Page 31 of The Duke’s Matchmaker

She nodded and started for the door. Then she turned back for a moment, her mouth open as though there was something she wanted to say.

Nathaniel had never felt more torn in his life. He was ready for her to go, ready to go back to being on his own. That was the way he was most comfortable, the way he liked to live his life. But at the same time, it was hard to see her leave, and there was a part of him that very much wanted her to linger.

She closed her mouth. Whatever she’d been about to say, she must have thought better of it. She nodded to him once, then turned and walked out the door. The footman followed her. He would see her back to her home and then return with the carriage.

The door closed behind them, and Nathaniel was alone with his thoughts again.

He wandered back in the direction of the study, but halfway there, he veered off and headed toward Colin’s room instead. The thought of sitting alone with his thoughts was suddenly unbearable, and he found that he badly wanted the company of his younger brother. And he felt bad about leaving Colin on his own, too.

He opened the door and slipped in. Helen was there, sitting in the rocking chair, her head drooping to one side. She had clearly fallen asleep watching over Colin, and Nathaniel felt a burst of gratitude for her. He was lucky, he knew, to have someone so devoted here to help him care for the boy, and he would see to it that her job remained even after he had found someone to fill the role of Colin’s mother.

He went to Helen and rested a hand on her shoulder. She stirred and blinked up at him.

“Go to bed,” he murmured. “Thank you for all you’ve done tonight. I’ll stay with him until morning.”

She nodded and rose to her feet. “I think the fever has come down a bit,” she whispered. “The physician was right. He’s going to be all right. Perhaps we overreacted. Maybe I shouldn’t have worried you.”

He shook his head. “You did everything right,” he assured her. “I would always rather worry too much about Colin than not enough. If we were wrong and he’s going to be all right, then I’m grateful for it, and that’s all I have to say.”

Helen smiled and saw herself quietly out of the room.

Nathaniel sank down in the chair she had vacated. He fixed his gaze on Colin, who was sound asleep in his bed and looked as though he wouldn’t be disturbed for anything. His breathing was so deep and even that Nathaniel suspected it hadn’t really been necessary to whisper to Helen. Colin probably wouldn’t have heard them even if they had spoken at full volume.

He leaned back in the chair.

He had opened up so much tonight, had shared so much of his life with Dorothy. What was it about her that he found so easy to trust? What was it that put him so at ease that he found himself able to talk about things he hadn’t told even his closest friends?

And why was he trusting her—a woman he hardly knew—to help select Colin’s mother?

He didn’t quite know. He only knew that it was the most faith he had ever placed in another person in all his life.

CHAPTER 17

“Explain what happened,” Honora said. She took a sip from her cup of tea and narrow her eyes at Dorothy.

“I’ve explained it,” Dorothy said. “I’ve been over it three times now.”

It wasn’t that she was tired of talking about what had transpired the night before. If anything, she wished she was at liberty to discuss it in more detail. She wanted to tell her sisters about meeting Colin, about the vulnerability Nathaniel had finally showed when the two of them had been alone, about the way he’d looked at her as she was getting ready to leave.

But she couldn’t talk about any of that, of course. In part because she had sworn up and down to herself that she would never, ever tell anyone where she’d been last night. Even for a lady who had no intentions of entering the marriage mart, a story like that could be ruinous, and she knew it. The scandal that would attach itself to her name would follow her for the rest of her life. No one would believe she’d gone home with a man in order to tend to a sick child she had never met before. She couldn’t quite believe that herself.

Honora and Abigail would believe it even less. They already thought she was being courted by Nathaniel, and they would take this as proof. She didn’t know whether they would be delighted, insisting that this proved the two of them couldn’t stay away from one another, or if they would be angry that she had put herself in a compromising position. Either way, she had no desire to face their reaction.

She wanted last night to be hers and hers alone. She wanted to treasure it, to take it out of her memory and look at it when she was alone, to turn it over and over until every little detail had been thoroughly examined.

That wasn’t what her sisters wanted. They wanted an interrogation. They wanted answers.

Abigail leaned forward, her eyes softening. “You can’t fault us for being worried, Dorothy,” she murmured, trying another tack. “You left the party without us. Anything might have happened to you.”

“The plan was always for me to leave the party without you,” Dorothy reminded them. “The two of you were supposed to go back to your own homes last night. I’m not even sure why you came here.”

“You do know why,” Honora countered. “It’s because we didn’t know where you were, and we needed to find you. And then we arrived here, and you weren’t here, and we thought something dreadful must have happened.”

“But nothing bad did happen,” Dorothy said. “I told you what it was. I went for a long ride on the way home.”

“Hours long?” Honora challenged. “It’s difficult to believe, Dorothy.”

“Well, I needed time to myself,” Dorothy said sharply. “Time to think. I never do get any privacy, you know, because my house is always full of sisters.”