Every Woman Avoided the Chair Beside the Feared Duke — Until the Quiet Spinster Sat Down

Chapter 3

“It was difficult not to. And yet you chose the chair.”

“I needed somewhere to sit.”

He turned back to her. “That is your explanation.”

“Were you hoping for something more flattering?”

A small silence opened between them; the fire snapped in it. “Most people,” he said, “find reasons to flatter me.”

“Then you hardly need another.”

His expression stayed severe, but something faint moved through it — a shift of light, nothing more. “You are either unusually honest, Miss Ellery, or unusually careless.”

“Those are not opposites.”

Across the room, Vivienne Prescott laughed at something a gentleman had said, a fraction too brightly, and glanced their way. Rosalind saw her do it. Edmund saw Rosalind see it.

“Miss Prescott has been watching us for three minutes,” he observed.

“Two and a half.”

“You counted?”

“No. But three sounded dramatic.”

The corner of his mouth almost moved. Almost.

“You do not seem eager to impress me,” he said.

“Should I be?”

“I am a duke.”

“I had heard.”

“That usually has an effect.”

Rosalind lowered her cup. “Your title tells me what your father possessed before you. It tells me very little about whether you are pleasant company beside a fire.”

His gaze sharpened. “And what is your verdict?”

“Incomplete evidence.”

He leaned back in his chair and gathered some of the fire’s warmth, and she noticed that he had stopped scanning the room. “Tell me something, Miss Ellery. Why are you unmarried?”

She raised one eyebrow. “You criticized my manners while asking that.”

“I did not criticize your manners.”

“You implied I was careless.”

“I am beginning to suspect calculation.”

“Then your evidence is deteriorating.”

He waited, and something in his patience was more disarming than any charm. She sighed, softly, and told him the plain truth, because the plain truth was cheaper than a performance. “I am unmarried because the men I wished to marry did not wish to marry me, and the men who asked were not men I could imagine listening to over breakfast for forty years.”

He seemed surprised by the simplicity of it. “You refused proposals.”

“Two.”

“Were they unsuitable?”

“Not according to my aunt. According to me, one spoke to servants as though they were furniture, and the other believed women should avoid newspapers because politics damaged the complexion.”

The laugh escaped him before he could catch it, low and brief, and heads turned throughout the room. Rosalind glanced around.

“You frighten them differently now,” she said.

His eyes remained on her. “You really want nothing from me.” The words came quieter than the ones before.

“We have known each other twelve minutes. What could I reasonably want?”

“An introduction. Influence. An invitation to Harnwood Park.” He paused. “Half the room wants something.”

“Then half the room must be exhausted.”

He looked toward Vivienne again, then back. “And you?”

Rosalind considered him honestly. “At present?”

“At present.”

“Another cup of tea.”

He stared at her for a moment. Then he stood, and the room reacted instantly — conversations faltering, fans rising, a footman stepping forward to be useful. The Duke of Harnwood crossed to the tea table himself, poured, and returned carrying a fresh cup.

“Milk,” he said. “No sugar.”

She blinked. “You noticed.”

“Apparently I do that, occasionally.” He set it before her, and their fingers nearly met on the saucer. Neither of them remarked on it.

A woman called his name from across the room. He did not turn.

Instead he asked what she had been reading. Twenty minutes passed. Then forty. Their conversation wandered from books to estate villages to the ridiculous architecture of London fashions, and whether silence between two people could be companionable rather than awkward. Rosalind gradually forgot the eyes fastened on her back, the calculations being redrawn in whispers. Edmund seemed to forget them too, which she found more surprising than anything else he had done.

Near eleven, the drawing room doors opened and a woman came in from the corridor beyond.

She was perhaps thirty-five, dressed in deep blue with the subdued elegance of mourning, and she had Edmund’s gray eyes. His posture changed before he spoke a word.

“Marianne.”

The concern sat underneath the single word like a stone under water. Lady Marianne Vane smiled at her brother, and the smile did not reach her eyes. A gentleman followed close behind her, handsome, smooth, his bow precisely calculated.

“Mr. Crane insisted upon showing me the conservatory,” Marianne said.

“Lady Marianne is too modest.” The gentleman straightened, all pleasant courtesy. “I merely hoped for a private word.”

Rosalind saw Marianne’s fingers tighten around her fan — hard enough that the sticks pressed white against her glove.

Edmund did not see it. He was watching Crane.