“Dearest?” Lady Forthwell said, staring at her husband. “Is there truth in what His Grace says?”
“Of course, there isn’t!” snapped the Marquess, who had turned green and looked as if he might be sick. “That is a preposterous claim to make! Practically treasonous!”
The Duke gave the Marquess one skeptical look, and he sat down hard in his seat and put his head in his hands.
“I know nothing of any shady deals!” Lord Langdon proclaimed into the quiet that followed, but Vanessa would guess, from the shifty way he looked at his father bent over the table, that he was not telling the truth.
Lord Forthwell, meanwhile, hesitated. Vanessa could imagine what he was thinking: that if he acquiesced to the Duke’s request, he would be as good as admitting that he had taken part in some illegal dealings, but if he denied the Duke, he might face comeuppance from the Crown. She could see the conflict on his face.
At last, wilting like a flower in the noonday sun, he turned to her.
“The choice is not mine to make,” he said in a small, defeated voice. “It is my daughter’s. She is the only one who can accept or decline a marriage proposal.”
Oh, now I have a choice?Vanessa thought dully as everyone in the room turned to look at her. She knew what her father was doing: he did not actually care about what she wanted. He just wanted a way out of his conundrum.
Vanessa turned to look at the Duke. He was watching her with the same intense, heated expression that he had worn when he had first come into the dining room.
“I require a moment with the Duke,” she said, her voice very thin and very small.
“Absolutely not!” Langdon said at once.
“It would be most improper!” the Marchioness murmured.
But Vanessa held her ground. Raising her chin a little, she continued to stare directly at the Duke. “I require a moment alone with the Duke,” she repeated, more firmly.
“Very well,” her father said in a reedy, impatient tone. “You may speak in the hall, but you only have five minutes.”
Vanessa’s legs felt like they had been turned to stone, but somehow, she managed to force herself to walk around the table and out into the hall. The Duke held the door open for her, and as she passed close to him, she breathed in his dark, masculine scent—like tobacco, evergreen, and molasses, all at once. It made her skin prickle.
Once they were out in the hallway, Vanessa took the Duke’s arm and pulled him away from the door to the dining room until she was sure they were out of earshot. She could not believe she was touching the Duke like this, but she also didn’t have a choice. They only had five minutes, and she had to say her piece.
Once she was sure they were far enough away, she rounded on him.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, her voice surprisingly hoarse and filled with emotion. “How dare you come here and expose the things I told you in confidence! How dare you just waltz in here and assume I will marry you! How dare you—” But she was so incensed, she couldn’t even finish the sentence. It didn’t help that he was looking down at her with a slightly amused expression, as if he didn’t take any of her objections seriously.
“You forget,” he said, a cool smile sliding across his lips, “that I am not actually a priest, Lady Vanessa, therefore the things you said to me were not actually in confidence.”
“It was implied that they were in confidence, even if you are not a priest,” she snapped back.
He took a step closer to her then, and she suddenly felt how small and fragile she was compared to him. He towered over her, and she felt herself shrink back. Intimidation flared in her chest. This was theDuke of Thornfield,and she dared to speak to him like this? To make demands of him?
“I apologize for repeating things that you told me in confidence,” the Duke said, surprising her into speechlessness. His voice was slightly gentler than before, but his presence was no less looming and overwhelming. “However, I felt that I did not have a choice if I was to convince your father to let me marry you.”
She narrowed her eyes, trying hard to think straight through her shock. “How did you even find me?” she asked at last.
“The livery on your coach. I had to ask around, but eventually, someone recognized it, and told me I was looking for the Earl of Forthwell. Or, more accurately, since it was a marriage proposal I was after, his daughter.”
“But—why?” she forced herself to ask, her voice breaking slightly. “Why do you want to marry me? Why are you doing this?” His dark eyes swept slowly over her, lingering on her eyes and lips, and for a moment, as they smoldered above her, she thought he was going to say because he was bewitched by her beauty.
But that would be mad! He only saw me for the first time today—he could not see me through the lattice of the confessional.
The Duke hesitated, and she wondered if he was going to answer the question.
“You owe me this,” she murmured, and he blinked.
“I want to help you,” he said at last. “Your plight moved me, and I could not bear to see you married to a man who physically and emotionally harms you.”
Vanessa stared at him. “But… why? You do not know me. You are not obligated to help me.”
