Chapter 5
Chapter Five
“Do not look at me like that, Margaret,” Emmeline sighed.
Margaret didn’t blink, her green eyes tracking every twitch of Emmeline’s jaw. Beside them, the tall grass hissed, whipping against their skirts with a restless, rhythmic snap.
“How else am I to look at you,” Margaret countered, “when you are walking about in yesterday’s disaster with your face composed as though nothing has happened at all?”
Emmeline turned her head to give her friend a weary look, though she lacked the strength for true annoyance. “I am not composed at all.”
Margaret’s brows lifted. “No? Then you hide your distress so well that I should recommend you to the stage.”
That might almost have drawn a smile from her under other circumstances. This morning it only tightened something in her chest.
A day after her canceled wedding, Emmeline had asked Margaret to walk with her because she could not bear another moment indoors. The morning was clear, painfully beautiful in its brightness, and it seemed almost cruel that the world could look so innocent when her own future had become so tangled.
“I do not know what to think,” she said at last, the admission leaving her more quietly than she intended.
Margaret made a small sound and slowed just enough to study her properly.
“You know very well what to think about Foxdale,” Margaret said. “The man is a coward.”
Emmeline let out a low breath. “Perhaps.”
“No perhaps about it. He heard one ugly story, decided it suited his pride to believe the worst, and fled before anyone could place the truth before him. That is cowardice.”
“My concern is not Foxdale’s character.” Emmeline turned her gaze back to the path because she could not bear to meet Margaret’s eyes just then. “It is what becomes of my father now.”
Margaret’s expression softened, though not enough to keep the edge from her voice. “Always your father. Must everything begin and end with what becomes of him?”
Emmeline stopped walking.
Margaret did too at once, her face changing with immediate caution, but Emmeline was not angry. She simply did not have the strength to.
“He is all I have,” she said quietly. “And I am all he has.”
“I know,” Margaret’s mouth softened. “But what have you done for yourself?”
Emmeline looked away. “That is not always possible.”
“Perhaps the Duke of Ironford could change that,” Margaret said, too lightly to be innocent.
Emmeline’s pulse did something unpleasant. “What of him?”
Margaret gave her a flat look. “You know perfectly well what of him.”
Emmeline tried to laugh and failed. “I know very little of him, except that his household ruined my wedding.”
“And that he offered to marry you himself.”
Heat rose with humiliating speed beneath Emmeline’s skin. “That was duty.”
Margaret was quiet for a moment. “And what did it feel like?”
It had felt like being seized by something she had not prepared for, something too large and too forceful to meet with polite emotional distance.
“My lady—Miss Godwin—pardon me.”
A figure came hurrying along the path from the direction of the house, coat tails flapping, boots muddied from speed. One of the footmen.
He bowed a little too quickly when he reached them, breath still uneven. “His lordship asks that you return at once.”
Emmeline’s pulse quickened. “Why?”
The footman straightened as much as his breathlessness allowed. “The Duke of Ironford has arrived, my lady. He seeks to speak with you.”
Margaret’s head turned so quickly that Emmeline almost heard the thought in it.
Emmeline felt the blood drain from her face and then rush back all at once.
He had done what he said. Which meant he had returned with an answer, and she knew what it was. If Foxdale had relented, the Duke of Ironford would not have come himself. He would have sent word.
A small, hard knot formed low in her stomach.
“Thank you,” she said to the footman.
He bowed again and stepped back.
Margaret said nothing until he had gone. Then, softly, “Do you wish me to come?”
Emmeline looked at her. “No. Yes. I do not know.”
Margaret’s mouth curved. “Then I shall come only as far as the parlor, and if you need me to fly at a duke’s face with my bare hands, you need only cough twice.”
Despite everything, the laugh escaped Emmeline this time. “You are absurd.”
“Yes,” Margaret said. “But useful.”
They walked back quickly, neither speaking much.
Emmeline felt every step in her body, the drag of her skirts against her ankles, the quick pulse beating at her throat, the wind cooler now against the damp heat in her palms.
By the time the house came properly into view, she had drawn herself back into composure by sheer force, though the effort of it made her feel brittle.
The butler let them in at once and led them to the parlor.
Her father was already seated, while the Duke of Ironford stood near the hearth.
He wore dark clothes again, his broad frame making the room feel smaller without seeming to move at all. Yet there was fatigue in him now too, a fine strain at the edges that had not been there in full yesterday.
Emmeline stopped just inside the room and curtsied. “Your Grace.”
He bowed in return. “Lady Emmeline.”
The sound of her own name from his lips made something low in her stomach tense.
She turned quickly. “This is Miss Margaret Godwin,” she said, introducing her friend because the manners had to be observed even now. “My dearest friend.”
Margaret curtseyed with perfect grace. “Your Grace.”
The Duke bowed again. “Miss Godwin.”
“I ought not stay,” Margaret said lightly. “Good afternoon. Emmeline.” Her eyes held Emmeline’s for one brief, pointed second. “Send for me later.”
“I shall,” Emmeline said.
Margaret departed, leaving the room quieter than before.
Lord Weston gestured at the chairs at once. “Please. Sit.”
They obeyed, though the Duke seemed built to resist sitting in any room he did not fully command. He took the chair opposite Emmeline with the same grim efficiency he brought to everything else.
Her father rang for tea, more from habit than desire, and once the servants had withdrawn, the room settled into the sort of hush that makes every word seem heavier before it is spoken.
The Duke did not waste time. “I met with Foxdale this morning,” he said. “He is not amenable.”
The phrase was so measured that for a second Emmeline almost wanted to laugh.
Her father made a sound of disappointment so genuine that it would have been touching if it had not made her chest hurt. “I was afraid of that.”
The Duke’s eyes shifted to Emmeline. “Which leaves only one honorable course.”
There it was. She had known it before he spoke, but knowing and hearing were not the same thing.
“I would like to ask for Lady Emmeline’s hand.”
Her father’s face changed so quickly it was almost comical.
His eyes widened. His back straightened.
His mouth did something indecisive between relief and reverence.
For one impossible instant, he looked like a man who had discovered a chest of gold hidden beneath the floorboards and was trying very hard to continue behaving as though he had merely found a dropped glove.
The Duke continued before anyone could drown in the silence.
“I am prepared to settle upon her all the rights and privileges due to a duchess,” he said, his tone turning almost maddeningly precise.
“My London residence, Ironford House, is hers to manage once we are wed, and Ironford Hall in the country as well. My income is more than sufficient for all household needs. I require no dowry.”
Emmeline felt her father go very still beside her. Even she, who had spent the last day trying to think only in practical terms, could not miss the enormity of what the Duke was placing before them with such brutal simplicity.
Lord Weston blinked. “No dowry?”
“No.”
Her father managed, heroically, not to gape, though Emmeline could see the effort of it in the set of his mouth. Had the circumstances been different, she might even have laughed.
“I see,” Lord Weston said, his voice almost touched. “That is… very generous.”
The Duke inclined his head once. “Lady Emmeline would also, of course, assume the position of duchess fully. There would be expectations regarding household management, social appearances, and the care of my son.”
Emmeline’s jaw almost dropped.
“Your son,” she repeated.
“Aaron,” Rowan said. “He is seven.”
Something softened in her immediately despite everything else.
A child. There had been no mention of him during the previous day beyond the brief glimpse at the chapel, but this felt like the best thing out of the deal.
If nothing else, if all romance had been stripped from the arrangement before it had even begun, there would at least be a child to love.
The thought ached.
“I should ask about Lady Juliet,” she said, because if she did not slow the moment, she would be swept under it.
Rowan’s shoulders went subtly rigid. “What of her?”
“If I accept,” Emmeline said carefully, “this situation becomes mine and Papa’s as well. What becomes of your sister matters. To us both.”
He pinned her with that unblinking stare. “My men continue to search. Until she is found, the story will be that illness prevented her wedding. If fortune favors us, society will soon find some fresher scandal to devour.”
Emmeline folded her hands in her lap. “If we marry too quickly, no one will believe the illness. They will simply say she fled and that you are marrying to cover it.”
Her father winced faintly.
The Duke did not. He only seemed to consider it. “Then we will wait.”
“How long?”
“Three weeks,” he said at once. “Long enough for the banns to be read properly.”
The firmness of it unsettled her again. He decided so quickly, without tenderness or any hesitation, that it could leave room for fantasy.
She glanced at her father before speaking again. “And this marriage… would you view it as an alliance in the broader sense?”
The words were chosen carefully, but she saw at once from the change in the Duke’s eyes that he understood exactly what she meant.
“You and your father would be my family,” he said. “I would assist him in every way necessary.”
Her father let out the smallest breath, almost a sound of prayer.
Emmeline’s shoulders eased too, though far more carefully. “I see.”
“And Lady Juliet?” she asked after a moment, because if this was to be her life then she would know the shape of it. “If she is found?”
“She will live with us until she chooses otherwise, or until another match is made,” the Duke said. Then, after the slightest pause, “You will get on with her. She gets on with everyone.”
His offer was so respectable it left no room for complaint, only surrender.
He had behaved with more honor than many men would have shown. He had not hidden from the damage done to her. He had gone after Foxdale. He had returned when that failed. He was offering not only rank but protection, stability, and help for her father without forcing them to beg for it.
And there was Aaron—a child she might perhaps love and guide and comfort in the ways her own mother once had for her.
There was no romance in it. No promise that he would look at her across a room because he could not help himself, though the memory of his gaze yesterday made that thought dangerously unstable.
No promise of tenderness, of affection, of a marriage made warm by choice rather than built from necessity.
But women had lived without those things before. Women had lived well enough with less.
And what right had she, of all people, to refuse a duke offering everything she had once tried to secure through Foxdale, only in stronger hands and upon terms far more honorable?
She lifted her eyes to his.
“Your Grace,” she said, and heard the faint unsteadiness beneath her own calm. “I am grateful for the generosity of your offer, and I understand the honor it represents.”
Her father had gone absolutely still.
Emmeline drew a breath. “I accept.”
Her father let out a sound so close to relieved prayer that it nearly undid her, then at once began speaking his blessing over them both, thanking the Duke in a rush of gratitude that embarrassed and moved her in equal measure.
The Duke only inclined his head, solemn as ever, though something in his face eased by a fraction.
“I will see the matter resolved with full propriety,” he said. “The wedding expenses will be mine.”
Lord Weston straightened. “Now, Your Grace, that is too much—appearances must be observed, and I cannot—”
“I insist.” Rowan’s voice remained calm.
Her father, who had spent years learning the limits of his means, seemed almost relieved to surrender at once. “Then… I thank you.”
“We should go to London soon,” the Duke continued. “Most of my business keeps me there, and it will be easier to manage the social aspect of this matter from the city than from the country. We will announce the engagement there, and the wedding may take place there as well.”
Emmeline nodded. “That seems sensible.”
His eyes shifted to her again. “In three days’ time, if it pleases you, you and your father will dine with me at Ironford House. You should meet Aaron before anything else progresses.”
At that, something like genuine warmth rose in her despite herself. “I should like that very much.”
He gave one short nod, and for some reason, the approval in it touched her more than any easier smile from another man might have done.
Then he rose.
The movement changed the room at once. The audience was ending. The decision had been made. The man she had just agreed to marry rose before her, broad-shouldered and grave, and Emmeline felt the strange certainty that the life awaiting her had just taken visible form.
She stood too.
Her curtsy was proper, her posture as composed as she could make it, yet she felt the strange heaviness of the moment all the same.
“Lady Emmeline.”
“Your Grace.”
He bowed.
Then, before turning away, he looked at her once more.
The look lingered only a moment, no more than a breath, but it held long enough to send that same unexpected shiver through her, the sort that felt less like fear than anticipation of something she had no business anticipating.
Then he was gone.
He was gone, leaving only the fading fresh scent and the heavy silence of a finished deal. Emmeline stood rooted to the floor, her skin still prickling with the ghost of his presence. The room felt strangely empty, and terrifyingly warm.