“So your sister isalsoroaming my home,” he said. “You do realize, Miss Turner, that your family has already presented an alarming number of irregularities in our arrangement. Wandering women. The younger sister marrying before the elder.”
“You really do seem remarkably worried about that,” she said. “Have you not traveled in Society since, oh, I don’t know, the late sixteenth century? Perhaps my father just thought Hannah would suit you better. Would—For God’s sake, will you…?”
Phoebe had vaguely hoped that she might be able to step around him if she talked at the same time, distracting him enough to get the opportunity to dart past. She recognized that this whole thing was absurd, of course, but such concerns were secondary to worrying about Hannah.
“I will not move,” the Duke said. He did not seem to notice the absurdity of the situation in the least. Or perhaps they trained that out of a man in the Navy. Maybe staring at the vast expanse of sea taught you to embrace everything with life-or-death seriousness. “I think you are trying to trick me.”
Phoebe threw up her hands.
“Oh, yes, you’ve done it,” she said. “You’ve figured out my devious plan to walk past you. Well done. Now, do you think I could go after my sister?”
“No, that’s not it,” he said, ignoring her main point entirely. Phoebe really was learning so very much about military service. Apparently, sheer bloody-mindedness was the defining characteristic of a naval officer.
“I think,” he said, tilting her head like he was a detective, “that you are hiding some sort of scandal.”
Phoebe didn’t react. Yes, nearly everything she’d done the past few years was prime for scandal. But in those same few years, she’d never been caught by anyone beyond her own father—and, Phoebe supposed, Ariadne Nightingale, now the Duchess of Wilds, but Phoebe trusted her friend implicitly.
Thus, no matter her father’s catastrophizing, Phoebe did not truly believe that ruin was on her horizon.
“The scandal of me trying to find my sister,” she said cheerfully.
The Duke was immune to suggestion.
“No,” he repeated. “I think your sister has been compromised and that you are trying to marry her off before her indiscretion comes to light.”
“Excuse me?” Phoebe cried, utterly outraged.
“It isn’t illogical,” he said, his tone almost contemplative, if not for that unshakeable line of ice that was always there. “People would be less likely to gossip about a duchess than a mere viscount’s daughter.”
Thatmerewas a bit insulting, but it was so much less insulting than everything else that Phoebe decided to let it pass.
“You are beingunforgivablyrude,” she told him furiously, as she began to suspect that he might not actually know this, caught up in his questions oflogicand solving an imaginarymystery as he was. “You do realize that you cannot have it both ways, don’t you?”
Oh, very well, yes. These comments were notentirelyfor his edification. She was also very, very deeply annoyed.
“You cannot,” she continued, “both fuss about proprietyanddemand to know personal details about my sister. Details,” she added hotly, before he got any ideas, “that do not even exist. No, my sister has not beenruined.And it is highly, highly improper of you to speak about this!”
“It’s not propriety that I value,” he returned, showing that he had an almost supernatural ability to miss the point of a conversation. They ought to study him at a university somewhere. “It’s order. Clarity. These are the kinds of things that keep you alive in a war.”
“This is not a war!” She was talking far too loudly. She was practically yelling at him. It was extraordinarily indecorous, even for her, but she was at her wits’ end. “This is not the navy!”
“Are you going to be a problem?” he asked her, running his eyes up and down her form, assessing her. In most men, Phoebe would consider this a liberty. In the Duke of Redcliff, it seemedalmostlike a compliment. As if he considered her a worthy adversary. “You seem like you’re going to be a problem. And that is not tolerable. There is an order to things?—”
“A wife is not a soldier!”
It was only when she really, fully lost her temper that the quirk of his lips turned into a full smirk. It was an unpracticed expression, as if it had been a while since he had used those muscles. Phoebe was horrified to discover that it took his features from merely striking to actually handsome.
“Ah, but Miss Turner,” he said. He soundedamused. It was dreadful. “Youwill not be my wife.”
Phoebe felt…somethingwhen he said that. She didn’t know how to name it, but she knew with certainty that she oughtn’t be feeling it.
And, even more certainly, she shouldn’t be standing this close to him. She hadn’t even noticed herself stepping closer, but now, somehow, they were practically chest to chest. One more heaving breath, and they’d be touching.
Phoebe stumbled back so abruptly and so far that she hit the wall behind her. She didn’t fall, at least. Her pride couldn’t have survived falling in front of him for athirdtime this evening.
Her eyes skittered away from him.
“We’ll be family,” she said, trying to sound dismissive and unconcerned. “I’ve never had a brother before.”
