thinking? The fiend looked anything but sorry. Perhaps she was still dreaming. Had William the Conqueror, another famous duke who had been known to be a bastard, apologized for invading England? She wrenched open the door. He reached around her and closed it again.

“Just what are you doing?” she asked indignantly.

He caught her beneath her knees, lifting her into the air with a look of mock alarm. “I cannot allow you to go fainting in the hall, or I shall be blamed for it. There is a perfectly good sofa behind us that you may swoon upon to your heart’s content.”

“How convenient.”

“Isn’t it?” he muttered, hefting her up a little higher to navigate his way across the room.

She locked her hands reflexively around his neck. It was either that or hit her head against the furniture. He bore her toward the sofa like a barbarian, apparently unconcerned that she might have a word or two to say about the matter.

“There.” He deposited her ungently on the burgundy damask sofa that sat between two sash windows. “I will give you three minutes to recover before I call a physician to the house. While you’re at it, I suggest you do something about your hair.”

“That,” she said, sitting up, “is the last insult I shall endure. I do not care if you are a duke and live in a castle made of diamonds. I do not care if every woman in the entire world dreams of becoming your wife. I-”

He sat down beside her, his expression encouraging her to continue. Harriet lost her train of thought. She had never noticed how the daylight brought out the singular beauty of his face. “I-I forgot what I was saying.”

He stretched his arm across the back of the sofa. “Something about diamonds, a wife, and-ah, the last insult. Which, oddly enough, leads me to the reason I summoned you with such urgency that you… you obviously had no time to prepare.”

Harriet compressed her lips. He was going to dismiss her, and she hated him. She hated him not only because he was a duke but because he smelled divine and his sultry eyes sent little shocks into her deepest regions. She hated herself for not moving when his carved mouth suddenly hovered a mere breath from hers. And she might actually have fainted if all the gin in her father’s blood hadn’t made her as strong as a cart horse.

“If you are going to let me go, your grace, then have the decency to do so before dark.”

He frowned. “Certainly not before breakfast.”

His shoulder pressed her deeper into the sofa. The ebony buttons of his cutaway black jacket brushed against her unadorned muslin bodice.

“Do you still feel faint?” he asked, lifting a strand of her hair to the light. “If so, I think you’d better have a cup of tea and a bite to eat before I explain why I needed to see you. A hearty breakfast might settle your nerves.”

She combed her fingers through her hair, reclaiming the strand he was studying in fascination. Settle her nerves. Of all the gall. He’d done more to tangle up her inners than the month she’d shared a gaol cell with a murderess. But-she was hungry.

“You had that breakfast ordered for me?” she asked, halfway to the table before he could answer.

“I ate earlier,” he said. “Please, serve yourself.”

She touched her palm to the pot. Still piping hot. The bacon and toast tempted her. It seemed a pity to let a decent meal go to waste, especially when she knew how hard the servants worked to please the young duke, in the hope he would keep them on.