Page 54 of The Wise Daughter
She was silent for several seconds. He could almost see her thoughts thickening. It was too much, them standing in the dark in the middle of the night in their nightclothes. She was already worried about compromising situations, but instead of chastising him for talking about her ankles, she poked his chest. “I’ll hold you to that, my duke.”
He pressed a kiss to her hand. “We’re almost there.” What he really wanted was to pluck her from the ground and carry her the rest of the way, but there wasn’t room in the passageways.
He led her up a flight of stairs to a door that let out to a cozy, cream-colored sitting room with matching white doors across from one another. Two matching windows that nearly reached the ceiling were covered with heavy, green curtains. Aaron paused, looking around the empty room, then gestured for Nora to enter. The door to the passageway was disguised by the bookshelves just like in the study. He opened the door on his left and felt the heat of another flush rush over him.
“This is my bedchamber, Nora. I want you to know where it is should you ever need to find me at night, if there were another emergency,” he quickly added.
She nodded solemnly.
“I wouldn’t have brought you here if I weren’t worried for your safety.” She nodded again, never saying a word as he went to the door across from his and opened it, revealing another large bedchamber. “This is where I would like you to sleep tonight. It’s meant to be your room after we are wed anyway, and it’s the only other room I knew for certain was properly prepared for you. Now that I better understand the state of the castle, I wasn’t sure whether any other room would be fit.”
Again, Nora nodded, looking in but not yet entering.
“This is our shared sitting room, for no one else’s use but ours.”Blast this flush!It was worse than the fire! He cleared his throat. “You should lock your door, but I’ll sleep with mine open. You need only call out to me if there is trouble.”
Again, she nodded.
He swallowed. “This fire tonight… I can hardly believe it. I’m so relieved you’re safe.” Fear and guilt over having nearly lost her made the words difficult to speak. It was his fault she was entangled in his troubles. He thought he was saving her and her father by promising her everything she could possibly need, but all he had accomplished was endangering her. “Nora, I know it isn’t proper to keep you this close.”
“Not at all.” She released his hand and stepped closer to the door of her new bedchamber.
He had to fix this. He had to make sure she understood just how serious he undertook the responsibility of protecting her, her life, her reputation, her heart. In one stride, he closed the distance between them and took her hand again.
“But there is one way to make it proper.” He gathered his courage and kissed her knuckles. Moments ago, she had held him just as closely as he had held her. She had trusted him enough to escort her here. Surely, that meant something.
He swallowed and forced himself to meet her eye. “We could marry one another right away. No more waiting. As soon as you and I are man and wife, we can put all questions about what is proper to rest, and–” His voice caught. “I won’t have to worry about your safety at night.”
She was silent for several painful heartbeats. “Aaron…” She looked at her feet and frowned. Not an encouraging sign. “I realize that is the plan eventually, but I cannot marry you just so you can watch over me. I have more to consider.”
He swallowed again and tried not to look as hurt as he felt. “I understand that, Nora, but your reputation–”
Her eyes flashed. “I thought you didn’t care about reputations.”
“I don’t. I may not base my decisions on what others say, but I do care about damage I may inadvertently inflict on your reputation. As you said, we’ve been in compromising situations. I’m willing to marry you as soon as we can.”
Her eyes were heavy with the need for sleep. “We’ve just experienced a scare tonight. We’re tense and tired. This isn’t the time to be altering plans.”
“I’m in a perfect mind about this. I’m not asking out of fear.”
“Even if that’s true, I can’t answer out of fear. It’s still too soon.”
“What difference does it make if we are wed in three days or three weeks?”
She looked away, then had difficulty meeting his eyes again. “The truth is, after tonight, I don’t think I can marry you unless we’ve caught the thieves. All of them.”
“What? Why should that matter? Obviously, I would like to catch them right away, but I can’t control how long it takes. I assumed we would face those challenges together, regardless of time.”
“I promise, I’m as determined as ever to root them out. That’s why I was searching the castle tonight. I found a letter I think you should see.” She reached into her night dress and handed him the folded paper.
Squinting and holding the paper up near the light of the fire, he read the entire letter as Nora watched. The lines were faded, and the light was poor, but the meaning was clear. His mother had felt grossly inadequate.
“Aaron, what if someone threatened your mother? What if something similar to this fire drove her away?” She pressed a hand over her mouth before speaking again. “There could be a much larger, longer-standing problem here than we thought.”
A wave of nausea rolled in his stomach. It was a possibility he had never acknowledged but one that had long haunted the farthest corners of his mind. He folded the letter and tucked it into his nightshirt to read again and ponder later, but as he looked back at Nora, her pale curls gently flowing over her shoulders, framing her soft features, he was struck with her absolute goodness and beauty. The cost of failing her was too heavy to consider.
His throat grew thick. “Nora, I can’t let you do this anymore. You can’t keep chasing after danger, not when someone wants to harm you.”
“But that was my condition to this engagement. I’m helping you solve this. It’s clear you need someone to ask questions and find answers, and no one else is stepping forward.”
