A Bride for the Ruthless Duke (Brides of Necessity #1)

CHAPTER ONE

“My sister, Your Grace. I am offering you my sister.”

Theodore Pillard, Duke of Rosanne, did not immediately answer.

He let the words remain where Henry Middleton had placed them, between the polished edge of the desk and the young man’s whitening fingers, and continued trimming the end of his quill as though offers of sisters were made in his library every Tuesday. They were not.

Henry swallowed. “I am aware that it is an irregular beginning.”

“It is several things, Lord Middleton,” Theodore said, setting the small knife beside the inkstand. “Irregular is among the kinder of them.”

“I had meant to approach the matter more delicately.”

“Then you were wise to abandon the attempt. Delicacy rarely survives desperation.”

The young man shifted his weight. He had been left in the hall for an hour and twenty minutes before Theodore admitted him, having been told only that the matter was urgent.

A man who came to a duke’s door with urgency in his mouth ought to learn the price of urgency before he spent the rest of what he had.

Henry’s gaze moved once toward the empty chair across the desk.

Theodore looked at him steadily. “You may stand until I understand whether I am receiving a petition, a confession, or an insult.”

“A petition, Your Grace.” Henry’s answer came too quickly, too smoothly, as if he had polished it in advance and feared that hesitation would show the tarnish underneath. “Though I will own it has the appearance of something less respectable.”

“That is a generous description.”

“I do not ask you to think well of me.”

“How fortunate, since you have made that unnecessary.”

A faint flush rose above Henry’s collar, yet he kept himself upright.

Theodore noted the effort. Four-and-twenty, perhaps, and frightened enough to look younger.

The coat was good and a season old; the boots had been polished by a servant kept well past the point of fair wages.

He had not been drinking, which counted for something, since it meant a sober man had thought about selling his sister long enough to come and do it on purpose.

“I expected,” Theodore said, “that this visit concerned your notes.”

Henry’s expression altered before he could master it.

Theodore leaned back. “You are surprised.”

“I had hoped,” Henry said carefully, “that Your Grace might not know of them in such detail.”

“I hold three of them.”

Henry’s breath caught. “You hold them?”

“Through a wine merchant in the Strand, who takes a small commission and asks no questions. I bought them two months ago.”

“For what purpose?”

“The purpose had not yet presented itself.”

Henry stared at him, and for the first time since entering the room, indignation managed to rise through fear. “You purchased my debts without intending to collect them?”

“I purchased inconvenience, Lord Middleton. It is often undervalued by young men and rarely by anyone older.”

“My father once offended you,” Henry said, with a strained attempt at steadiness. “That is the reason, is it not?”

“Your late father once cast a vote that cost me an afternoon’s irritation.”

“And so you bought my notes.”

“And so I bought your notes.”

Henry’s hand tightened at his side. “That is a cold method of remembering a man.”

“The deceased are beyond being flattered by warmth.”

For a moment Henry looked as if he might answer rashly. He took in Theodore’s face, the desk, the room, and whatever hope had carried him here rearranged itself into caution.

“You may sit,” Theodore said.

Henry obeyed, lowering himself into the chair with the care of a man who had waited long enough to resent the mercy and needed it too badly to refuse. He placed his hat upon his knee, then looked down at it as if it might supply the rest of his courage.

“Say the rest of it,” Theodore said.

Henry’s fingers pressed into the brim. “I have sold what could be sold.”

“Begin with the horses.”

“They are gone.”

“The plate.”

“Gone.”

“The small estate in Kent.”

“Mortgaged past the point where anyone sensible would lend further against it.”

“You have approached family.”

“I have written to cousins,” Henry said, and the words began to run faster now, a current breaking loose after too much restraint.

“I have written to my mother’s people. I have written to men who dined at my father’s table and declared, with wine in their hands, that they regarded him as a brother. All refused me but one.”

“And that one?”

“Sent ten pounds and a sermon.”

Theodore’s mouth barely moved. “A poor bargain. I hope the sermon was brief.”

“It was not.”

“Then you were cheated twice.”

Henry gave a short, startled sound that was almost a laugh and almost shame. He seemed to dislike himself for it at once. “I did not come here to be amusing, Your Grace.”

“You are not in danger of success.”

The color in Henry’s face deepened. “The notes come due in three weeks.”

“I am aware.”

“Beyond the notes, there are other debts.”

“How many?”

“Enough.”

“That is not an answer.”

Henry’s gaze lifted, then dropped again to the hat. “Debts to men who do not write letters when a sum goes unpaid. They call instead, in person, and bring a second man to wait in the street.”

Theodore’s fingers stilled on the arm of his chair.

Henry saw the movement and pressed on, more urgently. “I have nothing left to sell. I have nothing left to borrow against. I have asked where I could ask, swallowed what pride I could swallow, and discovered that pride is a poor meal even when one has chewed it thoroughly.”

“How very poetic.”

“It is not poetry when the butcher will no longer extend credit.”

Theodore studied him for a moment. The boy was afraid, certainly, but there was anger under it, and something fouler than anger. Guilt, perhaps. That was appropriate. A man ought to feel something when he brought his sister to market.

“You have nothing left,” Theodore said.

Henry’s mouth tightened. “Except.”

Theodore allowed the silence to stretch.

Henry inhaled. “She is twenty. She is not promised. She has no fortune, which Your Grace would not require, and no scandal attached to her name, which Your Grace might.”

“Might I?”

“A duke requires many things in a wife, I imagine. Money is not likely to be first among them.”

“Do not imagine my requirements. State what you came to state.”

Henry bowed his head once, accepting the rebuke. “She keeps a house well. She has been keeping mine on nothing for two years.”

“Many women keep houses.”

“Not as she has done.” His voice roughened, and he corrected it with visible effort. “She has managed servants when wages were late, tradesmen when patience was exhausted, and accounts when the numbers had become more wish than arithmetic. She has done it quietly.”

“Quietly is convenient.”

“It is also undeserved,” Henry said, then stopped as if the admission had slipped out before he could restrain it.

That caught Theodore’s attention.

Henry shifted under it. “I only mean that she has not complained.”

“And this recommends her to me?”

“It should recommend her to any man with sense.”

“Sense has very little to do with matrimony.”

“Then perhaps usefulness will serve where sense fails.”

Theodore regarded him across the green leather of the desk.

A living person was being auctioned in careful sentences, and some disciplined chamber of his mind, the place where figures arranged themselves and sentiment was denied admission, had already begun to weigh whether the auction was worth attending, a calculation he disliked and could not stop.

“Is she accomplished?” he asked.

“Enough.”

“That is evasive.”

“She reads well, writes a better letter than I do, understands household accounts, and can speak in company without disgracing herself.”

“A glowing tribute.”

Henry’s jaw tightened. “She is better than I deserve to describe.”

“Most sisters are.”

That struck him. Henry looked down once more, and when he spoke again, his voice had lost some of its rehearsed finish.

“She is not unpleasant to look at.”

Theodore’s brows lifted. “That is the phrase you chose?”

Henry colored. “I am trying not to sound as if I am displaying her in a shop window.”

“You have already brought her to the street.”

The words did their work. Henry closed his eyes briefly, then opened them.

“She possesses a very agreeable countenance, and few gentlemen would fail to acknowledge her charms. She is gentle, steady, and unspoiled by vanity. She has had little enough reason to be vain, given what our circumstances have become.”

“Your tenderness arrives late.”

“I am aware of it.”

The answer was quiet enough to be interesting.

Theodore sat forward, placing both hands flat upon the desk. Henry’s gaze fixed on them, then rose with visible reluctance.

“You will look at me while you answer this,” Theodore said.

Henry did.

“Does she possess any knowledge of what you purpose to do?”

The young man’s face changed. Nothing so useful as collapse or plea, only the small failure of his mouth to form an immediate answer, and the brief, miserable lowering of his lashes before he forced them up again.

“No, Your Grace.”

“She does not know that you are here.”

“No.”

“She does not know that her brother has offered her as a solution to his creditors.”

Henry’s voice thinned. “No, Your Grace.”

Theodore watched him without blinking. “Has she expressed a wish to enter into matrimony?”

Henry answered a shade too late.

It was less than a second, hardly more than the space between a breath drawn and a breath released, yet Theodore saw it.

The boy’s eyes shifted past his left shoulder, toward the window and the grey afternoon beyond it, then returned with the guarded look of a man who had found a truth and chosen to step around it.

“There was someone,” Theodore said.

Henry’s fingers tightened around the brim of his hat. “There was no understanding.”

“That was not my question.”

“Nothing was settled, Your Grace. Nothing was promised on either side.”

“That is not the same as nothing.”

“It came to nothing.”

“Did she think so?”