Page 2 of Anything But a Duke
“Samuel,” she started, desperate to forestall what he intended to say or do. But it was too late.
In one swift move, he lowered himself onto one knee and reached for her hand.
Diana froze, her muscles tightening and her tongue thickening. His touch felt heavy and yet oddly distant, as if her skin had gone numb.
“Marry me, Miss Ashby.”
Oh no.Panic sped her pulse. A single insistent hammer pounded behind her eyes. She knew what she wished to say. There was no question of her answer, but she couldn’t get the words out.
“May I take your silence as an acknowledgment of what I’ve long known?”
“I...” she forced out on a gasp.
He squeezed her fingers and inched closer, as if fearful of missing a single word.
“I regret...” The words were almost impossible to get out. Not because they weren’t true, but because panic always caused her to freeze.
But the two words sufficed.
Egerton began to crumble, the eagerness in his pale gaze turning to disappointment and then anger.
“I cannot marry you.” She shook her head to make sure he could not mistake her meaning. She had no wish to cause him embarrassment or misery, but she had no desire to marry him. Or anyone. Not yet. “My inventions—”
“Good God, no.” He burst up to his full height, turned his back on her, and paced the edges of the rug in the center of the room. “Tell me anything but that you’re refusing me for your pastimes.”
“My work is not a pastime.”
“Work? You’re a baronet’s granddaughter. You needn’twork, my dear girl.”
“I am notyouranything, Lord Egerton.” Everything in her bristled and her blood fizzed with irritation. “I refer to my research. My designs.”
“Your hobby?” he sputtered, closing his eyes, as if attempting to calm himself, before continuing. “The unladylike way you insist on spending your spare hours is something I’m willing to overlook, as long as you cease such foolishness once we wed.” He came back to stand in front of her. Too close. Nearly toe to toe. “Why can’t you simply paint watercolors or play the pianoforte like other ladies?”
“Because they don’t interest me at all.”
“You waste your time with such nonsense.”
A waste of time.It’s what her mother called all the hours she spent in her workshop rather than attending to the social calendar. But just because she couldn’t study at university like her brother and would never be asked to speak at the Royal Society as her father had, that didn’t mean her inventions weren’t worthwhile.
They mattered, if only to her. One day, she hoped they’d matter to others. She just needed funding and someone to believe in her potential. If her ideas could come to fruition, her inventions could be put to good use.
“I am offering you more than anyone else will. A title, a position in society far higher than that to which you were born.” Egerton spoke the words with a coldness she’d never heard from him. He leaned closer, near enough for her to smell liquor on his breath. “Your mother will not approve of your refusal.”
Diana hated that he was right. She’d been given a fine education, but her family had always been on the edge of society. Marriage to a nobleman was what her mother wanted for her most of all, and she’d never imagined she could forestall wedlock forever. Just until she could make a name for herself and achieve some small measure of recognition for her inventions.
Diana could imagine marriage and motherhood. One day. But not yet.
“Do you have nothing to say for yourself? Does it not bother you to be an aberration among your sex?” He reached out to grip her wrist. “You should be honored by my interest. No other man will want a lady who cannot behave like one.”
Diana yanked out of his grasp, then shoved at his chest with her forearm. Watching him stumble was terribly satisfying, but there was no use provoking him.
“There’s nothing more to say, Lord Egerton. Just go.”
He shot her a malicious glare. Diana glanced toward the closed drawing room door and considered shouting for a servant or her mother.
“Don’t worry. I shan’t waste my time with you any longer. I’d hoped you knew your duty, but you’ve only doomed yourself to spinsterhood.”
Egerton started out of the room and she pressed the heel of her palm to her breastbone, struggling to steady her nerves.
