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Mrs. Trilby was forced to follow after the constable.
Mari walked behind them. The shouting grew louder as they walked down the hallway.
A furious male voice, deep and unmistakable.
“What have you done with my governess?” Edgar roared.
He stood in the center of the room, an immense, glowering monstrosity of a knight in shining armor. But would he defend her honor when he knew the truth? That she was in his house under false pretenses. That she’d deceived him.
The clerk at the desk clapped his hands together. “Here she is, Your Grace. You see? We’re returning her to you.”
“Mari.” He strode toward her, eyes steely and handsome face worried. “Did anyone touch you? Look at you the wrong way? Because if they did, I’ll have this entire station shut down.”
“I’m unharmed,” said Mari.
“She came willingly, Your Grace,” said the now anxious-looking constable. “She was treated with respect.”
Mrs. Trilby made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. “Respect? She’s unfit to be serving in your household, Your Grace. She’s an orphan. A charity girl of unknown origins. She lied to you. She’s not from my agency at all. She’s...”
“Mrs. Trilby, I presume?” Edgar gave her the exact same look of dismissive, aristocratic disdain that his mother had used on Mari.
Mrs. Trilby swallowed. “Yes, Your Grace.”
“Please know one thing, Mrs. Trilby. I don’t care where she came from, or what she’s done. She could be the leader of the most notorious gang of cutthroats in this city and I would defend her honor, do I make myself understood?”
The butterflies returned to Mari’s stomach in droves. His conviction took her breath away. “Thank you,” she said, wanting to touch him but holding herself in check.
Mrs. Trilby pursed her lips. “You can’t honestly mean to say that you don’t care about the qualifications of your servants. She misrepresented herself. It’s a slanderous outrage on the sterling reputation of my agency and I will—”
“You will be quiet, you awful woman.” Edgar stood at his full height, every inch the commanding, arrogant duke his gate would have society believe him to be. “You’re the one slandering my future duchess.”
Wait. Hiswhat?
“Your what?” Mari asked.
Mrs. Trilby’s jaw flapped open. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh I’m deadly serious,” he said. “I have a ring in my waistcoat pocket.”
He did? Their eyes met, and Mari saw the truth there.
“But, but...” sputtered Mrs. Trilby. “Dukes don’t marry governesses.”
“No buts, Mrs. Trilby,” said Mari in grand, trilling tones. She walked imperiously to Edgar and slid her arm through his. “Good day to you, Mrs. Trilby.”
And she stuck her nose in the air, as any future duchess might, and sailed out of the room on the duke’s arm.
And she didn’t stop sailing grandly until they reached his carriage. Then her shoulders deflated, as if she’d been a hot air balloon descending from the sky.
“That was a very nice thing to do, Edgar. But I know you don’t really want to marry me.”
“Yes, I do.”
She sighed. “You just think you do, because you’re so honorable and you’ll do the right thing by me, as you did by your children. Not because it fits with your life, but because it’s the right thing to do. And that’s no reason to be married.”
His face closed up, just as it had when his mother walked in the room during Lady India’s antiquities exhibition. She’d wounded him, which was all for the best.
She’d been hiding too much from him.
