Chapter 5
I t did not take long for what happened in the garden to become a story.
Emily sat in the family sitting room at Salbury House with a cup of tea gone cold beside her and the folded scandal sheet lying on the table like something left there to taunt her.
Sunlight filtered in through the windows with a wave of cheerfulness that should feel illegal. It touched the edge of the silver tray and the paper, and Emily felt her stomach turn just at the sight of such brightness.
Dominic, on the other hand, was pacing.
He had been pacing since breakfast was served, and if he crossed the carpet one more time, he would wear a hole into it.
While he muttered to himself most of the time, Emily would hear him whisper Two men once in a while.
She could tell he felt dazed and disappointed and didn’t know how to properly channel both.
Eventually, he stopped pacing and turned to look at her with a kind of furious disbelief that would have been almost funny if she had not been so tired.
“Two men. Two ! Emily! What were you thinking?”
Emily refused to let the disappointment on his face wear her down. “I was thinking very badly, evidently.”
Dominic let out a breath through his nose. “This is not amusing.”
“I did not say it was.”
“No, but you persist in sounding as if the whole thing was one small inconvenience. It is not . The ton will care nothing for what truly happened. They will remember two men in the darkness and your name.”
Frances, seated near the fire with the scandal sheet already read and refolded twice over, spoke before Dominic could continue. “Shouting the point does not improve it.”
“I am not shouting.”
“You are one degree shy of it,” Sybella said from the sofa.
Emily looked at her sister and found her leaning back with one ankle crossed over the other, spectacles low on her nose, an expression on her face that suggested the morning was terrible but not surprising. That alone nearly made Emily laugh.
Dominic rounded on her. “This is exactly the tone that has brought us to ruin.”
Sybella lifted an eyebrow. “My tone was not in the garden.”
“No, but your influence on this house is rarely beneficial.”
Frances sighed. “Dominic.”
He pressed a hand to the back of his neck and turned away again. “It seems I am the only one here trying to be practical about this.”
“So am I,” Frances said. “But that does not require us to forget that Emily did not invite insult.”
Emily said nothing. She understood her brother quite well. She knew Dominic was not inventing the danger. He understood society too well for that. He was right about what people would choose to remember.
However, every sentence still left her feeling as though she had become a difficulty to be managed rather than a person who had been cornered, insulted, and then dragged for it.
Sybella plucked the paper off the table and glanced at it again. Then, to Emily’s surprise and Dominic’s outrage, she gave a short laugh.
Dominic turned back at once. “Have you lost your senses?”
“No,” Sybella said. “I merely find the ton’s moral standards very selective. A young lady is seen in a garden with an unsuitable man, and all of London clutches its pearls. But when a gentleman spends half his youth seeking private waltzes with unsuitable people, everyone calls it adventure .”
Dominic went still, and Emily knew at once why. The line cut too near the fact that her brother survived far worse than what she was being expected to now atone for.
She was following his list at the end of the day.
Frances, on the other hand, closed her eyes briefly, as if choosing not to pursue that particular avenue. “What matters now is that the article exists. We cannot ask that it be unreleased.”
“No,” Dominic said. “But we may still prevent worse.”
Emily looked at him. “And how do you plan to do that, Dominic? You plan to lock me upstairs until the Season ends?”
His jaw tightened. “No. We just need to understand that you are no longer dealing only with your own feelings.”
There it was, what she had been waiting to hear all morning.
Her own feelings seemed to belong to everyone except her. Dominic’s anger was protective; she knew that. Frances’s calm was strategic. Sybella’s wit was a mercy. Still, all of it pressed in on her. All of it framed her as the center of a scandal and therefore a problem.
Emily sat straighter. “I understand perfectly well what has happened.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” Her voice came out sharper than she had intended. “I understand that a man may insult me, corner me, and be punched for it, and by breakfast I am the one being discussed as though I did something unspeakable.”
Frances looked at her then, properly looked at her, and some of the firmness in her face disappeared.
Before she could answer, the butler appeared at the door. “The Duke of Huxley, Your Grace.”
The atmosphere in the room immediately changed, and Emily felt it. Dominic stopped pacing, and Frances lowered her hands to her lap. Sybella, on the other hand, placed the scandal sheet neatly beside her and looked toward the door with far too much interest.
Then, a pair of footsteps grew louder, and soon, he stepped into the room.
He was in a grey waistcoat that complemented his white shirt and grey trousers properly, and still looked like he had the previous night. If anything, he looked even more severe.
He bowed to Frances first, then to the room.
Dominic did not return the courtesy with much warmth. “Unless you came to ask for my sister’s hand in marriage, you should not have come here at all, Duke .”
Emily’s face burned. The memory of the garden had been private until that instant. The Duke, however, did not flinch. His gaze flickered briefly to her, then he spoke.
“I came to speak with Lady Emily first, because this is a matter that concerns her. Afterward, if she wishes it, I will speak with you.”
Dominic’s expression hardened. “You spoke with her unchaperoned and ruined her. I am surprised you know what permission is.”
The Duke’s answer came without heat, which made it cut harder. “Leaving your sister undefended against that hideous man would have actually ruined her.”
A charged silence followed, and Emily felt her face turn red. Dominic, on the other hand, looked ready to continue the fight. But Emily rose before he could.
“We will walk in Mama’s gardens,” she said.
No one stopped her. For some reason, that surprised her less than it should have. Perhaps the tension had grown too far for any softer solution to present itself.
The Duke stepped aside to let her pass. She did not look directly at him until they had left the room, crossed the corridor, and reached the first stretch of the garden path beyond the morning room windows. Only then did the silence between them grow tense.
Emily cleared her throat once and clasped her hands together before her belly. Whatever he had come to say, it would not be light. She could feel the gravity of it in his very stride.
For several steps, neither of them spoke. Even as the gravel shifted softly beneath their feet, conversation did not start.
Eventually, and due to the fact that she could not bear the silence anyway, Emily stopped first.
“I am sorry for Dominic’s behavior.”
He looked at her. “You should not be.”
The answer checked her more effectively than courtesy would have.
“He was rude.”
“He is your brother .” The Duke’s tone remained even. “He had every reason to speak the way he did.”
Emily searched his face. There was no wounded pride in it. Now that surprised her even more.
“You would have done the same?”
“Yes.”
She believed him at once.
There was something almost comforting in how blunt he had been and how he did not pretend that Dominic had forgotten himself, when any brother would have done the same.
For one dangerous instant, the memory of the night before rose between them with a wave of warmth that felt incredibly unnecessary. She still remembered the look in his eyes before her mother broke the moment. Perhaps he had come because he remembered it too.
The Duke spoke before she could do anything foolish with the thought. “Your brother was right, Lady Emily. I have come to ask for your hand.”
The world narrowed to the space between them.
Emily did not answer at once. The words had been plain, almost stark in their simplicity, yet they still felt intense.
A proposal. From him .
She heard her voice come out quieter than she had intended. “Are you sure, Your Grace?”
The question hung there, holding one last opening. She was giving him one last chance to say something about the charged thread she had felt between them since the garden, and not just the duty he had to fulfill.
“I mean to do what is right,” he said. “The scandal has linked your name to mine. Marriage would settle the matter.”
Emily kept very still.
“You would, of course, have every freedom proper to your position. You would be the Duchess of Huxley, mistress of the house, and answerable to no one in the management of your own sphere. We would lead separate lives.”
Her mind caught on the words as if they had been spoken in another language.
“Separate lives?”
“Yes,” he responded, the calm in his voice immensely terrible.
Emily stared at him. “You cannot mean that as you have said it.”
“I mean it exactly as I’ve said it.” His gaze did not waver. “I do not care for a wife, my lady, and I do not plan to care for one.”
The last fragile bit of hope she had left died cleanly. For one second, she could only look at him. He narrowed his eyes at her as well, waiting for her to say something. Then, she laughed, the sound sharp enough to sting.
“How romantic!”
His jaw hardened. “I did not mean for it to be romantic.”
“No,” Emily said. “You have made that very clear.”
He seemed to mistake her upset for misunderstanding, and for some reason, she felt even worse for it.
“This would be an arrangement of mutual benefit. Your reputation would be saved. You would be secure.”
Secure .
She could have screamed at the word.
“A house, a title, and a husband who announces in advance that he has no intention of caring whether I am lonely or not.” She lifted her chin. “You must forgive me if I fail to swoon.”
Something flickered across his face then, something brief and unreadable, but his voice remained controlled.
“I offer honesty.”
“And I imagine you expect me to be grateful?”
“I expect you to be reasonable. This is a solution that helps both of us.”
Emily felt the hurt settle into something sharper and more useful— anger .
She kept her eyes on him, almost like she wanted him to read her lips. “This may sound rather unreasonable to you, Your Grace, but I intend to marry for love and companionship. So you can look for your practical wife elsewhere.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “Your reputation?—”
“Is none of your concern.”
The words came out before he finished. She did not regret them.
His expression changed again by a small degree. He had come prepared to solve a problem. She could tell he had not expected to be refused, and yet that thought gave her no pleasure.
“As you wish,” he said.
That was all.
Emily nodded and held herself still until he turned away and began walking back toward the house. Only then did she let herself breathe properly again. By the time she returned indoors, her heart was beating hard enough to make her feel almost feverish.
Sybella was still waiting in the sitting room, perched near the window with her hands folded in her lap and an expression too composed to be innocent.
“Well?” she prompted.
Emily shut the door behind her. “He asked me to marry him.”
Sybella’s eyebrows rose. “That was swift.”
“Well, he only saw it as damage control, nothing else.” Emily crossed the room and turned back, too agitated to sit. “He said we should lead separate lives . That he does not care for a wife and does not plan to care for one.”
Sybella’s face lost its trace of amusement.
Emily heard her own voice sharpen again. “I would rather endure every whisper in London than spend my life living as an unwanted wife.”
“You refused him.”
“Yes.”
Sybella studied her quietly. “Good.”
Emily looked at her.
“Believe me, that was the best thing you could have done,” Sybella said. “I would not wish something like that upon anyone.”