Page 16 of The Lord Next Door I Wished For
Jane frowned, an image forming of Luke with a crowd of young ladies around him.
Stay out of my path.
“They can have him,” Jane muttered.
Her mother stopped walking abruptly. “What was that?”
“Er…”
Her mother spun to face her with a scowl. “Young lady, if the marquess wishes to pay you the honor of considering you for marriage, you will smile and you will nod and you will not open that big mouth of yours, do you understand me?”
Jane’s cheeks grew hot with embarrassment as she felt the curious, amused stares from the servants who’d heard every word. Her mother waited impatiently.
“Yes, Mother.”
Her mother huffed. “I can hardly believe it myself, but the dowager marchioness was most clear that you are invited to dine. And His Grace will be there as well. From what I understand, the duke was most pleased by the idea of a connection with our family. We do have neighboring estates, after all, and your lineage is more than good enough, I should say…”
Her mother kept talking, but Jane’s mind was starting to function properly.
The duke…Luke’s grandfather. He was the one who approved of this match.
And suddenly it all made sense. It wasn’t Luke who wished to make a match with her, but his grandfather who wanted to form a strategic alliance with her family.
Something inside her shifted and settled, and for the life of her she couldn’t say if she was disappointed or resigned or…or just sad.
Luke was already being ordered about by the duke. Just like his father.
She remembered the duke well. He’d been terrifying even when she was a child.
She remembered how Luke used to say that his grandfather had his fingers in every aspect of their lives.
He always believed it was why his father was so miserable. He was his father’s puppet.
And now Luke was the puppet.
And you?A voice teased her. It sounded a bit like Jocelyn’s voice, and right now she missed her friends from Madame Bellafonte’s so badly she thought she might cry.
But she swallowed down the urge to sob and let her mother and the maids dress her and style her hair…
Rather like a puppet herself.
CHAPTERFIVE
Luke would have beenable to see Jane’s misery a mile away.
But sitting across from her as he was at the dining room table, her unhappiness at being here with them—withhim—she might as well have been shouting it in his face.
He shifted in his seat, ignoring his mother’s encouraging look, which was only slightly less irritating than Jane’s mother’s ingratiating smile. Both of which were a fair sight better than his grandfather’s incessant badgering and her father’s apathetic silence as he kept his entire focus on his meal as though someone might come along and steal the soup straight out from under him.
“And this finishing school,” his grandfather said, continuing the seemingly endless line of questioning. “You say you like it there?”
Jane’s polite smile was strained, but Luke seemed to be the only one who noticed or cared about her discomfort. “Yes, Your Grace,” she murmured. Then she dipped her head again, apparently just as engrossed by her soup as her father was.
Yes, Your Grace. No, Your Grace. Of course, Your Grace.
He gripped the spoon in his hand so hard his knuckles went white.
Where had that fire gone? Where was the girl he’d known, or…better yet, where was the feisty young lady he’d met the other night?
