Page 29 of A Duchess for his Family

“Then you agree?”

Benedict looked down at her. Her eyes were bright with embarrassment and defiance, her chin lifted as though daring him to think less of her for speaking plainly. She looked shy and brave and thoroughly vexed with him.

He had proposed marriage for the girls. He told himself so repeatedly. Yet at that moment, with Sophia’s hand trembling almost imperceptibly upon his arm and her color high from the courage of her own words, Benedict found himself confronted by the alarming fact that she would not only become part of Rivermere. She would become his wife.

“Yes,” he said, his voice lower than before. “I agree.”

Sophia looked away at once. For reasons beyond his comprehension, she still seemed annoyed.

The carriage came into view at the edge of the path, the horses waiting in the dappled shade, and Jenny quickening a little behind them as propriety drew them back into ordinary order. Benedict escorted Sophia toward it with the grave attention expected of an engaged gentleman and the inward bewilderment of a man whose carefully ordered future had just shifted beneath his feet.

At the carriage door, he handed her up. Her fingers rested in his for no more than a second longer than necessary. When she settled inside and looked out at him, still flushed, still indignant, still entirely unlike any woman he had ever known, Benedict bowed.

Then he stepped back.

Only when the carriage rolled away did he realize he had been standing in the path with the expression of a man who had just been informed that rules, however numerous, were no defense at all.

Chapter Eight

“Ithink, miss, if I may say so, that you will make a very lovely duchess.”

Sophia looked at Jenny in the mirror and felt her face warm at once. “You may not say so unless you intend to make me nervous before breakfast.”

Jenny, who stood behind her with a comb in one hand and several pins arranged neatly between her fingers, smiled with the careful affection permitted between a lady and her maid. She served Sophia for nearly five years, long enough to know when silence was wanted and when it would only allow Miss Norton to worry herself into a headache.

She was not familiar, precisely. But there was a gentleness in Jenny’s manner that Sophia often found more comforting than all the elegant advice of relations.

“I only meant it kindly, miss.”

“I know.” Sophia softened at once. “Forgive me. I am very poor company this morning.”

“You are to be married to a duke,” Jenny said, separating a lock of Sophia’s brown hair and winding it deftly. “I should think any lady might be allowed a few nerves.”

Sophia lowered her gaze to her hands, folded upon the dressing table. Her chamber smelled of rosewater, clean linen, and the faint lavender Jenny tucked among her ribbons. Outside the open window, a breeze moved the pale curtains inward and back again like a quiet breath. It ought to have been a peaceful morning. Instead, Sophia felt as though she had been placed inside someone else’s future by mistake.

“Everyone is pleased with my marriage,” she sighed.

“Are you, miss?”

The question was spoken softly and respectfully. Yet it touched too near the tender place Sophia had spent several days avoiding.

“I am doing what is right,” she replied.

Jenny pinned a curl into place. “That is not quite the same thing.”

Sophia met her eyes in the glass. Jenny’s expression remained proper, but concern made it very nearly bold.

“The duke needs a wife,” Sophia mused, as if presenting evidence. “Amelia and Marjorie need a mother. I just happen to fit the role.”

Jenny hesitated. “And do you want the role?”

Sophia’s fingers tightened together. Want was a dangerous word. It suggested choice, longing, even hope. She was not certain she had the courage for any of those things. She knew only that Amelia’s face had fallen when she imagined Sophia would leave, and Marjorie’s brave little chin trembled before she could hide it.

“I want the girls to be happy,” she confessed.

Jenny did not answer at once. She slid another pin into place, then touched the arrangement with the lightest hand. “Then I hope they know how fortunate they are.”

Sophia looked away. Before she could respond, a knock came at the chamber door. Jenny went to answer it and returned with one of the housemaids, who carried a large, flat box tied with a satin ribbon of deep ivory. A folded note rested atop the box, sealed with dark wax.