Page 16 of The Duke’s Hidden Duchess

“I am.”

“You first met me four days ago.”

“Four days have been sufficient to teach me certain things about you.”

“That I am unemployable and attract scandal with unusual efficiency?”

“That you are a gentlewoman. That you are intelligent, honest when dishonesty would serve you better, and courageous to a degree I find deeply inconvenient. My sister trusts you. You understand this household more clearly after four days than most people have managed in four years.” He paused. “And I am not indifferent to you.”

Something shifted in her expression, but it vanished before he could identify it.

“You have also been denied the protection ordinarily afforded to a woman of your birth,” he continued. “My name could restore some part of it. You would have a secure home, an independent position within it and no employer empowered to send you away upon a rumour. I would have a duchess whom I respect, a wife whose judgement I trust and, if the marriage proved acceptable to us both, the possibility of an heir.”

“You make it sound remarkably orderly.”

“I have had all night to put it in order.”

She considered this for only a moment. “And the scandal? What effect might an association between my family and yours have upon Georgiana’s prospects?”

“There will be talk. I shall not pretend otherwise. But Rowland has already placed your family name beside mine. Dismissing you would not sever the connection; it would merely suggest that I was ashamed of it. Marriage would make that connection deliberate and place it beneath the protection of my title.” He paused. “Georgiana would remain a duke’s sister, with her name, fortune and my support behind her. Any gentleman deterred by the history of her sister-in-law would not have suited her in the first place.”

“Then you propose to spend your name to bury one evening’s gossip. That is a very large coffin, Your Grace, for a very small corpse.”

“I propose to use my name where it may do some good. And the matter is not small. It concerns my sister.” His gaze held hers. “And you.”

Selina crossed to the window and stood a little apart from him. It was easier to address the glass than his face.

“I will not bind the Duke of Wexford to the daughter of a hanged man merely to repair a difficulty my presence has caused. You received me into your house out of decency, and this is the price that decency has exacted. Dismiss me instead. Give me a character and allow the story to die for want of anyone in this house upon whom it may fasten.”

“You did not cause this.”

“I entered that house.”

“You entered it in pursuit of my sister, whom I had failed to keep at home, because no one else knew where she had gone.” His words came more quickly now that they were no longer rehearsed. “You did not entrap me. Whatever account you have constructed in which you are the author of my ruin, abandon it. I am offering marriage, not merely shelter. My title may protect you, but it is my home, my family and my future that I am asking you to share.”

She turned from the window and regarded him in silence. Nathaniel allowed her to do so, having reached the end of what he had prepared and found nothing waiting beyond it.

“You have considered my objections,” she said at last.

“Since the carriage.” He drew out a chair. “Sit. If you do not intend to refuse me outright, then do what you do best and make me agree to terms. Now, at dawn, while neither of us has the strength to pretend.”

“You are remarkably certain that I shall not refuse.”

“I am certain of nothing where you are concerned. It is a novel condition, and I dislike it.”

She remained standing for a while. Then she sat, and he took the chair opposite, and they began to construct a marriage as other people might draw up a lease, though neither proved particularly skilled at it.

“Separate rooms,” Selina said. “I understand that an heir forms part of what you are asking, and I am not refusing that part of the marriage. But I will not enter your bed at once, nor be summoned to it as though the ceremony had purchased me. When I am ready, we shall decide together how our marriage is to proceed. If you require more certainty than that, say so now, and I shall take the character instead.”

Nathaniel was silent for a moment. “I will not pretend that an heir is unimportant to me.”

“I have not asked you to.”

“Then separate rooms, for as long as you require them. I shall neither press you nor claim a husband’s privilege before you freely offer it. When you are ready to reconsider the arrangement, we shall reconsider it together.”

“Agreed.”

“I will not be asked for affection I do not feel, nor reproached for its absence. If affection comes, it comes. If it does not, you will not have been cheated, because I promise none.”