The fire shifted in its grate. Somewhere upstairs, a footstep crossed a room.
“Miss Linton.” He let the silence hold a half-beat. “Trowbridge will not offer for you.”
“Then the Alliance shall provide me with a husband.”
He turned his signet ring slowly. “The Alliance is not in the habit of matchmaking.”
“The Alliance can start with me. They should have kept a better eye on one of their members. The Duke of Trowbridge’s disgrace means humiliation for the Alliance, does it not? The Alliance shall therefore arrange the natural remedy. Failing which, I shall write directly to the gossip columns myself, with aparticular emphasis on the part where a cabal of dukes elected to do nothing for a baron’s daughter who had been thrown over by one of their own.”
“You would only hurt your own reputation by writing to the papers.”
“If you recall, Your Grace, I am already ruined. So are my sisters.”
He looked at the single candle guttering in the corner. “The Alliance could be persuaded to provide you with a dowry to attract a suitable match.”
“A suitable match.” She said the words slowly, as if he had offered her something unclean.
A crease formed between his brows. “Yes.”
“Judging by how easily you made that offer, I suspect our ideas of a suitable match differ considerably.”
He crossed one leg over the other. “Do enlighten me. Who do you have in mind, other than the Duke of Trowbridge.”
She poured tea into his cup, then her own. There was no sugar. No milk.
“If the Alliance is not inclined to force His Grace to take responsibility for ruining a gentlewoman, I am willing to acceptyouas my betrothed.”
Henry brought a fist to his mouth, stopping the tea from spraying his cravat. He coughed. She sat with her ankles crossed beneath her chair, as she had been taught, and waited for him to finish.
“Miss Linton, you cannot be serious.”
“I have never been more serious in my life, Your Grace. You need a wife. I need a husband. The matter resolves itself.”
“I am not the man one offers up at a baron’s daughter’s table.”
“No, Your Grace.” Her mouth curved at the corners. “You are the man no other family will allow at their table at all.”
The fire made a small dry sound. Henry stared at it.
“I shall overlook your impertinence on the grounds of recent shocks.”
“Let us be practical, Your Grace. We are both adults. You are, I hazard to guess, five and thirty? Perhaps six and thirty? I am eight and twenty. It is debatable which of us is the greater pariah.”
Henry picked up the teacup and sipped it. The taste was bitter and weak. The leaves had been used before. “I shall never remarry.”
“You will not, or you cannot?”
His jaw clenched. The humiliation of being read so easily by a woman he had known for five minutes cut deeper than the humiliation itself.
“I know what thetonwhispers about you. I also know that you cannot be content with your situation. No heir. Living alone in that house. You could have companions if you wished. But it is not the same as a wife.”
Henry opened and closed his fists. “You presume to know me well, Miss Linton.”
“I only know what I hear. I am willing to be corrected.”
He looked at her then. Properly. He had not, since Margaret, looked at any woman with even ordinary attention. A strand of her hair had escaped its pins, curling against her flushed cheek, the brown reddening in firelight. Her lips pressed into that gentle, unyielding line. The neckline of her dress had slipped with wear, exposing the sharp angle of her collarbone and the hollow beneath it. He forced his eyes back to her face.
“Miss Linton, are you saying you are willing to risk your life?”
