The opening chords drowned out whatever else Mrs. York meant to say.
Lawrence barely arranged himself and Miss York in position in time to begin the dance with the others.
Although he tried not to look, his gaze flicked over her shoulder toward Chloe.
She was not dancing with Southerby. Chloe and her great-aunt were ducking out before the song had ended. Disappearing without saying good-bye. His chest ached. It was as though a hole had opened within him.
When she left, Chloe took the air from his lungs with her.
He returned his gaze to Miss York, trying his damnedest for a pleasant smile. Perhaps Chloe’s sudden absence would allow him to concentrate on fulfilling his duty, as he should have been doing all along.
Miss York gazed back at him, her expression level and her eyes blank as she completed each step of the minuet without fault.
She was a clever woman. Everyone said so, even if Miss York was disinclined to share her intellect with Lawrence. He would not force the matter. Animated conversation was not a prerequisite for the role of duchess. It wasn’t as if a husband and wife were expected to spend lazy afternoons discussing art or debating politics. Not as he’d done with Chloe.
Miss York would bear him an heir—and, if not, a daughter or two—and he and his wife would be as happy as…as…
All right, perhaps they wouldn’t be easy company.
They’d be indifferent strangers.
Lawrence would be hard at work on parliamentary matters. And Miss York would be…reading, perhaps. He’d restore the ducal estate with her dowry, beget a few children, and then enjoy an extraordinarily dull, loveless marriage, like those of their class often did.
It was not what Lawrence wanted at all.
Anxiety crept beneath his skin like ants. He tried not to let his steps falter in the dance. This was the moment he’d been preparing for. He was Wellington, poised to win or die trying at Waterloo. Miss York was…Napoleon Bonaparte? What was happening with this metaphor? Marriage wasn’t war. There was no reason for proposing to feel like being run through with a bayonet.
He was Lawrence Gosling, eighth Duke of Faircliffe, and he, like all but one of the previous holders of the title, would do what was right.
He performed the steps in silence to give a sharper look at Miss York. An unsettling sensation twisted in his stomach. Did she wishshecould choose someone else?
Perhaps she’d been unenthusiastic about the prospect of becoming a powerful duchess married to a virtual stranger because she, too, had been hoping to find love.
Was that the man he had hoped to become? One who improved his own lot at the expense of others? He could not live with himself if he did right by his title only to do his bride terribly wrong.
“Do you want to marry me?” he asked suddenly.
She stumbled. “Are you asking me to marry you?”
“I’m asking you if youwantto marry me.”
“If you ask, I’ll say yes.”
“Because it’s what you want?”
“Because it’s my duty.” Her eyes were tired. “Isn’t it yours?”
Not like this. He was desperate, but not a monster.
“It is not my duty to beget children on someone who would prefer I not visit her bedchamber.”
The words were crude and ungentlemanly, but neither of them deserved a future in which he must force himself upon her to do his duty, and that she must allow herself to be violated to do hers.
“I know my responsibility,” she mumbled.
That did not sound promising at all.
“If you were not honor-bound to obey your parents,” he asked, “how interested would you be in pursuing wedlock to me?”
