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He’d have saddled himself with such a woman to protect his brothers and sisters, and something warm and heavy and poignant made her heart swell.

Kingston Barclay was a good, good man.

“You’re young, Vanessa. Beautiful. Accomplished.”

He thinks I’m beautiful?

More delicious warmth wound through her. At this rate, she’d be half in love with him before the night ended.

Would that be so bad?

Assuredly it would if the marriage ended in a few months.

He chopped the air with his hand. “You don’t have a tarnished reputation to hinder your prospects, and you’re gently-bred. And soon, you’ll be quite wealthy, too. You could have any man. Why me?”

“Why? Because I’ve known you almost my entire life. I trust you, Kingston, and I do not trust easily.”

You haven’t seen him in almost a decade, and he didn’t even call after Gabriel’s death, an unpleasant little voice dared to remind her.

She slammed the door on the annoying, unsolicited advice and turned the key in the lock.

“We can make this work,” Vanessa assured him, aware of the pleading tone seeping into her speech.

“I shan’t likely come into the duchy in the next few months,” he informed her without compunction. “To be perfectly candid, it may be years after the dissolution of our marriage. And the gossip after the annulment will be horrendous. A shroud that will haunt you always. You’ll not be accepted into society afterward,” he warned, his tone compassionate.

“Pish posh. I’ve never cared about titles. You should know that.” Vanessa gave a little roll of her shoulder and a flip of her hand. “As for society, my friends will understand, and those who don’t aren’t really my friends, are they?”

Many of the upper ten thousand had looked down their noses at her family. Their wealth had been attained through hard work and investments. They smelled of the shop, as she’d been informed at finishing school.

Better to smell of the shop than reek of arrogance, unkindness, and conceit.

And old cheese.

Sighing, his sculpted mouth drawn into a terse strip, Kingston cupped his nape. His hair shone gold in the candlelight, his eyes chips of blue ice. “Six months? We’d only be married six months, and then we’re free to file for an annulment and go our own way? You’d agree to those terms?”

Vanessa sat straighter, her heart climbing to her throat, and then leaned forward and gave a cautious nod.

Was he actually going to agree?

Saints above, please let him agree.

“Yes,” she said. “Though, I’d hate for us to become distant or estranged. Mightn’t we stay in touch afterward?”

He was her final link to Gabriel. The only person she had any attachment to in any manner except her devoted servants.

Was she mad for asking such a preposterous thing?

Wouldn't that have the tattlemongers' tongues flapping wildly? They’d give themselves black eyes in short order.

She nearly giggled at the image her musing conjured.

Kingston stared at her for so long, and with such all-pervading concentration, she began to squirm on the settee.

What did he seek with that inscrutable, probing gaze?

It felt as if he peered into her very soul, touching her spirit with that honest, frank, blue-eyed gaze.

“What if the annulment isn’t granted, Vanessa?” he ventured softly after another several tick-tocks of the clock. “It’s probable it wouldn’t be.”