Page 14 of The Duke's Treasure
“No,” she said so swiftly that it caused his head to snap up in order to gauge her expression.
“Why not?”
“My one marriage was more than enough,” she said bitterly. “I have no wish to go through that again.”
“Not every man is like your husband was.”
“I have no wish to find out,” she said, leaning against the doorframe, her arms crossed as she watched him. He wondered if she knew how her stance pushed up her cleavage. “When I met my husband, he appeared to be a wonderful man, loving and kind. That is what everyone believed, including me.” She shuddered, her eyes taking on a glazed, faraway look. “How wrong I was,” she murmured.
“I’m sorry,” he said sincerely, wondering just how cruel her husband had been to her.
She waved a hand in the air. “Do not pity for me. Many women have it much worse than I did. He never laid a hand on me. Not really. It was his words that were… well, shall we say, most unkind.”
“That can be nearly as hard.”
“I’m sure not quite so much.”
A tense silence filled the air, and Edward continued his search, finding nothing out of the ordinary so far, just what one would expect of a man’s grooming essentials.
“I am sure you must have women lined up at your door, waiting for you to pick one of them,” themarquesasaid, to which Edward couldn’t help but snort, so right she was.
“Yes,” he said. “One of these days I’ll have to. Although?—”
He stopped, oddly not wanting to speak of it.
“Although what?”
“I am all but promised to a woman.”
“I see,” she said with a small nod. “The poor thing.”
Her joke cleared the tension, and just when he was about to explain that he wasn’t sure he actually wanted to marry the woman, that she was so meek and mild he couldn’t imagine how they could ever match, his eyes caught something in the desk drawer.
“Here,” he said, his word coming out on a hiss as he studied the paper he held.
“What is it?” she asked.
He looked up, a smile on his face. “The plan of theSan Juan’slast journey.”
The evidence seemed so perfectly situatedand discovered that Mariana eyed the duke with suspicion, wondering if he had, in fact, placed it there herself. But for what reason, she wasn’t sure, and so she accepted it, albeit with a great deal of skepticism.
“It might be proof, yes, but it doesn’t give you any idea of where a treasure might be, does it?” she remarked, and he shook his head, such apparent sadness in his eyes that she nearly laughed.
“No, it does not,” he said morosely. “I think I will venture into the town, do a walk around, see if there are any areas near the docks that might be of interest. Perhaps I could also try to determine if anyone saw anything.”
“They are not going to trust you, strange Englishman,” she said, and he grinned.
“I know. That’s why you are going to come with me.”
“I am, am I?”
“You want me out of your life? Then let’s get this done.”
“Very well,” she said, wondering just what Raquel was going to have to say about this. She had told Mariana to be open to whatever came her way, had she not? Little could she have ever imagined that it would be an English duke who would find her.
“What’s so funny?” the duke asked, and Mariana realized she had worn her emotion on her face.
“Nothing,” she said brusquely. “Let me collect my hat.”
