Page 55 of How Not to Marry a Duke

There was a difference. God help her, there was a difference.

"I should like to offer you my hand in marriage."

The words fell into the overheated room like stones into still water. From the doorway came the soft sound of Margot's needle going still.

"I know I am not—that is, I am aware I am not the most dashing of suitors." Lord Camberton pressed on, the words tumbling faster now. "I cannot offer you grand passion or romantic poetry. But I can offer you security. Respectability. A home of your own." He lifted the orchids toward her, an offering. "An end to uncertainty."

An end to uncertainty. As though that were what ailed her. As though the cure for a shattered heart was simply to stop hoping it might mend.

Florinda looked at him—truly looked. At his kind face, his soft hands, his brown eyes that held nothing more complicated than earnest hope. He was offering her everything practical. Everything sensible. Everything a woman of six and twenty with no fortune and diminishing prospects ought to desire.

She opened her mouth to say yes.

* * *

The word would not come.

She stood there with her lips parted, the acceptance balanced on her tongue like a communion wafer she could not bring herself to swallow, and her throat simply—closed. As though her body knew what her mind was attempting to ignore. As though some essential part of her had drawn a line and refused to cross it, no matter how sensible the crossing might be.

One syllable. Three letters. The easiest word in the English language. Say it, she commanded herself. Say yes and mean it later. Say yes and learn to love him, or at least to be content.

Her throat remained closed.

"Miss Ashbourne?" Lord Camberton's hopeful face began to falter. The orchids drooped. "Are you... is all well?"

"I am deeply honoured by your offer, my lord."

The words emerged mechanical, rehearsed—the polite preamble every woman learnt before she learnt to walk. She pressed her palm against the cold window glass behind her, anchoring herself to the present moment.

"But?" His voice held the wariness of a man who sensed his rehearsed scene had departed from the script. "There is a but. I can hear it."

"But I find I cannot promise to love your hedgerows as they deserve."

The joke fell flat—too light for the weight of the moment, too flippant for a man who had just offered her his life. She watched his face cycle through confusion, hurt, and the dawning recognition that she was refusing him. The orchids dropped to his side.

"I do not understand." He took a step back, and then another, as though her refusal were a physical force pressing against him. "I thought... the carriage rides, the conversations... I thought we had an understanding."

"We had pleasant afternoons." Florinda pushed away from the window, her leg protesting the sudden movement. The ache grounded her. "We had hedgerows and tea and the comfortable fiction that I might become the sort of woman who could be satisfied with pleasant afternoons. But I cannot marry you, Lord Camberton." Her voice cracked, and she let it crack. "I cannot marry any man I do not love."

"Love." He said the word as though it were foreign—quaint, impractical, the concern of poets and fools rather than sensible people arranging sensible matches. "Miss Ashbourne, with respect, love is not⁠—"

"Not what? Not necessary? Not practical?" She heard her voice rising and could not stop it. "I am six and twenty years old, my lord. I have been courted by a poet who broke my heart, pitied by my family, and carried about like an invalid for two months. I have precisely one thing left that is mine to give, and it is my choice." She pressed her hand to her breastbone, feeling the wild beat beneath. "I choose not to give it to a man I do not love, no matter how fine his hedgerows."

The silence that followed was devastating.

* * *

Lord Camberton set the orchids on the nearest table with the exaggerated care of a man controlling himself by force of will.

"I see." His voice had gone cold—not cruel, but wounded in the particular manner of men who had expected to receive what they asked for. "I had thought, given your circumstances, that you might appreciate a practical arrangement. Clearly I was mistaken about the nature of your character."

"My circumstances." The words tasted bitter on her tongue.

"You are six and twenty, as you say. Unmarried. Without fortune or particular prospects." His jaw tightened. "Many women in your position would have been grateful."

"Many women in my position would have said yes and spent the rest of their lives regretting it." Florinda met his eyes without flinching. "You deserve better than a wife who accepts you from gratitude, Lord Camberton. And so do I."

He stared at her for a long moment. Then he gave a stiff bow—the bow of a man whose dignity had been bruised and who intended to preserve what remained.