Page 40 of Unbound Duchess

“It is not amusing!” she snapped, hurling the blanket back at him.

He laughed harder as he caught it, unable to help himself.

“From where I am standing, it is,” he chuckled, ruffling the blanket through his wet hair.

“If you had any idea what I was about to⁠—”

He stopped. Not just his words but his movements. His entire being froze as he realized what exactly he was just about to admit. How he had been ready to give her a spanking and so much more if she had kept wriggling against him like that.

He cleared his throat, the humor of the moment suddenly gone, and his face once more transformed into a mask of stern annoyance.

“What in the devil were you doing out there?” he demanded.

Ellen said nothing as she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. Her lips, now tinged blue, were trembling as she fought the cold that had seeped into her bones.

“You would not understand,” she said, her tone shrinking back into that soft, delicate sound he was starting to despise. She only spoke in that tone, he realized, when she felt powerless.

Laurence worked his jaw, silently willing the rage and lust battling within him to calm themselves. He turned from her, busying himself by throwing another log on the fire.

“Is it about control?” he asked over his shoulder. “The sense of having it, I mean.”

He turned, just enough to see her face, and found her studying his back.

“In a way,” she answered, her voice still weak as they remained on opposite sides of the room.

“I did not go out there because of the storm, though,” she confessed. “I went out in spite of it.”

Confused, but relieved that they were conversing, Laurence rose to his feet and turned his back to the fire—his skin prickling as its warmth began to dry his still-soaked shirt. He crossed his arms and looked directly at her, waiting for her to continue.

“Mrs. Bradley paid me a compliment this morning,” she said.

“How dare she?” Laurence quipped.

Ellen shot him a withering look, and he could not help but smirk. He enjoyed this, he realized: their bickering.

“She said I was quite skilled at running a household,” Ellen went on after he bowed his head in silent apology. “And it reminded me how much freedom I used to have when my father was alive. I think…I think I took it for granted. Even when his strange illness started taking a deeper toll on him, I told myself not to worry. That he would recover, and things would remain the same as always. That I would live the life I liked for a very long time.”

Laurence thought of the information he'd gathered on the late Earl of Highcastle. The man had been losing money in bad investments for years, so how did he not lose his staff? His properties?

“What did you manage your father’s estate?” Laurence asked, his curiosity growing.

A genuine smile spread across Ellen’s pale face, as if recalling the fondest of memories.

“I managed anything and everything,” she said with a shrug. “Instructed the servants, managed the chores. Then, when we lost more money and relieved all but a handful of our staff, I learned how to take on the chores myself. But balancing my father’s books was one of my favorite responsibilities.”

Laurence raised a single brow.

“He allowed you to manage his accounts?” he asked.

Ellen let out a soft laugh.

“More like he needed me to manage them,” she retorted, huddling deeper into the blanket. “After my mother’s passing, my father lost his head for figures and investments. I enjoyed it though. Liked taming the numbers into sensible beings. A budget, I think, is a lovely thing, and easy to adhere to when you have no interest in frilly ball gowns or the latest jewels. I preferred to put our money where it was needed instead of using it to please others.”

Laurence turned her words carefully over in his mind, feeling the loss and longing in her voice from a time not that long ago when everything she did or happened to her made perfect sense because she had control.

“When Mrs. Bradley said I could not go pick the flowers myself,” Ellen went on with a sigh, “I fear I might have gone a little mad.”

She looked up at Laurence then, giving him a sheepish grin of admission.