Marrying the Wrong Lady (Preview)

Chapter One

The sitting room in Arabella Wentworth’s little St. James home was so small that two women standing together could make it feel crowded. With all three women, the old nursing chair by the window, and the narrow table near the hearth, it seemed almost impossible to breathe.

Arabella sat on the edge of the room’s only decent chair, bent over a faded gown of blue sprigged muslin, stitching a new hem where the old one had worn thin. Beside her, Nanny Hargrave worked with her spectacles low upon her nose, the gnarled fingers of the thin, gray-haired fifty-year-old woman surprisingly nimble as she mended the sleeve of a second dress. The fabric had been washed and altered so many times that it was no longer a proper blue or green, but something between the two, as if it had lost the courage to be either.

Her sister Beatrice paced the narrow strip of worn carpet before the hearth with the restless urgency of someone who had already decided the answer and was waiting for the world to catch up. Beatrice was twenty, five years younger than Arabella. But in that moment, the worry in her features could make even Arabella believe that Beatrice was twenty-five years older than her.

“I shall not do it,” she said for the third time, stopping abruptly and whirling to face them. “I simply shall not.”

Arabella did not look up from her sewing. “You have said as much twice already.”

“And I mean it every time.”

Nanny Hargrave made a small sound that might have been a sigh or a snort. “My dear, if repeating yourself were enough to alter the laws of England, every woman in it would be a duchess and every man a chimney sweep.”

Beatrice threw up her hands. “You all speak as though I am being unreasonable, when I am the one being asked to marry a man I have never met.”

“You have met him,” Arabella reminded her gently. “Once. At his father’s funeral.”

“That was ten years ago.”

“I did not say it was recent.”

Beatrice crossed to the window and stared out into the gray London afternoon, though the view was only of the neighboring brick wall and a slice of soot-dark sky. 

“I was nine,” she said, in a voice that had gone quieter, more dangerous. “I remember very little of him, only that he was tall and solemn and looked as though he had been carved out of ice. And now everyone says he is worse than that. That he is cold. That he despises his title. That he cannot bear Ashford House, nor his lands, nor any living creature unlucky enough to require his attention.”

“People say many things of great men,” Arabella said. “Half of them are nonsense.”

“Is that meant to comfort me?” Beatrice asked.

“It is meant to remind you that gossip is a parlor game, not gospel.”

Beatrice turned, her dark eyes flashing. “And what if this time it is true?”

Arabella opened her mouth, then closed it again. She could not honestly say it was not possible. Her father had spoken of the previous Duke of Ashford with warm certainty, and in his last years had clung to the marriage contract as though it were a shield against every future calamity. That shield had been all but the only thing left to them.

“The contract was not made with this duke’s whims in mind,” Arabella said at last. “It was made by two men who trusted one another. Our father and his friend intended it to bind their houses.”

“Then perhaps his son should have been consulted before I was bargained away like a parcel of ribbon,” Beatrice replied.

The words struck cleanly, because there was truth in them, and truth had a habit of cutting even when one expected it.

Nanny Hargrave reached over and laid a worn hand over Arabella’s wrist. “Let her pace, Bella. A girl is allowed a little storm before she goes into a gale.”

Beatrice gave a miserable laugh that was almost a sob. “I am not storming. I am frightened.”

For a moment no one answered. The fire cracked softly. Somewhere below, a child cried and was hushed.

Arabella resumed stitching, though her eyes stung unexpectedly. “We are all frightened. You are only the one with the honesty to say it aloud.”

Beatrice pressed her palms to the windowpane, then spoke without turning. “Why must it be me?”

Arabella’s fingers stilled.

The question had been waiting in the room from the moment Beatrice learned the truth of the contract, and Arabella had hoped, weakly and stupidly, that she might somehow avoid hearing it asked in plain terms.

Beatrice did turn then. Her face had gone pale beneath the color in her cheeks. “Why me, Bella? You are the elder sister. You are the one who ought to marry.”

Nanny Hargrave’s mouth flattened into a line. She looked suddenly fascinated by the sleeve she was mending.

Arabella set the blue gown aside with great care. There was no graceful answer to such a question. There was only honesty, and honesty had already ruined too many of their mornings to bother sparing her.

“Because no one would take me,” she said quietly.

Beatrice stared. “That is not true.”

“It is.”

“Arabella, you are beautiful.”

Arabella almost smiled at that, though it hurt. “Beauty is not a dowry.”

“It ought to be.”

“Perhaps. But society has never shown much interest in what ought to be.”

“When Lord Harrison Sinclair courted me,” Arabella continued before Beatrice could argue, “I was foolish enough to think myself secure. He made such a great matter of devotion, of admiration, of how much he valued my spirit. He spoke to me as though he meant to ask for my hand before the month was done.”

“And did he not?” Beatrice asked, frowning.

“He did, in all but formal words. Then our parents died, and the money died with them, and suddenly his admiration had other engagements.”

Beatrice’s mouth parted slightly.

Arabella drew a slow breath. “He ended our courtship within a fortnight. No note. No civil explanation. He simply ceased calling. Then his mother informed a mutual acquaintance that a man in his position could not be expected to marry a girl with nothing but a name and a few worn silks.”

Nanny Hargrave gave a sharp, ugly sound. “His mother is a viper.”

Beatrice flushed with indignation. “He promised you.”

“He promised many things,” Arabella said. “So do men with smiling mouths and unencumbered consciences.”

Beatrice’s eyes had filled, though she blinked furiously to stop the tears. “I did not know it had been so cruel.”

“Not especially cruel,” Arabella said with forced lightness. “Merely practical. That is the language gentlemen use when they wish to abandon a lady without appearing vulgar.”

Beatrice sank slowly onto the window seat. For the first time all morning she looked less combative than defeated.

“And so because I have not been publicly discarded,” she whispered, “I am to be the one offered up instead.”

Arabella’s throat tightened. “You are to be the one who can still be saved.”

The words seemed to freeze all three of them.

Nanny Hargrave lowered her sewing into her lap. Her old face, usually so dry and alert, gentled into something almost unbearably kind. “My darlings,” she said, “do not turn on one another. The world is doing that for us well enough.”

Beatrice stared down at her gloved hands. “If I marry him, there will be an end to it. To all of this. The debt. The whispers. Percival. The scraping and patching and pretending that we are not one bad week away from ruin.”

Arabella said nothing. Because that was the truth of it. Without the marriage contract, they could not pay Nanny Hargrave’s wages. They could not keep a roof over their heads. They could not maintain even the pretense of gentility, and in London a woman who could not pretend was quickly made invisible—or worse, visible in all the wrong ways.

Beatrice bowed her head. “I hate that I must be grateful for being trapped.”

Arabella rose and crossed to her, laying a hand on her shoulder. “You are not trapped. You are preserving us.”

Beatrice laughed once, softly and bitterly. “That sounds nobler than it feels.”

“It is rarely noble while one is in the middle of it.”

A knock came then, sharp and impatient at the outer door.

All three women looked up.

Nanny Hargrave’s mouth pursed. “Ah,” she said, with the tone of a woman hearing the first peal of thunder. “That will be your cousin.”

Beatrice’s face hardened with immediate dislike. “Must he come here at all?”

“Apparently,” Arabella said, taking a steadying breath. She straightened her shoulders with whatever dignity she could gather, because dignity, like inheritance, had to last longer than it was meant to.

When the footman admitted Percival Wentworth, Viscount of Wentworth, he brought with him a gust of cold street air and the smell of horseflesh, tobacco, and self-satisfaction. With blond, well-kept hair, deep green eyes and a tall, muscular build, he was handsome enough in the way of men who spent money easily and believed that alone to be a moral quality. His coat was cut in the newest fashion, his cravat tied with painful neatness, and his expression carried the faint boredom of a man who had never once doubted his own importance.

Arabella had disliked him since they were children, realizing at a rather young age that her cousin behaved as though he was entitled to more than was rightfully his. And she had never found reason to improve on the judgment. At thirty, he was five years older than her, yet he seemed to revel in treating Arabella and her sister like they were still toddlers.

“My dear cousins,” he said, bowing with exaggerated courtesy. “I trust I am not interrupting some domestic idyll.”

“Hardly,” Beatrice muttered.

Percival heard her and smiled as though she were a child who had mistaken impudence for wit. “Ah, the younger sister. I see the country has not improved your temper.”

Arabella’s temple throbbed. They lived in town, albeit more modestly than their peers, and the difference from the country was plain.

“We are in London,” she said.

Percival scoffed. “Barely. The air is no better, I warrant.”

Nanny Hargrave made a tiny sound, as though she were chewing on laughter and refusing to let it out.

Percival took the seat opposite Arabella without invitation, crossing one polished boot over the other. “Well? You sent for me rather urgently. I hope the matter is important.”

“It concerns our dowries,” Arabella said.

He did not even blink. “Does it.”

“The funds held in trust from our father’s estate.”

Percival leaned back a fraction. “Ah.”

Arabella’s fingers curled against the edge of her chair. “You told me, when I last wrote, that there had been some delay. That the accounts were being settled.”

“And so they were.”

“Are being,” Beatrice snapped.

Percival smiled thinly at her. “My dear Beatrice, you are in no position to correct me on finance.”

Arabella cut in before the room could sharpen further. “Then let us speak plainly. We require access to our portion. We have nothing else.”

“How candid,” he murmured. “It is always refreshing when ladies refuse the tedious fiction that money grows in hedges.”

“It does not,” Arabella said. “But it ought not to vanish either.”

Percival’s smile thinned by another degree. “Your father’s debts were considerable.”

“He was not a reckless man.”

“No,” said Percival, with a faint shrug, “merely dead.”

The insult was so obvious that Beatrice made a small, choked sound. Arabella did not move.

“You disposed of our dowries,” she said carefully, “to pay his debts.”

“I discharged obligations that should never have been left unattended. As head of the family, I had no choice.”

“You had a choice,” Arabella said. “You chose to keep us impoverished.”

His brows rose. “Now, that is an ugly accusation.”

“It is also true.”

Percival looked at her for a moment, then smiled. “How spirited you have become since losing your expectations.”

Beatrice stood so suddenly her chair rocked backward. “Do not speak to her that way.”

Percival’s gaze shifted to her, cool and amused. “Or what? Will you challenge me to a duel with a darning needle?”

Nanny Hargrave set down her sewing with deliberate calm. “If she does, I should advise you to be careful. She has a fair arm.”

That earned the smallest of smiles from Arabella, though it faded before it could settle.

Percival ignored the remark. “The matter is concluded. I have used the funds for their intended purpose. You may consider yourselves fortunate that the family name has not suffered greater embarrassment.”

“Our family name,” Arabella said, “will suffer a great deal more if we are forced to live as beggars.”

“Then do not be beggars,” he said pleasantly. “Marry well.”

Beatrice laughed, harsh and incredulous. “And who, pray, would have us now?”

Percival made a little show of considering the question. “I should imagine someone sufficiently desperate.”

Arabella felt every muscle in her body go rigid. “You have no intention of restoring anything to us.”

“I have every intention of leaving England before the month is out.” He glanced toward the door, as though the room itself were already dulling his appetite for the day. “I am taking an extended tour of the Continent. Italy, perhaps. France, certainly, if the roads are tolerable and the women agreeable.”

“And we?” Arabella asked.

He rose, smoothing his cuffs. “You, my dear cousin, are entirely on your own.”

At the door, he paused and looked back at them with eyes that held more smugness than pity. “Do try not to make too much of a scene. People can be unkind to ladies who appear inconvenienced by their circumstances.”

Then he was gone, leaving behind a faint trail of cologne and a much stronger one of contempt.

For a long moment, nobody spoke. The fire hissed softly.

At last, Nanny Hargrave gave a long, meditative sigh. “Well,” she said, folding her hands in her lap, “I always did think if I had my hands on that boy when he was young, I should have spanked him a little more.”

Beatrice let out a startled laugh. Arabella tried and failed to suppress one of her own. It escaped in a sudden, breathless sound that felt almost improper after everything that had just passed. Beatrice laughed again, more helplessly this time, and Nanny Hargrave’s stern mouth twitched, then softened.

“There,” said the old woman. “That is better. A man like that ought not to be allowed the satisfaction of making us all gloomy at once.”

But the laughter faded quickly, as laughter often did when it had nowhere to go. Arabella reached for her sewing again, though her fingers felt awkward and cold. 

“I must lie down,” Beatrice said abruptly, avoiding Arabella’s gaze. Before either she or Nanny Hargrave could speak, Beatrice rushed to the door and disappeared into the corridor. Arabella shared a silent look with the woman who had cared for her and her sister like a second mother their entire lives. 

The room seemed to have shrunk around them, as if Percival had taken something more than money. And perhaps he had, as Arabella was filled at once with dread, sure that her life and her sister’s had just changed irrevocably. And not for the better.

***

For the next few hours, Arabella tried to allow her sewing to comfort her and ease her restless mind. Yet as she surveyed the pink fabric, she idly noted that she had made little progress, and what she had accomplished looked much like the sewing of a child. She mended the same hem twice before admitting, in the quiet of her own thoughts, that she was not going to sleep until she had checked on Beatrice.

She rose and padded quietly down the narrow passage to her sister’s room.

When she reached it, she saw the door stood ajar. Arabella frowned softly, then pushed it open. The chamber was empty.

For one foolish moment, she assumed Beatrice had merely gone for water or decided to sleep in Nanny Hargrave’s room for comfort. Then she saw the bed. It had not been slept in. It had not even been disturbed as though Beatrice had tried to rest there. The coverlet was folded back with near-military neatness. 

The next discovery made Arabella’s heart thump. Her sister’s bonnet was missing from the peg beside the door. Her cloak was gone, too. So was the little valise Beatrice used when she traveled. Arabella’s gaze swept the room in mounting horror, taking in the open chest, the half-empty drawer, the window that stood unlatched.

“No,” she whispered, though the room did not answer.

She turned and ran for Nanny Hargrave’s door, rapping in panic before pushing inside. “Nanny, wake up. Beatrice is gone!”

Nanny Hargrave rose at once with alarming speed. “Gone where?”

“I do not know.”

The old woman followed, shawl around her shoulders, candle in hand. They entered Beatrice’s chamber together. Nanny Hargrave’s sharp gaze took in the signs at once. Her mouth compressed. “Lord have mercy. There is packing gone.”

Arabella’s hands had begun to shake. She crossed to the dressing table and found, beneath the silver-backed brush, a folded note addressed to her in Beatrice’s familiar hand. She opened it with fingers that no longer seemed entirely her own.

Bella, 

Forgive me. I know what I am doing is wicked and foolish and will likely ruin us both, but I cannot marry a stranger and call it duty. I love him. I have loved him for nearly a year. William and I are already beyond recall. I had hoped to find a way to explain before this became necessary, but I have not the courage to stand before you and watch you plead. Please do not hate me. I am sorry. I am so sorry. 

Beatrice

The room tilted.

Arabella stared at the page until the words blurred and swam, then cleared again, each line cruelly legible.

Nanny Hargrave gave a low sound. “Who is William?”

Arabella sighed.

“William Foster. The former stable boy who vanished from St. James months ago. Young. Quiet. Always polite to Beatrice when he came to the back gate. I noticed him, of course, and I merely assumed him to be no more than a passing fancy in the great wilderness of their hardship. It seems Beatrice had been living a different sort of hardship altogether.”

Arabella sank slowly onto the chair by the dressing table, the note still trembling in her hand. Her sister had run—not to a friend’s house, not to a relative, not to safety. She had fled with a man who could not save her from scandal, even if he loved her enough to try. And in doing so, she had handed Arabella the most impossible choice of her life.

At last, Nanny Hargrave moved and drew the note gently from her hand. The old woman did not speak. There was nothing to say.

Outside, the wind began to whip at the panes. Arabella remained perfectly still, listening to it, and thought: What is there to do now?

Chapter 2

Edmund Carrington, Duke of Ashford, had been staring at the same ledger line for so long that the ink seemed to have lost its meaning.

Profit margin. Cargo weight. Tariffs. Port delays.

All tidy things. Honest things. Figures that obeyed the laws of arithmetic and never once pretended to love, as people often did.  

And after all the years he watched his father pretend to love his mother in public and take countless lovers in private, he preferred these figures for that reason.

“You are scowling at it again,” said Geoffrey Hastings, Marquess of Haston, and Edmund’s brother-in-law and close friend. His voice came from the opposite chair, where he had been sprawled with infuriating ease. “The numbers are not going to take offense.”

“They might if you keep calling them ‘it’ as though they are a horse.”

Geoffrey grinned and leaned back, one boot crossed over his knee. “I would rather trust a horse. Horses know where they stand.”

Edmund gave a low, humorless huff and turned another page. “Indian trade committees do not, if the three reports before us are to be believed.”

“Which is precisely why we should stop reading reports and go there ourselves.”

At that, Edmund looked up.

Geoffrey tapped the shipping proposal with a decisive forefinger. “You said you wanted the distraction. Here it is. Go to India. Inspect the routes. Speak to the men on the ground instead of trusting clerks who have never been farther than Dover.”

“And leave London.”

“Yes.”

“And Ashford.”

“Also yes.”

Edmund’s mouth twitched despite himself. “You make exile sound almost restful.”

“I am trying very hard to be persuasive.”

Edmund leaned back and stared at the ceiling for a moment, which was easier than staring at the walls. The walls of his study still carried the invisible weight of the title he had spent most of his life trying not to notice. Duke. Estate. Family expectation. Responsibilities his father had treated as ornaments when they ought to have been obligations.

India. A long sea voyage. Heat. Business. A useful excuse to be unavailable.

The idea was so attractive it was almost indecent.

“How long would we be gone?” he asked.

Geoffrey’s expression sharpened in satisfaction. “Long enough to make a point.”

Edmund arched a brow.

“Long enough,” Geoffrey amended, “to make your aunt stop looking at you as though you are a cracked teacup she means to hide in the cabinet.”

“I do not have an aunt.”

“You know very well who I mean.”

Edmund did know. Mrs. Pembroke, the sixty-year-old woman who had served his family as a housekeeper for decades. After his parents had died, she had adopted the role of stern matron with him. 

It often seemed that he could not have a negative thought without her materializing to voice her opinion about it as if she was a mind reader. Yet he knew that, if she did see him as a cracked teacup as Geoffrey had said, it came from a place of warmth and love that was difficult to see through her tough, critical façade. 

He looked back down at the proposals. “You are proposing we oversee the venture ourselves.”

“I am proposing that we stop pretending this can be done from a desk. The East India route is not some darling embroidery pattern one can settle with a nod and a stamp.”

Edmund’s gaze moved to the window. Gray light lay over the courtyard, and beyond it the London street seemed all coal smoke and motion. “You realize this is the first time in months you have suggested a plan that does not involve a house party, a card table, or a woman I am meant to dance with.”

Geoffrey spread his hands as if innocently surprised. “I am growing into a more serious man.”

“God help us.”

“God will not help us. He will leave us to the market, which is much more efficient.”

Edmund almost smiled.

Almost.

Then the study door opened.

“Efficient?” Vivienne repeated from the threshold. “I should like to see the pair of you attempt efficiency before luncheon. I have sent twice for both of you and received only silence in return.”

Edmund looked up as his sister entered with a tray balanced expertly in one hand and the expression of a woman who had spent the first twenty-five years of her life learning to manage impossible men.

Behind her came a maid with a second tray, and behind the maid, peering around the doorframe with solemn curiosity, was a small brown-haired child in a blue frock.

Edmund went still.

His niece stood on the edge of the room as if uncertain whether she had been invited into a sanctuary or a courtroom. She had Vivienne’s fine mouth and delicate chin. But her eyes were his mother’s—that soft, warm brown that used to look at the world as if it were still capable of being good.

Something in his chest pinched so tightly that he had to look away.

Amelia’s little hand tightened around the doorframe. “Papa?”

Geoffrey stood at once. “Yes, my heart?”

The child went to him immediately, and he lifted her onto his lap. She tucked her face into his shoulder, and he kissed her hair.

Edmund rose before he could think better of it.

Vivienne glanced toward him, already reading more in the movement than he wanted her to. That was the trouble with having a sister. She saw things before he had shaped them into lies.

“I should go,” he said.

Vivienne’s brows rose. “You have been in this room for four hours.”

“Have I?”

“You have.”

He nodded once, too sharply. “Then I should go.”

Geoffrey gave him a puzzled look over Amelia’s head. “Edmund?”

But Edmund had already stepped back, the room suddenly too warm, too bright, too full of that small child’s watchful eyes.

He left before anyone could stop him.

The corridor outside was cooler. Better. He moved to the window at the far end of the hall, one hand braced against the stone sill, and took a slow breath.

Below, servants crossed the courtyard. A groom led out one of the horses. The house moved around him with easy confidence.

He wished he could have that confidence.

“Was that necessary?” Vivienne’s voice came softly behind him.

He did not turn. “Yes.”

“It was not.”

He closed his eyes briefly. “I did not ask for your opinion.”

“No. You never do.” She came to stand beside him, not quite touching, not quite leaving him alone. “You cannot keep flinching every time she speaks.”

“I did not flinch.”

“You did.”

“It is hardly a crime.”

“No,” she said. “But it is exhausting to watch.”

Edmund pressed his lips together and said nothing.

“How long are you going to do this?”

“Do what?”

“Retreat every time anything resembles a feeling.”

“I do not retreat.”

She gave him a look so distinctly sisterly that he almost resented being known so well. “Amelia adores you. She came to the study because she wanted to show you the picture she drew of your horse.”

That landed harder than he expected. He glanced down at her. “She drew a horse?”

“Yes. A very bad horse, but she was proud of it.”

Edmund looked away, because his throat had started to feel tight and he would rather have been stabbed than admit it.

Vivienne exhaled slowly. “You cannot go on avoiding her simply because she reminds you of Mother.”

He flinched despite himself. “Do not.”

“I have to say it.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. Because no one else will.”

He turned toward her. “I remember what Father did. I remember how Mother broke a little more each time Father was seen with another woman. I remember how he laughed in Mother’s face when she asked him to stop.”

Vivienne’s expression did not change, but something in her eyes sharpened. “So do I.”

“Then you know why I do not care to be reminded.”

“Amelia is not Mother or Father. Amelia is not a ghost. She is a child who loves you.”

He looked down at his hands. And I do not trust myself. That was the part he could never say aloud—not to Vivienne, not to anyone. I have seen what men do when they are given the power. I have seen the kind of damage that passes from father to son without either of them choosing it.

“I am aware of my failings.”

“That is not what this is,” Vivienne said. “It is grief. And fear. And anger that has nowhere to go, so it circles back on the people who love you.”

That was uncomfortably precise. He hated it when Vivienne was precise. Especially because she was rarely wrong.

He said nothing.

She touched his sleeve. “And there is another thing.”

He groaned under his breath. “Of course there is.”

“The contract.”

That word soured the air instantly.

Edmund’s jaw tightened. “I do not wish to speak of it.”

“You do not wish to speak of anything that requires you to move in a direction you did not choose.”

“Must you be unfair?”

“I am being practical.” Her voice lowered. “You have until the end of the year.”

He said nothing.

“Edmund. You have been behaving as if the matter might vanish if ignored long enough.”

“It might.”

Vivienne gave him a flat look. “No, it might not. Beatrice Wentworth will marry you before the year ends, or the contract is void. That would put our family under considerable financial strain, and it would destroy what is left of our family name. You know it. And whether you like it or not, your future is tied to hers.”

“I do not care for the sound of that.”

“I imagine not.” She turned to face him fully. “You have no wish to marry.”

“I have no wish to be responsible for anything that can love me back.” He caught himself. “That is not what I meant.”

Vivienne said nothing. Which was somehow worse than if she had agreed.

He looked away. “I have seen what marriage looks like. Our father’s version of it. Grand on paper, poisonous in practice. A man given legal authority over a woman’s entire existence, and what he chose to do with it.”

“You are not our father.”

He let out a slow breath. “You keep saying that.”

“Because I keep having to.”

“Vivienne—”

“Edmund.” She stepped nearer. “Do you truly believe you are capable of what he was?”

He didn’t answer.

“Do you?”

His jaw worked. “I do not know what I am capable of.”

“I do,” she said simply.

He gave a short, unwilling laugh. “Your faith is noted.”

“I have not mentioned faith.” She reached out and took both his hands in hers, turning them palm-up. A gesture she had used since childhood when she wanted him to stop retreating and simply be somewhere. “I am asking you for something. And I want you to hear me properly.”

He stilled.

“Geoffrey and I leave for India in two days.”

He stared at her. “Two days.”

“Yes.”

“You did not mention it would be so soon.”

“I am mentioning it now. We may be gone several years.”

The corridor seemed to lose warmth entirely.

“Several years,” he said carefully.

Vivienne nodded. “Geoffrey cannot ignore the business there forever, and I will not send him alone. Amelia comes with us.” She watched his face. “That is why I need to know what will remain here. I need to leave knowing Ashford is cared for. I need to leave knowing you have not condemned yourself to living like a ghost because Father taught you cruelty.”

“You are asking me to marry a stranger so you can leave for India with a clear conscience.”

“I am asking you,” she said quietly, “as the one thing I have ever truly asked of you—to honor a promise that meant something to the people who made it. Our mother wanted this family settled. She wanted what came after to be different from what came before.”

His voice came out low and rough. “Do not use Mother against me.”

“I am not. I am asking you to remember her.”

He looked at her then. Really looked. At the person who had been his shadow and his confidante and the only one who had ever told him hard truths without wanting something in return.

“I want to leave for India knowing you are not entirely alone,” she said. “And I need one of my brothers to still be alive to write to.”

That silenced him.

He looked at her for a long moment. “You only had to ask,” he said after a moment.

Vivienne’s eyes filled just a little, though she blinked the moisture away at once. “I did.”

He shook his head, a little helplessly. “You manipulative creature.”

“You love me.”

He could not deny it.

She tightened her hold on his hands, and he let her, which was not something he did easily. The contact was warm and familiar and carried the whole weight of their shared history in it.

“I despise the thought of marriage,” he said quietly.

“I know.”

“I am not good at this.”

“No,” she said. “But you are better than you think.”

He looked at her for one more moment, then away toward the courtyard, where the cold gray afternoon had begun to soften toward evening.

“I will honor the contract,” he said. “I will marry Beatrice Wentworth before the year ends.”

Vivienne’s shoulders eased at once.

She stepped forward and embraced him hard. Edmund stiffened at first, as he always did when affection arrived without warning, then slowly brought one arm around her shoulders.

“You dreadful man,” she muttered into his coat. “Do not break my heart by dying alone and stubborn.”

He huffed a breath against her hair. “That seems unnecessarily dramatic.”

“It is entirely necessary.”

When she let go, he felt strangely colder.

Vivienne straightened his collar with brisk fussing. “You will come to dinner.”

“Will I?”

“Yes. And you will eat something.”

He glanced toward the study door where Geoffrey’s voice rose faintly, followed by Amelia’s delighted squeal. His chest tightened again, but this time he did not flee from it.

“I may leave for London tonight,” he said.

Vivienne nodded once. “That would be sensible.”

“Sensible is rarely comfortable.”

“No, but it does often keep one alive.”

He almost smiled.

When he returned to the study, Amelia had climbed into Geoffrey’s lap and was showing him a lopsided drawing of a horse so ill-proportioned it looked as though it had been assembled in a gale. Geoffrey praised it with such obvious sincerity that Edmund had to turn his face toward the window to hide the strange sting behind his eyes.

By nightfall, his trunk was packed.

And before the household had gone fully quiet, Edmund Carrington, Duke of Ashford, climbed into his carriage for London with the uneasy sense that he had agreed not only to a marriage, but to the end of the very careful life he had built to keep himself safe.

He told himself it was only a contract. Only a duty.

He did not entirely believe it.