“You know I can beverypersuasive,” she said, smiling at him.
She could be, indeed. Not only did Madeline enter his study without warning, but she also sat on the edge of his desk. So, the days when she did not come, did she merely accept his absence as if it were a natural thing? He was the one evading her, but somehow, that did not sit well with him.
“Madeline,” he exclaimed. “You are almost sitting on a report. You will crush it.”
“The keyword is ‘almost,’ Kenneth,” she retorted. “And what will a few wrinkles on a report do? Will it change anything about how the country is being run? I am here because you have spent a week acting like some disgruntled ghost, always keeping to yourself.” She leaned closer, and Kenneth could not help but inhale her maddening scent. “We must attend Cathy’s ball. It is bound to be the event of the Season. At least, I would like to think so. Most importantly, it is Selina’s debut, and she needs our support. I know you do not like balls, but I am your wife, and I would like you to accompany me.”
“No,” Kenneth said. “I have given you my answer.”
“Have you?” Madeline tilted her head, and instead of retreating, she leaned in closer. “Because it seems to me you have not given me a single good reason. Only that you dislike crowds, which I already knew.”
“That is reason enough.”
“It is not.” She reached out and straightened his cravat, though it did not need straightening. Her fingers brushed the line of his jaw as she withdrew them, and he went very still. “You manage an entire estate, Kenneth. You sit in Parliament among men you cannot abide. Surely you can survive one evening of dancing for the sake of your wife.”
“I do not dance,” he reminded her, but his voice had lost some of its conviction.
“Then you may stand at the edge of the room and glower at everyone, as I am certain you intend to do regardless.” She smiled and let her hand rest lightly on his arm. He could feel the warmth of it through his sleeve. “But you will do it beside me.”
Kenneth meant to refuse her again. Yet she was close now, close enough that he could see the flecks of gold in her eyes, and the swell of her breasts as she deliberately squeezed them together.
He was losing. He knew it, and worse, he suspected she knew it too.
The Duke was a master of avoidance and dismissal. Yet, with her, his mouth opened and then closed. He should have many reasons to give her. He disliked crowds and found parties to be a waste of time. However, none of those words materialized when he looked at her.
“I...” he began, swallowing hard. “I suppose I will come. For your sister’s sake.”
Madeline rolled her eyes, but her smile was brilliant, so Kenneth knew that he had said the right thing.
“I was right. You cannot possibly be made of stone!” she exclaimed.
Then, Madeline hopped off the desk gracefully, nudging and crumpling some pages of the report. All Kenneth could do was exhale and shake his head in disapproval. She was quickly gone, with the door clicking shut behind her. As for him, he rested his back into his chair, wondering why he had agreed to something he was not comfortable with.
The door opened again before he could settle. Malcolm wandered in, a glass in his hand, and dropped into the chair across the desk.
“I just passed your wife,” he said. “She looked far too happy, unusually so even for her. What did she want?”
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“Oh, that means she got something out of you. She had the look.” Malcolm propped his boots on the edge of the desk, ignoring his brother's glare. “Come now. Tell me.”
Kenneth kept his eyes on his report. “We are attending the Baxter ball.”
“A ball! You? I have spent two years trying to drag you out of this house, and you have refused me every single time. She has been here a few weeks, and you are already agreeing to dance.”
“I am not going to dance.”
“No, but you are going to a ball. That is more than I ever managed.” He shook his head, still grinning. “She has you wrapped around her finger, Kenneth, and you cannot even see it.”
“I see a great deal more than you think,” Kenneth muttered.
“Do you?” Malcolm pulled his boots off the desk and stood. For a moment, the humor left his face, replaced by something quieter. “I have not seen you bend for anyone in your whole life. It suits you, brother. Whatever she is doing, do not stop her.”
He departed without awaiting a response, and Kenneth realized he had none to offer.
His mind turned to the ball and to what awaited her there. He had not forgotten how he found her at the Serpentine, soaked and shaking. The Quinten name was whispered about in every drawing room in London, and her father had seen to that, drinking and gambling until the whole family became a byword for disgrace. Madeline walked into every room with her chin high, smiling as though none of it touched her. Kenneth was not fooled. He had seen what it cost her.
He could not change what people said, but he could change the reason they said it. Harleigh's debts were the root of it. As long as the man kept sinking, the family would drown with him, and Madeline would keep paying for it in whispers. If the debts were gone and the creditors silenced, perhaps the worst of the talk would die with them.
