She was in love with him. She could say it now, sitting in the dark on the edge of her bed with the note in her hands and the evening settling around her like silt after a storm. She was in love with the Duke of Ravenhurst, and the love was not sensible, safe or anything Bethany would approve of, but it was the truest thing she had ever carried.
She undressed and went to bed but did not sleep. She held the note against her collarbone, listened to the quiet house and thought about the sound of his voice when he had saidI amsorry. It was real, and she was going to trust it, and that was a decision that was either going to save her or break her.
Chapter Thirteen
“If you ever use my name to lure her into a room like that again, the wager will be the smallest of your problems.”
Ash found Devlin in the back study with a glass in his hand and a smile he was unable to hide; the smile of a man who had set a trap, watched it spring and was now enjoying the mechanical satisfaction of the springing, regardless of what had been caught. The study was dim, one lamp, the remains of a cigar in the tray, and Devlin was leaning against the desk as if the desk belonged to him, , and as if the evening belonged to him, which, until twenty minutes ago, it had.
“You sound like a man in love, Ravenhurst.” Devlin’s smile did not waver. “I had not thought it possible.”
Ash did not answer. He stood in the doorway and looked at the man he had called a companion for eight years. The man who had proposed the wager at three in the morning in a brothel, the man who had lured Imogen Goodall into a room full of courtesans and gamblers with a forged invitation and an invented sister, and the look said everything the silence did not. Ash walked out of the study and out of the house.
He walked the three miles home to Grosvenor Square without stopping. The night was warm, the streets were dark, and his shirt was thin against the air. His hands were shaking, not with cold, but with the particular fury that arrived when a man discovered that someone he had trusted was not someone who could be trusted. The discovery was not surprising, which made it even worse.
He reached Grosvenor Square at midnight. He did not sleep. He sat at his writing desk until dawn, the license on one side, the watch on the other and the plan assembling itself between them. The plan was that tomorrow morning he was going to goto Imogen’s house. He was going to apologize and tell her about Devlin, the invented sister and the trap. He was going to show her the license. And tomorrow night, at the Carlisle ball, in front of every person who had ever overlooked her, he was going to ask her to marry him.
Mid-morning. The day after the trap.
Aunt Margery was making her morning calls, her chill improved enough for visiting but not for chaperoning. Cassie was at her dancing master and the house was quiet.
Ash arrived at eleven. Mrs. Glass, the Goodall housekeeper, a solid woman in her fifties who had been with the family since Imogen was a child, admitted him to the morning room without surprise, and she remained in the doorway with a piece of mending; a silent chaperone who was prepared to look the other way if looking the other way was what was required.
Imogen was standing by the window. She had not slept. He could see the shadows under her eyes, the slight pallor of her face, and the particular set of her shoulders that came when a person had been awake all night and had passed through exhaustion into something clearer and more focused on the other side. She was wearing a morning gown he had not seen before, pale gray, and she was holding his note in both hands. The note was creased and soft from handling, which meant she had been reading it again and again, and the reading had not worn the words out.
“I owe you an explanation,” he said.
“You owe me several, Your Grace. You may begin with the one that involves Lord Devlin and a sister who does not exist.”
He told her. Devlin had forged the invitation and had invented a sister. He had arranged the entire evening as a trap, though Ash did not tell her what the trap was designed to catch, because telling her would have meant telling her aboutthe wager, and the wager was the truth he was not yet ready to admit.
“I will explain everything else,” he said, “as soon as I have earned the right. I am asking you to trust me one day longer. After tomorrow night, there will be nothing between us that is not spoken.”
She set the note down and looked at him.
“Do you mean to marry me?” she asked.
The question was direct, calm and completely without flutter, and the directness of it did something to him that no amount of fluttering could have done. Because directness was trust, and trust from Imogen Goodall was not a thing that was given lightly.
“Yes,” he said. “Tomorrow night at the Carlisle ball, in front of every person who has ever ignored you, I am going to ask you to be the Duchess of Ravenhurst.”
“Show me the license.”
He took it from his coat. The parchment was warm from his body, the wax seal heavy at the bottom, his name in the clerk’s careful hand on the first line. She took it from him and read it, slowly, her eyes moving across the legal language and the Archbishop’s seal and the blank space where her name would go. She held it for a long moment, the small document that was going to change both of their lives sitting in her hands, light as air and heavy as everything.
She looked up at him. Her face was calm, her eyes bright and her hands, holding the license, were not trembling.
“Come upstairs.”
He stopped breathing. She was serious. She meant it, and the meaning was visible in every line of her face, every angle of her body and the absolute steadiness of her hands.
“Imogen, I will not. Not before tomorrow. I will not have you give me anything I have not yet earned.”
“You have earned this.” Her voice did not waver. “You stayed by my side last night. You stood at my shoulder for two hours. You walked past every woman in that room to reach me. You have not slept any more than I have. I do not want to walk into the Carlisle ball tomorrow as a maid making a bargain. I want to walk in as a woman who has chosen.”
He hesitated. He had stopped himself four times now, and every time the stopping had been the hardest thing he had ever done, and each time it had gotten harder. He was standing in Imogen Goodall’s morning room with her eyes on his face, and her voice saying come upstairs, and the stopping was running out.
“Ash.” She set the license down on the table beside the dried violets. “I have read every book my uncle owned about this. I am not afraid. I have read enough to know what to expect, and I have read enough to know that I want it to be you.”
