Page 32 of When a Duke Loves a Woman
He furrowed his brow. “Why do you think that?”
“I’m not small and delicate, the sort who makes a man feel all the more manly, the kind he’d like to put on a shelf and look at, take down now and then to play with. Nor am I docile. Men are threatened by women who stand up for themselves. Then the gents get ugly. Makes them difficult to love. I’ve no one to tell me what I can and can’t do. Maybe that’s the reason your bride ran off.”
“Are you implying I’d have ordered her about?”
She gave him a pointed look.
“I assure you that I would not have. One of the reasons I asked her to marry me was because she was a paragon of proper behavior and would not have required my instructing her.” Which was also one of the reasons he hadn’t hesitated to reassure his father as he was dying he would adhere to the terms of the contract.
“A paragon? Oooh. She must have liked it when you whispered that in her ear.”
She was teasing him again, but he didn’t much like the implication. “I never whispered in her ear.”
“Why ever not?”
He stared at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“Didn’t you do things with her you ought not?”
“Absolutely not. I respected her too much for that.”
Leaning back, she crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a steady look. “How much did you love her?”
Shifting in his chair, he glanced around. This woman’s audacity was not to be tolerated. Yet he couldn’t seem to withhold the truth from her. He brought his attention back to her. “I loved her not at all.”
The bloody nobility. She knew they had their fancy houses and their posh clothes, their pristine lives that were constantly scrubbed clean, but it appeared they didn’t dirty any aspect of their existence with something as mundane as emotion.
“Then why marry her?” She closed her eyes, knowing the answer before he spoke. “Because she’s aparagonand you’re a duke. And you needed a proper wife.” A woman with pure bloodlines who could trace her ancestors back generations. Something she would never be able to do. She opened her eyes. “And your pride won’t let her go.”
“My pride might have been driving me that first night, might have resulted in my idiocy that led me into your care. I’m not sure what I would have done had I found her. Express my disappointment. Demand answers. Haul her back to the church.” He shook his head. “Her brother and my mother are insistent we still marry, but I will not force her, and I don’t want her living in fear that she has no recourse except to hide. I feel something is amiss and I must make it right.” He glanced around. “Why would she come to this area?”
He seemed sincere in his quest to reassure and help the girl. “It’s easy to lose oneself, to blend in, within these streets because there are so many people about—or to start over. Change a name. No one asks you to prove that’s the name you were given when you were born. Or perhaps she knew someone here.”
He went remarkably still. “Like whom?”
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t know her.” She held out her hand. “May I see the miniature?” She’d only caught glimpses of it when she’d handed it over to one person after another. Now she studied the delicate features. The woman looked familiar but she couldn’t recall where she might have seen her. Had she come into the Mermaid? Had their paths crossed on the street? “She’s very pretty.”
“The wrong sort could take advantage of that.”
He sounded truly worried, and perhaps a bit guilty, as though he had led this woman here. And he spoke true. An improper sort could use her to fill his pockets with coins. “Why her? Why did you ask her to marry you? I’m sure there are an abundance of paragons among the aristocracy.”
He gave her a sad sort of smile. “There is a stretch of land that borders my ducal estate. It was set aside to serve as a dowry for the daughter of a particular earl, and every duke before me planned for his son to marry that earl’s daughter in order to gain that land, only no earl ever produced a daughter until she came along. The day after she was born, her father and mine got together and worked out the arrangements, signed a contract that she and I would marry. I was eleven at the time. My opinion on the matter was neither sought nor wanted. When I was fifteen, as my father lay dying, I promised him I would honor the terms of the contract and the land that meant so much to every duke before me would become ours. Therefore, it was always expected we’d marry, but neither of us was in any hurry. Her brother is a friend and had begun pushing of late, because she was quite on the shelf. So we decided it was time. She and I have always gotten along famously.” He shrugged. “I didn’t think marriage to her would be a hardship. Although I am rather upset with myself as I’m coming to realize I might have in fact done her a disservice. I was willing to take her to wife when my feelings for her weren’t stronger. When she didn’t intrigue me... as you do.”
Her heart fairly galloping, she wished she was drinking whisky instead of coffee. “You like a bit of the rough, do you?”
“You’re anything but rough. You possess the gentlest touch I’ve ever known. You’re generous, giving out your wooden tokens to anyone you think might be in need. You take a moment to offer a kind word here and there. It’s obvious people think highly of you.”
She wasn’t accustomed to praises, didn’t like having them showered on her. “They don’t want me to stop serving them.”
“You’re modest as well.”
“I need to get back to the Mermaid.” She rose to her feet. He got up a bit more slowly and she suspected he wasn’t nearly as healed as he claimed. “Today gave you a taste of what you’re up against. You won’t find her if she doesn’t want to be found, but we can keep looking tomorrow if you like.”
“I do.”
“Right.” She wished he’d given another answer, even as she’d hoped he’d give the one he had. Silly goose that she was, she wanted to spend more time in his company, because the truth was that he intrigued her as well.
Chapter 10
