AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Need I remind you that you were trembling? Which you’d never done before. Not even when you were woken by a farmer with a gun. At first I couldn’t think why you were so overset. But then I reasoned that if even I felt self-conscious, because I smelled of the cow byre and looked like a vagrant, then it must be ten times as bad for you. I was at least among my own family—you were facing a set of strangers. Hugo was being abominably rude, and Lady Mixby was being...’ He compressed his lips for a second. ‘Lady Mixby. I thought you’d feel better able to deal with them all in a...er...complete set of clean clothes. And naturally you were upset with me, too, for not being completely honest about my identity. I hoped that if you had a chance to calm down you’d be able to see things weren’t as black as they seemed. Besides, you needed to get your feet treated,’ he finished on a shrug.
Once more she’d misjudged his motives. She’d been so angry, so hurt, when he’d hustled her upstairs, because it had put her in mind of the way she’d been treated by her aunt. She’d assumed he wanted her out of the way, too. Because she had already felt betrayed on discovering he’d been hiding so much from her when she’d thought they’d been so close.
But Gregory had been thinking of her all along. Not only that, but he’d pretty accurately judged how she’d been feeling during that first awkward meeting with his family. Even down to his oblique reference to her lack of decent underwear.
‘Oh, you dear, dear man,’ she said, reaching out her hand to caress his cheek.
He grabbed at it. ‘Shall I take that as a yes?’
Chapter Seventeen
‘Oh, Gregory...’ She sighed. ‘I wish I could say yes—I really do...
He surged to his feet. ‘You cannot possibly still be harbouring any doubts, surely?’
‘I cannot help having a few,’ she protested. ‘I mean, when I suggested marriage I thought I had many practical reasons for doing so. Only when we got here they all turned out to be nonsense.’
‘What do you mean, nonsense?’
‘I have no title, nor even a fortune—not by your standards. I suddenly felt as if I had nothing to bring to our marriage except disgrace. So I couldn’t understand why you seemed content to go along with it unless it was because you didn’t want to go back on your word, once given. And anyway, had I known at the time you were a duke of course I’d never have been so...so...forward as to dare propose in the first place.’
‘Which is one of the reasons I didn’t tell you,’ he said grimly. ‘Don’t you have any idea what it did for me when you whispered that shy proposal in that barn? To know you were willing to trust your fortune to me, thinking I had nothing? Prudence, nobody has ever thought I was of any account.’
‘Of course they have,’ she said, frowning. ‘You’re a duke.’
‘No,’ he groaned. ‘You don’t understand. Me.’ He beat his chest with the flat of his free hand. ‘This. The man. You heard Hugo. He said what everyone else thinks. That I am nothing without the title, and the wealth, and the body of servants whose only function is to maintain my dignity. Even my wife—’ He stopped, his face contorting with remembered pain. ‘You are the only person who has ever seen me. Wanted me. Gregory. Just Gregory.’
‘But you are not just Gregory, though, are you? Can you not understand why I have felt as though I can’t marry you?’ She cupped his lean jaw with one hand. ‘I wouldn’t know how to begin to be a duchess. I’m so ordinary.’
‘Not to me, you aren’t! You are the only woman I have ever spent an entire day with. The only one I have ever held in my arms all night. The only one I could imagine ever wanting to do either with.’
‘Are you sure,’ she asked, searching his earnest face, ‘that it isn’t all because of the extraordinary adventure we’ve had? That once you get back to your real life you will wake up and realise you were carried away on a tide of...of recklessness, or something? I mean, when I proposed to you, you said I’d have changed my mind by the morning, once it was clear of that drug.’
‘My mind is completely clear now,’ he said earnestly. ‘And I swear I will never grow tired of you, Prudence. Because you have seen me. The man I am inside. You looked right past the title—’
‘Which was only because I didn’t know it was there,’ she pointed out.
‘Even now you know I have it you would rather I didn’t, which is completely astonishing. Do you think I could lightly let such a rare treasure slip through my fingers? A woman who sees me and not the title?’
