“Lady Alice.” His voice was the correct shade of formal. “I trust you slept well.”
“Tolerably, Your Grace.”
“I am pleased to hear it.”
“Are you?”
It came out before she could stop it. A faint bite. She heard her mother make a tiny sound. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Duke’s mouth twitch.
“Quite,” he said.
He turned to her mother, who led him out of the morning room, flustered. The door clicked shut behind them.
Joanna sat down on the chaise.
There was a long, ringing pause.
“What are they talking about in there? And what is taking them so long?” Joanna asked, half to the rug.
“The wedding, of course,” Daphne said absent-mindedly, not looking up from her embroidery.
Alice and Joanna both looked at her.
She did not look up. She was halving a knot of pink silk with the placid concentration of a young woman unaware of the gravity of what she had just said.
“The wedding?” Alice was shocked.
That had not been at the top of her list of possibilities last night. In fact, it had not been on the list at all. She could not imagine the Duke wanting to marry her. He’d made it perfectly clear that he did not approve of her. And then he’d kissed, and she…
She thought maybe he wanted to tell her father the truth. But a wedding?
Alice caught Joanna’s eye. “Sweet Daphne, I am going to take Joanna out for some air. We shall be just on the terrace.”
“Mm,” Daphne hummed, threading.
Alice was on her feet before her sister had finished. “The terrace,” she muttered to Joanna. “Now.”
She crossed the morning room, opened the long French door at the rear, and stepped out onto the stone terrace that overlookedthe kitchen garden. Joanna followed, and Alice shut the door behind her.
The morning was cold. The terrace was empty. The kitchen garden was full of cabbages.
“Joanna,” Alice said, “I still have no idea what happened. What the hell was your brother thinking, kissing me like that?”
“He kissed you!”
“That is what I just said.”
“It is not the same thing as you kissing him, Alice.Hekissedyou. He chose you.”
“Joanna, I went looking for someone to ruin me. I picked the man. He stepped in. We were looking for someone to make my situation less complicated, and now, I am going to end up married to him? Are you sure?”
Joanna stared.
“Are you sure?” Alice repeated. “I mean, maybe he just wanted to tell my father that he wants nothing to do with me. He could have come to forbid us from ever speaking to each other. He could be telling my father this very moment that he had a fit of madness and apologizing.”
“Alice.”
“He could.”
