Free Untamed by Anna Cowan

flattering conversation. He had time to take in more of the room and a kind of muted horror was working its way, insect-like, up his neck. The signs of daily habitation were unmistakeable – miniatures hung on the wall in a cluster, brown petals collected around the base of a vase, books lay open on the one small desk, and a faint stain described where a teacup must have rested earlier in the day.
    This was not a small evening parlour, or even the private parlour of the mistress of the house. This was their whole living area, next to the kitchen, in the very back of a dead house.
    He looked at Mrs Sutherland, still working at her sewing, and at Tom, who did not look back at him. This was their private world, and they were to be his only company for a week at least. Miss Sutherland came into the room back first, carrying a tea tray.
    And Katherine. She was here, too.
    He made a travesty of her home, sitting there as splendid as an empress on their poor sofa that sagged where too many bottoms had sat before him. She served him, then Ma and Tom tea, then sat on the arm of the chair where Ma was doing needlework. The Duke asked Tom whether he’d yet come across the boy-poet Keats, which started a passionate discussion. Kit blinked, stifled a laugh and bent her head to watch her mother’s rhythmic stitching.
    ‘I suppose you’re hoping to convince her that you’re a respectable widow,’ she murmured, bending over to rest her chin on her mother’s shoulder. ‘Even though you haven’t the knack for fine needlework.’
    ‘I am a respectable widow. And as far as our guest will ever know, I embroider beautifully.’ She held up the hooped fabric and Kit hid her smile in the folds of her mother’s shawl. The patch was one of Miss Faith’s embroidered masterpieces. Ma was simply adding some ugly green shapes to the border.
    ‘Are those supposed to be lizards?’
    ‘They’re leaves, obviously.’
    Kit caught Tom’s eye and he made a very slight expression that she could read as if she’d been the one to make it. He was nervous, but hiding it behind amusement. He turned back to a question the Duke asked him in Lady Rose’s unsettling voice. He made Tom uneasy, and Kit was the one who’d brought him here.
    If he meant to turn her family into a weapon against BenRuin, he must have realised by now what poor ammunition they would make.
    She let her head settle back onto her mother’s shoulder. Today had been a long day. She would think about what to do with the viper tomorrow.
    ‘I find I am tired by the day’s journey,’ the Duke said, placing his saucer delicately on the small table. ‘May I enquire what sleeping arrangements have been made for me?’
    ‘You’re to sleep in the room opposite this one,’ said Kit. ‘The bed’s ready made, and your things have been, er, put away as best we could manage.’ Stacked in a menacing pile in the corner of the room, because Ma’s wardrobe had filled after the first box was opened. ‘Let me show you the way.’ She was impatient to have him gone, so that she could have her family to herself – her brother, her dear mother.
    The Duke stood and made one of those careless curtsies that women would study their whole lives to emulate. ‘Your hospitality undoes me,’ he said. ‘But I am afraid I must trespass further. It is difficult for me to admit it . . .’ He broke off in exactly the manner calculated to pique her mother’s curiosity.
    He allowed a tense, expectant silence. Then, as though it were difficult to say: ‘I am afraid of the dark.’ His face was flushed, but his eyes flickered to hers and within the affected embarrassment she read triumph, like jewelled sap in bark. ‘It is shameful, a woman grown, and still I find I need company in order to sleep. I had thought perhaps a maid . . . But you have only the one, and I would hate to monopolise her.’
    ‘We had thought to give you my room,’ her mother said, a little less certain, ‘and I to share