Page 50 of A Most Improper Duchess
She’d worked, she’d learned and with a relieved beat of his heart, he felt that perhaps they could weather whatever storm Winton threatened to hurl at them. No one would believe she had ever been anything but a perfect duchess. They could deny all of it, or better again, ignore any bad press and refuse to acknowledge its existence. Who would believe his complacent bride had been a fiery ballerina? He caught her eye and gave her a half smile. She frowned, then shook her head and turned her attention back to Mrs Crofts.
Arley moved to the centre of the archway. ‘May I steal Miss Chevalier for a moment?’ he called.
Mrs Crofts gave a half bow. ‘Anything you need, your grace.’
Vivianne scrunched her skirts. She stood and walked across the room, her head high with her eyes fixed on the carpet. When she reached him, she dropped into her perfect curtsy.
‘Your grace?’
‘What did you say to Pemberton last night?’
‘He asked about our engagement and our meeting. I told him in Paris. I tried to remember everything you said, in my history…’ She wrung her hands. ‘What has happened?’
‘Nothing. Well, something. He’s giving me his support. You must have made an impression on him.’
‘That is good?’ No smile, no light, she trembled like a leaf.
‘Yes, it’s good. It’s what I’ve wanted for years. And Winton won’t dare to—’
‘Shush, Arley. They are listening.’
So drawn into his own enthusiasm, he who had spent his life aware of how others watched him, he did not notice the slight dip in conversation in the sitting room, or the stare of so many sets of eyes. Perhaps it was because they were all focused on Vivianne, and not him. One woman leaned over and spoke in her neighbour’s ear from behind a gloved hand.
‘Would you like me to make some excuse for you? We could take a turn around the park together?’ he asked.
‘Not in this dress. I will need to change. Perhaps later, after the meeting? It is very important I attend them, don’t you think?’ She bobbed again, and before he could grasp her hand and draw her back, she had returned to her place on the settee, her eyes once more focused on Mrs Crofts.
A quiet discomfort settled on his shoulders. She’d transformed from a woman who watched no name painters for fun and made love in a train carriage to one who wore colours so fragile she wouldn’t dare to leave the house and who attended meetings for a society that equated joy with sin.
Because he’d asked it of her. Demanded it of her.
A visage of his days rolled out before him, into a long, regimented line, falling into place one after the other like soldiers on parade. They’d spend the season in town. The summer at the estate. He’d be appointed to committees, work longer days. Father children he’d barely know and return home each day to a wife who curtsied her hello instead of kissing him on the cheek or throwing her arms around him as she squealed his name.
Arley pulled at his cravat. His finger snagged on his pin, the same topaz gem he’d used to bargain for her time.
He twisted his signet on his finger.
She had become the perfect duchess. Completely proper.
And for the first time in his life, he wished he was not a duke.
‘I think you’re being overly dramatic,’ Phineas said. ‘You could just buy a chateau over the Channel and have another holiday. Say you don’t want the appointment. Retire.’
Arley flicked through a few of the neglected envelopes on his desk. ‘Winton will never stop holding her past over us, and over Spencer and Co. The requests for favours won’t end, here or in the country. Every day, every season, there will be more letters, more demands. Vivianne will be lost in them.’
‘Have you asked her what she wants?’
Arley shook his head. ‘That’s the problem, I never did. I just assumed. And now, she’s already bent. Because of me.’ His mother had been a demure violet for so much of her life, and it had frustrated him that she’d taken so long to stand up for herself, and for him. But how could she be anything else when her husband was a pompous duke? How could Vivianne be authentic to who she was, when he relied on her to bolster his reputation, and to stretch the distance between his shortcomings and his dreams?
He’d worked so hard to be like his father. And now he was. Winton had not gotten everything. The old duke had left him this legacy too, and the realisation curled coldly in his gut. ‘I’ll ask her, but not here. It will have to be away from all this.’
‘I still think—’
‘My father was thirty-seven when he became duke.’ Arley raised his voice a little. He was tired of arguing with the only man in London who was prepared to argue with him. ‘He held the title for nine years before he passed. His uncle held it for twelve. Before him, my great-great-grandfather, had it for just three. Do you know how long I’ve had this privilege?’
Phineas didn’t react. He knew everything.
‘Twenty-seven years. From three weeks before my sixth birthday until today.’ He twisted the ring on his finger in a full circle. ‘I think I’ve been a duke for long enough.’
