“You Should Marry My Sister,” the Girl Told the Duke — The Duke Smiled at the Child’s Bold Proposal

Chapter 11

The harvest assembly filled Elmswood’s glass oriel with candlelight.

The room had been built by Adrian’s grandfather for exactly this — a long, high conservatory of a room, glass on three sides, with a stone floor that had been strewn with late jasmine and rushes, and eighty candles in six wall-branches, and the whole of the county’s better families arranged beneath the glass roof in descending order of consequence.

Maren stood near the edge of the room in deep green silk with Nell’s hand in hers.

She had borrowed the gown. That was worth remembering: the drawing mistress standing at a duke’s assembly in a borrowed dress, with a child beside her in a white ribbon and no flowers, because Maren had made very certain that no flowers would be handed to anyone tonight.

Nell had been furious about it for an hour and then had forgiven her, which was the usual duration of Nell’s fury.

Ottilie Vane stood near the musicians, receiving guests as though Elmswood still belonged to her keeping. She was wearing grey, as always, and she had a lavender stem pinned at her shoulder, which Maren looked at once and then did not look at again.

When Adrian entered, the conversation in the room diminished around him.

He was wearing black evening clothes and an expression Maren had seen only once before, on the terrace, in the moment before he had taken the heather out of Nell’s hand. It was the face of a man who had decided what he was prepared to lose.

He crossed the floor. He did not come to her. He took his place at the far end of the room, near the musicians, where the host stood to greet the county, and he stood there with his hands at his sides.

He had told her earlier, in the corridor, one sentence: Whatever happens, do not step forward until I do. If I cannot answer it, then it cannot be answered, and you must let me fail alone.

Maren had agreed to that condition without argument, and had spent the entire afternoon suspecting she had agreed to something she would regret.

The first dance was called.

Ottilie Vane moved to the centre of the floor before the musicians could begin it.

“Your grace,” she said.

Her voice carried under the glass roof with no effort at all.

“This house cannot begin its celebration while scandal remains unanswered.”

Eighty faces turned.

“Miss Thurlow coached her sister to accost you on the terrace. She used a child’s innocence to obtain a false betrothal, and has since directed your household, your tenants, and your purse. She is unfit to remain at Elmswood.”

The silence that followed was the same silence Maren had heard on the terrace four weeks earlier.

This time she did not step forward.

Adrian did.

“The betrothal was false,” he said.

A gasp went round the room like wind through a field, and Ottilie Vane’s face changed — victory slipping into something else, something with an edge of alarm, because this was not the shape she had prepared for.

“The betrothal was false,” Adrian repeated. “Miss Thurlow did not devise it. I did.”