Free The Duke's Marriage Mission by Deborah Hale

would be a terrible mistake to detain her that way. An appeal might work better.
    He stepped aside, allowing her free access to the door should she wish to leave. “Please stay, Miss Shaw. We have too little opportunity to talk without my son present. I should be sorry to lose this chance while he is asleep.”
    Leah Shaw cast a longing glance toward the door but held her ground. “Whose fault is it that Kit must witness all our conversations? That is another reason I have tried to make light of all your fault-finding during our lessons. I did not want to trouble him with the hostility between us. However much you detest me, I must ask that you treat me with respect in front of him.”
    “I do not detest you!” Hayden protested even as his conscience questioned how she could be expected to know that.
    “Indeed?” She crossed her arms in front of her chest and gave an exaggerated scowl. Hayden feared it was an all-too-accurate imitation of how he had looked this week during Kit’s lessons. “If we are quibbling over a choice of words, how would you describe your attitude toward me? Contempt? Loathing?”
    An unexpected hint of vulnerability behind her challenge forced Hayden to confess the truth. “Threatened.”
    The instant that word left his mouth he wished he could take it back. But Miss Shaw’s bewildered silence urged him to explain himself. “I am afraid Kit will prefer your company to mine. Your way of teaching makes lessons more diverting than play.”
    “Do you mean that?” His grudging admission seemed to moderate the worst of her defensiveness. “You interrupted so often, I was certain you must disapprove of my methods.”
    “Quite the contrary,” he muttered, driven to confess by a growing sense of shame. “I interrupted because I was drawn into your lessons. None of my tutors ever engaged my interest in learning the way you have Kit’s...and mine.”
    For the first time that evening Miss Shaw’s lips broke into one of her infectious grins. “Neither did any of my teachers. That is why I am so determined to take a different approach.”
    Hayden began to understand her mysterious motives at last. “So every day you teach is an act of rebellion against them ?”
    A mischievous spark kindled in her eyes. “You are a dangerously perceptive man, Your Grace.”
    Others might wonder how perception could be considered dangerous, but Hayden thought he knew. There was something else he now understood, as well. Leah Shaw did not mean to defy him but rather those grim teachers who had tried to make her youth a misery. But she had refused to let them. Her humor and high spirits had been a means of rebellion.
    Who could not admire that kind of courage? Hayden found it impossible.
    * * *
     
    “This conversation has been most enlightening, though I am not certain a chapel is the best place for it.” The duke motioned toward the door. “May we continue out in the cloisters?”
    Leah thought for a moment then nodded. Knowing the duke felt threatened by her connection with his son shed an entirely different light upon his recent actions. No parent would want to lose their child’s affections to a newcomer. She regretted giving Lord Northam cause to fear that might happen, and even more to think she meant to ridicule him in Kit’s eyes.
    His Grace pulled open the chapel door and motioned her into the cloisters. This would be a better place for them to converse, Leah realized. Not squared off opposite one another, fixed in their positions, but moving forward side by side.
    She had only taken a slow step or two when the duke caught up with her.
    “I hope you know I would never harm anyone the way you were.” He sounded as if he expected her to doubt him.
    “Of course, I know it.” She answered more sharply than she meant to.
    What had compelled her to show him her scarred palms and tell him how she had come by those scars? She was not at all comfortable having him see a side of her that she had hidden for