Page 69 of The Duke’s Matchmaker

I wonder if I hurt him when I rejected his proposal?

She had to assume the answer was no. He didn’t really want to marry her, no matter what he had said. He wanted to do the right thing. That was all it had been.

And even if he had wanted to marry her, she couldn’t possibly have accepted.

The thought of being married to someone, of letting herself need someone, was like looking over the edge of a cliff. It made her sick with fear.

“You’re really set on this course of action, aren’t you?” Violet asked her sadly. “Never getting married, I mean. Never finding out what that would be like. You really mean to just…remain a spinster forever.”

“I always said so,” Dorothy reminded her friend.

“I know you did. I suppose a part of me just believed you would change your mind when you met the right man, if you ever did meet him,” Violet said. “But I see now that it isn’t so. It’s hard to imagine you meeting a man who was more right for you than Nathaniel, and it’s clear you feel the same way, but he hasn’t changed your mind. Your mind is never going to change. Not about this.”

“No,” Dorothy agreed. “I don’t think it is.”

There was a weighty sadness to the realization, and Dorothy realized she had held onto the same hope as her friend. Though she would never have admitted it, there had been a part of her that had believed a marriage was still possible, that something could happen to convince her it was a good idea.

That hope was gone now. If the prospect of marriage to Nathaniel hadn’t been enough, then nothing would ever be enough.

She would stay here with Violet until Nathaniel got his life back on course. Once he had accepted that Dorothy wasn’t going to change her mind, he would go back to Lady Amanda. He would beg her forgiveness. He would tell her that Dorothy had been at fault for the kiss, or perhaps he would just say that he had made a mistake and that he regretted it. Either way, he would persuade her and she would come back to him, and then the two of them would find a way to be together. They would announce their engagement.

Then it would be safe to return home. Then it would be safe to believe that her sisters would finally give up on the idea of her marrying Nathaniel. Because as difficult as it had been to say no to him once, the idea of having to repeat and reinforce her answer over and over was too shattering to be borne.

If she had to answer again, she was afraid that she might say yes.

So, she’d stay with Violet, who at least understood her well enough not to ask the question.

CHAPTER 35

“Father?”

Nathaniel didn’t look up from the drink he held in his hand. It made his heart turn over to hear Colin address him as Father, and on any other day he thought he would have been happy about it.

“Yes?” he replied. “Do you need something?”

Colin hesitated for a moment. “Is it all right for me to be in here?”

Nathaniel didn’t know what answer he wanted to give. His study was a sacred space, one that he had always kept to himself. Even the staff didn’t come here unless they had special permission. He allowed it to be cleaned once a week, only when he had given instructions to do so. The rest of the time, it was his own private space, his sanctuary.

But could he really insist that Colin not come into his space? Colin was a child, after all. It wasn’t right to have a space that you didn’t allow your own child to enter.

Or was it? What did he know about such things?

Dorothy would have known.

“You can be here,” he told Colin. “Don’t touch any of the books, all right?”

Colin nodded and climbed up carefully to sit in the armchair by the window. For a long moment, he was quiet, watching Nathaniel as he flipped through the pages of the book on the desk in front of him.

Finally, he spoke. “It’s been a long time since our picnic,” he said.

“About ten days.” Had it really been so little time? Colin was right, it felt much longer. Everything had changed so rapidly since then. He remembered sitting with Dorothy and feeling as if they were just at the start of something. A friendship, yes, but something.

Now everything was over.

It was his own fault. He had kissed her when she had made it clear that she wanted nothing more than friendship. And then, in the wake of that error in judgment, he had compounded things by asking her to marry him. Could there possibly have been a more foolish move? There was no way for them to return to the safe ground of friendship.

Not that that ground had ever been particularly safe to begin with.