Chapter 3 #3
She glanced at him. “Doing what?”
“That.” He nodded at her general bearing. “All of it. The posture, the expression, the careful distance.” He tilted his head. “We are at a small dinner party, Lady Emily. Not a state occasion.”
“I am perfectly relaxed.”
“You look like you are bracing yourself for inspection.”
She said nothing to that. But then, so gradually he almost missed it, her shoulders dropped, just slightly. The distance between them did not close, but it softened. The look past his shoulder became a look at his shoulder, and then, eventually, a look at his face.
“There,” he said quietly. “Was that so difficult?”
She blinked. Then, to his considerable surprise, the corner of her mouth moved. “Do not make a thing of it, Your Grace,” she said.
He wisely said nothing.
They danced for another measure before he spoke again.
“So,” he said, his voice dropping a register. “What exactly are you doing with my godmother?”
Emily looked at him.
“Lady Julia Birks does not invite young women to intimate dinner parties out of sentiment,” he continued.
“She is fond of you, clearly. But she is also, as we both know, a woman with a purpose.” He held her gaze.
“Have you changed your mind about me, Lady Emily? After all these months of finding me perfectly insufferable?” He paused.
“Are you finally giving in to my charms?”
Emily looked at him for a long, steady moment.
Then she said. “I need a husband.”
Theodore blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“A husband,” she said again. “I need one. You are available. Your godmother has a list.” She met his eyes. “It is not more complicated than that.”
Theodore stared at her. She stared back.
“You are telling me that your interest in me is entirely practical.”
“Yes.”
“No sentiment whatsoever.”
“None.”
“You have not, at any point, reconsidered your assessment of my character?”
“Not materially, no.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Most women...” he said. “...at least pretend.”
“I can pretend,” Emily said. “Do you need me to pretend, Your Grace?”
He said nothing in response. He merely looked at her.
“I need a powerful husband,” she said. “One with a title and influence and the kind of name that opens doors.” She held his gaze. “You happen to qualify.”
“How terribly flattering,” he said.
“I thought you would appreciate the honesty.”
“I appreciate it enormously,” he said. “I am simply not sure I appreciate being described as a qualifying candidate.”
“Would you prefer I had said you were charming?” she asked. “I could, if it would help.”
“Would you mean it?”
They both paused. The briefest, most telling pause.
“You happen to qualify,” she said again, and looked past his shoulder.
“How fortunate for me,” Theodore said. “How fortunate for you, too.” He tilted his head. “There is, however, one small problem.”
Emily looked back at him. “Which is?”
“I’m afraid I must decline the honor.”
Emily's expression did not change. Not immediately. There was a fraction of a second, barely anything at all, where her face froze.
“I beg your pardon?” she said.
“I reject your application,” he said. “Kindly, of course. You are a perfectly lovely woman, Lady Emily. But I am afraid I am going to have to say no.”
She stared at him. “You cannot reject me.”
“I just did.”
“I have not formally applied for anything.”
“You said you needed a powerful husband with a title and influence and a name that opens doors,” Theodore said. “That I happen to qualify. That is an application. I am rejecting it.”
Emily's chin lifted. Just barely. “That,” she said. “Is absurd.”
“Is it?”
“I would be the perfect wife,” she said. The composure was still there, but it had acquired an edge now. “You do understand that. Last season, I was the most sought-after bride in London. I had more offers than I could reasonably manage. Titled men, wealthy men —”
“I do not doubt it,” Theodore said.
“Then what exactly is your objection?”
“My objection,” he said pleasantly. “Is that you just told me, while we were dancing, that you feel nothing for me, have reconsidered nothing about me, and require me primarily as a door that opens.” He smiled.
“Call me particular, but I find I would like slightly more than that from the woman I marry.”
“You do not even want to get married,” Emily said. “Everyone knows that.”
“Everyone is occasionally wrong.”
“You have not courted a single woman with serious intention in three Seasons.”
“I have been waiting for the right candidate,” he said serenely.
Emily looked at him. “You are being deliberately difficult.”
“I am being perfectly reasonable.”
“You are being —” She stopped. Collected herself. “One would say that I am accomplished, I have good manners, and I come from a good family. I am exactly what a man in society requires in a wife.”
“You are,” Theodore agreed.
“Then —”
“You would also,” he said. “Make me absolutely miserable within a fortnight.”
Emily opened her mouth. Closed it, then opened it again. “You are being absurd.”
“I am being honest,” he said. “You find me unserious. I find you exhausting. We would be at each other within the week.”
“I do not find you —” She stopped. “That is beside the point.”
“Is it?”
“The point...” Emily said, with great precision. “...is that I would make a brilliant duchess. That is the point.”
Theodore looked at her. Really looked at her, the way he had been doing all evening without meaning to.
He felt the thing he had been feeling since she stepped into his path earlier and told him not to ruin this for her.
There was something underneath all of this. Something she was holding carefully.
“Why did you come to me?” he said. His voice was different now.
Quieter. “Truly. Maybe I will consider it if you tell me. Of all the names in London, all the titles, all the qualifying candidates. You said it yourself, you would have no problem finding a good match. A love match.” His eyes held hers. “Why this list? Why now?”
Something flickered across her face. “I told you. I am in a hurry to get married.”
“You are hiding something.”
“I am doing no such thing.”
“Lady Emily.”
“I am simply in a position where marrying sooner rather than later would be advisable. That is all.”
He watched her. She looked back at him, and he thought in that moment that she would have made an extraordinary card player.
“All right,” he said. “Convince me then.”
She blinked. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace?”
“You say you would make an exceptional duchess.” He lifted a shoulder. “Convince me.”
Emily straightened, which he would not have thought possible given that she was already perfectly straight, and spoke. “I speak three languages.”
“Boring,” Theodore said.
Her eyes narrowed. “Boring?”
“Half the women on Lady Birks’ list speak at least two languages. There’s one who speaks four. Try again.”
Emily paused for a moment, thinking. “I am an accomplished pianist. I have been told my playing is —”
“Boring.”
“I have not finished.”
“You were going to say exceptional or something adjacent to it,” he said. “Every accomplished young woman in London plays the pianoforte exceptionally. It is practically a requirement of the Season. Next.”
Emily looked at him with an expression that was working very hard to remain neutral. “I am very good with accounts. Ledgers, staff arrangements...”
“Other ladies can do that too,” Theodore said. “In fact, most duchesses have an entire staff to do it for them. That is rather the point of being a duchess.”
“I am patient,” she said, and the slight edge in her voice suggested she was drawing on that particular quality at this very moment.
“I would not call that a good thing,” Theodore said. “Patient women tend to store things up. It comes out eventually. Usually at the worst possible moment.”
Emily glared at him. “You are the most infuriating man I have ever met.”
“Now that...” Theodore said. “...is not boring.”
She made a sound that was not quite a word.
Her composure, that magnificent, impenetrable composure of hers, had developed several small but visible cracks, and he could see her working to seal each one as it appeared, which was, he thought privately, one of the most interesting things he had ever watched anyone do at a dinner party.
“I am loyal,” she said, through her teeth.
“Boring.”
“I am discreet.”
“Boring.”
“I am —”
“Lady Emily.” His voice gentled, just slightly.
“I do not doubt that you are every single thing you are listing. Truly. You are accomplished and capable and by every measurable standard precisely what a duke should want in a wife.” He held her gaze.
“But you are also standing here on a dance floor telling me about yourself like you are reading from a book, and while I do not claim that I know you, I am certain that this is not the way you wish to be married. You wanted a love match, if I recall correctly. Like Alistair.” He paused.
“So I will ask you again. Why did you really come here?”
Emily swallowed. She held his gaze for precisely two seconds, and then she stopped dancing, slipped her hand from his grip, and turned to walk away.
In the middle of the dance floor.
His hand found her waist before he had consciously decided to move.
It was smooth enough, a natural continuation of the dance to anyone watching, just a gentleman guiding his partner through the turn, nothing more.
But his grip was firm, and she was drawn back to him in one swift move, and for a moment they were closer than they had been all evening, closer than was strictly necessary.
Emily gasped, the sound lost in the swell of the violins. Caught off balance, she instinctively slammed her palms against his chest to steady herself. Her fingers curled into the fine black wool of his evening coat. For a heartbeat, a single, suspended second, neither of them breathed.
He felt the warmth of it through his coat. The slight pressure of her fingers, there and deliberate and then gone, as she removed her hand, pretending something had not just happened.
He said nothing about it.
“That...” he spoke first instead, quietly, his eyes on hers. “...would have been extraordinarily rude.”
“I was warm,” she said. “I needed air.”
“You were three steps from causing a scene.”
“I was not.”
“Tell me what you are hiding, Emily.”
She looked at him for a long moment, and he waited with a patience he did not usually possess, because something told him that whatever was coming was worth the wait.
“I have a child,” she said. Quietly. Just for him to hear.
Theodore went still.
She did not elaborate. She did not explain, soften, or surround it with detail. She simply let it sit there between them and held his gaze, waiting to see what he did with it.
He watched the careful blankness of her expression, the way she had locked every door and shuttered every window, giving him the bare fact of it and nothing more. Not enough to draw conclusions from. Not enough to answer the obvious question that was already forming in his mind.
She had done that deliberately. He was certain of it.
He felt the corner of his mouth move.
A child. Emily Pierce, the Diamond of the First Water, the most composed and correct woman he had encountered in three Seasons, was standing on his godmother's dance floor with a secret she had just placed, very precisely and very carefully, into his hands.
Julia, he thought, had absolutely no idea.
His plan, the one he had constructed on the terrace with such satisfaction, the worst possible candidate, the most catastrophic choice, the name that would make Julia set down her tea and reconsider everything, shifted in his mind. Rearranged itself. Settled into something new.
This, he thought, studying Emily's face, was considerably better.
“Now that,” he said softly. “...Will do.”
Emily frowned. “What do you mean?”
“That is what makes you the perfect candidate.”
She stared at him. “You spent the last ten minutes rejecting me.”
“I have reconsidered.”
The music drew to its close around them, the final notes settling softly over the room, and the dancers slowed and stilled.
Theodore released her waist. He took her hand instead, bowed over it, and pressed his lips to her gloved knuckles with a deliberateness that was a beat slower than the occasion strictly called for.
He straightened. His eyes found hers.
“Dance with me again,” he said.
She looked at him. At his hand, still holding hers. “What?” was all she could say.
“A second dance.” He said. “Dance with me again, Lady Emily.”