Chapter 3
Had someone spiked the punch? There was no way the Duke of FitzOsbern planned to marry her. Why, he hadn’t even clapped eyes on her before this very night!
“I beg your pardon?” she asked, certain she hadn’t heard him correctly.
“You sound upset to be leaving London, and it seems an unfair thing to do to a young lady,” he said. “Removing her from friends simply because she hasn’t yet married.”
Marianne catalogued the teas and musicales that she had attended and found that her overbearing guardians had prevented her from forming such friendships.
“If that’s not a cause for consternation,” he continued, “I’m afraid I have committed an act of indecency and must rectify it. By marrying you.”
“Indecency!” she exclaimed, looking about them as if to discover where it was hiding.
“Yes, madam, permit me to convey my sincerest apologies.”
“Whatever for?”
“I caught a glimpse of your ankle.”
“A glimpse of my ankle. In the ballroom.”
“Indeed. And I did not avert my gaze.”
“And so we must marry.”
“Indeed,” he said gravely, then shifted on his feet. “That is, unless you object.”
Marianne struggled to make sense of this conversation. Did she object? To marrying a handsome duke she’d met only just that evening? For a reason that sounded nonsensical?
“I…”
Her life flashed before her eyes. She’d been offered to the dregs of London’s bachelors, and here was the prize of his generation, suggesting they marry for what could only be considered a spurious reason. What was he thinking?
And then Marianne looked into his dark and warm eyes and saw hope.
She didn’t yet know his motivations for marrying her; if they were nefarious, God save her.
But he was by far the best prospect for marriage she’d ever met.
And the first who looked upon her with genuine interest. More than interest; he’d proposed marriage!
Well, not so much proposed as ordered. That would need remedying.
“Thank you for the dance, Your Grace. Have a wonderful evening,” she said, turning to go. And still, after all that time, he didn’t release her hand.
The duke maneuvered to stand before her. “You have not answered my question.”
She liked this man, but he was certainly high in the instep!
“I did not hear a question,” she replied, trying to convey dignity but sounding sniffy, she feared.
Marianne thought she heard the man mutter something about “will make a grand duchess,” but she couldn’t be sure, as the wind in the trees was enormously noisy and distracting. She waited.
“Miss Marianne Vale.”
“Vyler.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My surname is Vyler.”
“Apologies. Miss Vyler, will you give me the great honor of consenting to become my wife?”
“How can I consent to such a thing when you didn’t even know my surname a moment ago? We hardly know each other.”
“I hardly think it a problem,” he said with a touch of aristocratic hauteur.
“And why is that?”
“Because, should you accept my proposal, I’ll soon know your surname very well indeed.”
He was arrogant but not wrong.
And that is how Miss Marianne Vyler came to accept the Duke of FitzOsbern’s marriage proposal.