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“Marry me.”
* * *
Marry me.
“I…what?” Verity’s words escaped like an inelegant squeak. There was no excuse for it, but she never anticipated those words from the duke. She was certain there was some misunderstanding.
“No need to look so horrified,” he said. “You’ll be a duchess.”
This was so unexpected she felt faint. Her heart certainly beat a madcap tempo. “A duchess?”
“Yes.”
Remarkably she felt like laughing. “This is a poor jest, Your Grace. A poor jest indeed, and one I cannot fathom at the moment.” Oh, God.
Another one of those smiles touched his mouth, the one that suggested he was amused with her and possibly the entire world. The man was truly perfectly and ruthlessly handsome. Verity did not trust him. It was even painful to admit she found him a bit intimidating, even though she had lifted her chin and faced society without an ounce of fear or trepidation for the last several months. Damn this duke for making her feel this confused mess of sensation.
“It is no jest.”
“I do not understanding your reasoning!”
For a moment she thought he would ignore her cry.
“As I sat in this chair earlier and planned the boy’s future, I realized he would need a mother. A nursemaid alone will never do,” he clipped. “I already gathered it was his mother—who knew of my connection to his father—who left the boy on my doorstep, and you are in earnest disagreement with her actions. Given that you might do something even more rash than breaking into my home, a marriage between the two parties who have a vested interest in the boy is the best solution. Is it not?”
He was entirely serious. The realization set her heart to hammering.
The duke continued, “You will understand this is an offer for a marriage of convenience. I can see you will be a nuisance regarding little Thomas, and since I might be forced to do away with you, I must make you a part of my plans.”
“Do away with me,” she said faintly, her heart starting to pound an even harsher rhythm.
That cunning gleam once more brightened his eyes. “Yes. I could see you transported to another country with no hopes of returning to England’s shore.”
She cleared her throat. “And making me a part of your plan is to take me as your wife, your duchess?”
“Thomas will need a mother, one who will love him and does not treat him like a bastard. I believe you qualify for the position. It will also save me the burden of entering the marriage mart to seek a bride. This is an offer suitable for both of us.”
“You do mean it,” she said, still astonished and grappling with the implications. A duchess? Her?
“Yes.”
Perhaps there was more to it than he was letting on. “I suppose you will be wanting an heir and a spare…” she began, only to pause when his lips twisted in a cruel, dark smile.
“There will be no need for that,” he said.
“For what?”
He prowled closer, his expression was inscrutable. “For an heir or a spare.”
She dropped her gaze to the front fall of his pant.
“You’re a brazen one, aren’t you?”
For a moment, she could only stare at him and then her cheeks heated. Verity hated that she blushed. A woman known in the country and London as a scandalous, ruinous disgrace should not know how to blush. “Are you impotent?” she asked in a choked voice.
He stared at her for a long moment. “No.”
“Then…” Oh, perhaps he was not at all attracted to her. The idea was mortifying, especially when she found him so remarkably appealing. “I…Forgive me…I am not certain at all what I was thinking.”
He pierced her with his intense gaze and merely waited for her scattered thoughts to make sense of his extraordinary offer. To be a duchess would mean so much to her family. The family had been cast into fiery ruin with their eldest daughter falling with a child out of wedlock. Then their youngest had abandoned her attachment and run off to support her sister when the family cut Catherine from their ranks.
“The disgraced daughters,” the scandal sheets had called them for weeks, and then the foul air of their scandal had chased them all the way back to the country, where they had met the ruthless will of their father, who turned his back on Catherine and put her away from their home.
Her heart lodged in her throat.
And now Catherine has run away and left us, leaving me alone to decide our future.
