Chapter Twenty-One
The first half of the ride home had been spent with the blasted argument tumbling over and over in her head as she rewrote it in her mind, searching for ways she might have responded to his accusations with fact rather than feeling.
She prided herself on being faultless, and she’d been anything but.
The more his words circled, the more inertia they gathered, and the more they sounded like truth. She wanted to claw them from her brain.
The decision not to try is your own. If cowardice makes you average, it is on your head, not mine.
He didn’t understand. He couldn’t. He’d never had to work for everything like she’d had to.
He could be mediocre and society would still worship him.
For her, mediocrity might as well be death.
The fear that she might once again become invisible, or be thought of only in concert with failure, would not let go of her.
What terrible twist of fate had led him to the restaurant? What terrible twist of fate had left her there, alone, exposed?
The last half of the ride home had been spent drafting and redrafting a letter to the Captain, so that by the time she slammed the door shut and sank into the sofa without bothering to change out of her dress so that Baskerville’s claws didn’t catch on it, the words were already written; she simply needed to put them on paper.
Dear Captain,
I don’t know what happened tonight. I waited for you at the spot where we said we’d meet. I wore yellow like I said I would, and I sat with a book and a flower, just as promised. But you never arrived.
At first, I thought it was because you were caught in traffic, but as the hour wore on, I realized you simply weren’t coming.
Instead, I was met by an awful, awful man who is single-handedly destroying my life.
The entire time we argued, I wished you were there.
With you beside me, I wouldn’t have gotten so angry.
I wouldn’t have resorted to insults, which are a lazy, cheap way of winning an argument.
If you were with me, I would have felt safe regardless of who sat down at that table.
But I wasn’t safe, and you weren’t there, and I don’t know why.
Was it something in my last letter that made you change your mind? Or did you arrive at the restaurant, see me, and decide to leave? Was I not at all what you expected? How did I fail?
I am not fond of ambiguity. If you have decided that you no longer want to be friends, please let me know and I will stop writing.
If there was another reason for your absence, please tell me, so that I can stop trying to work out where I went wrong.
Regardless, I will always think of you with great affection.
—Booklover
A tear rolled down her cheek, and she tossed the letter aside so that she wouldn’t smudge the ink. She looked at the clock. There was still time to meet Lady Wharton.
It had been irresponsible to choose her own desire instead of the job she’d been hired for.
Not only was she late but she was going to have to admit the truth about why she was there at all.
Lady Wharton had demanded a reason for Eleanor’s absence and had then warned her of this very possibility, but Eleanor had assumed she’d known better.
The Captain’s rejection was clearly the karma Müller wrote of. Eleanor was arrogant and this was her comeuppance. Hearing the dowager duchess say “I told you so” was what she deserved.
She dragged herself away from the writing desk to her closet and shed the yellow silk dress that she would never wear again.
Standing there in her petticoats, she searched for joy in the plethora of color and lace, but there was none to be found.
She could draw no strength from her pretty dresses because they no longer meant anything.
She was not a success. She was not excellent.
She could not pull herself up by the bootstraps as normal.
There was no facing Lady Wharton. There was no facing the music and joy and color of a ball. Not tonight. So she gave in to her cowardice, crawled into her bed, and wallowed.
Peter’s head throbbed. The lack of sleep made his eyes bleary, and there was an inexplicable ache in his chest. The letter he’d received from Eleanor that morning had been shoved into the drawer, unread.
He stalked to the sitting room, prepared to shut down whatever nonsense his sisters had planned.
They would all know Booklover’s identity by now.
It was not possible for Edwina to have kept that information to herself.
What a fool he’d been to allow them into that part of his life.
Now he’d have to explain that the only version of himself that existed was the one they’d always known.
Their clamor silenced as soon as he entered. All three faced him eagerly. “You were gone for a long time, brother,” Winnie said. “Please tell me that you overcame your shock and met with her?”
He didn’t respond, and his youngest sisters misinterpreted his silence, bouncing childishly. Meg was more prudent. She regarded him with apprehension.
“Well?” Jac asked, leaning forward. “What did she say?”
“Was she surprised?”
“Was she happy, or was she mad?”
“Did she swoon when you told her how you felt? Did you kiss her hand? Did you kiss her lips?”
“Winnie!”
“What?” Winnie glared at Jac. “Are you suggesting that he hasn’t fantasized about smooching her for weeks?”
He clasped his hands together, pressing the knuckles against his lips, funneling his frustration and anger back into himself rather than directing it toward them.
“I have not been fantasizing about smooching Miss Eleanor Wright.” His attraction to the blasted woman had been an annoyance, not a fantasy, and now it was a thing of the past.
“But you have been thinking of kissing your mysterious pen pal, who just happens to be Miss Wright.”
A muscle along his jaw twitched. “For heaven’s sake, Edwina. Your imagination has gotten away with you.”
“Oh.” Her face fell, and he cursed himself for taking his ill feeling out on her.
“I apologize. That was uncalled for.”
“It did not go well, then?” Meg asked. Her sympathy snaked painfully around his ribs.
“It went about as well as one can expect when dealing with such a harridan.” They didn’t need to know the details.
What if his sisters also thought he had no empathy?
That he was barely a person? What if he told them what Eleanor had said and they brushed it aside because they could not imagine he had feelings to hurt?
Meg patted the seat beside her. “Brother, come sit.”
“No thank you.”
“Sit.”
Every instinct refused. A month ago, he’d have left the room. Yet he gritted his teeth, plunked himself next to her, and submitted as she stroked his hair. “I do not need tending to.” He hated how his voice sounded strained.
“Of course you don’t,” she replied. “You’re a big tough duke with no feelings to hurt.” But her actions did not match her words. She wrapped an arm around him and nestled her head on his shoulder.
Jac clucked softly, and Winnie gave his hand a squeeze.
They sat like that in awkward silence for a full minute before he could bear it no more. “Are we done?”
“Are you done, brother?” Meg asked.
He took a breath to reset himself, so that he could move past his sisters’ pity and return to the reason he’d braved their company in the first place. “I am done. I have nothing that needs grieving. In fact, I came here with another purpose entirely.”
They looked at one another skeptically, and Jac pursed her lips. “Do tell.”
He reached into his pocket and retrieved the paper he’d folded neatly an hour ago, before he’d worked up the courage to face them. “Here are the qualities I require in a duchess. Since the three of you are more familiar with the ladies out there, I ask that you make a list of suitable brides.”
Meg raised an eyebrow. “You’re entrusting your marriage to us, then?”
Winnie scowled. “What of your agreement to dance with women? You still have two weeks left.”
“I stand by my commitments. I’ll dance with the women you put on that list.”
Jac snorted. “That makes it easy. We’ll put everyone on the list.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. Could they make nothing easy? “I will cross-check your list with the proposals I’ve had from my peers and dance with the overlap.”
Winnie blew a raspberry. “That is no fun at all.”
“Shush, sister,” Meg said, wagging her finger. “Clearly, Peter has put a lot of time and thought into this strategy. No doubt he has been weighing the merits of it for weeks now.”
By the arch of her brow, Peter could tell his sister knew exactly when the idea had come to him—in the middle of the night, while Eleanor’s words rattled through his skull.
But he wasn’t being rash. This was the most sensible thing he’d done in weeks.
His preoccupation with Eleanor—with Booklover, with either of them, with both of them—had been out of character. Look at where it had landed him.
“So, you’ll do it then?” he asked. “Quickly?”
“Give me the list.” Meg scanned it and looked to the ceiling.
Winnie reached across the coffee table for the list and then rolled her eyes. “Brother, you cannot be serious.”
“What does it say?” Jac asked. “How many times do I have to remind you to say things out loud?”
Winnie scowled and cleared her throat. “Peter’s duchess must possess good teeth, clear skin, ample hips, and a healthy countenance.”
Jac slumped like a knitted doll. “It does not say that.”
“It does! Peter, tell her.”
“I would like my children to be robust,” he said. That was perfectly reasonable.
Winnie snorted and turned her attention back to the page. This time, she spoke solemnly. “She must have a low register.” Her solemnity broke. “Brother, what does that even mean?”
“I cannot live with a woman who shrieks.” There was enough of that in his life, thank you very much, though he had enough self-preservation instincts not to say so out loud.
“Her hobbies, should she have them, must be befitting of a duchess—music, watercolors, charitable endeavors.”
Meg cleared her throat, obviously displeased, though Jac brightened. “Oh, Violet Lewis could be a good match. She is doing all that work down in Southwark.”
Winnie shuddered. “I like Violet, but I’m not sure that I could listen to her talk of poverty every day.”
He didn’t know Violet Lewis, but he knew the type of woman his sisters described—virtuous, principled, and with opinions. “No. This woman is to be the Duchess of Strafford. Her charitable endeavors should be genteel—hosting garden parties and the like.”
“Well, that’s dull,” Jac murmured.
“What of humor?” Meg asked, steel in her tone.
“It is unnecessary.”
“Intelligence?”
“No longer desirable. In fact, the more dimwitted, the less trouble she’ll be.”
All three sisters scowled. “What of kindness?” Meg continued.
“Preferable but not essential.”
She snatched the list from Winnie and waved it. “Brother, this is an entire one-hundred-eighty-degree turn from what you wanted a month ago. Your desires can’t possibly have shifted so drastically.”
A month ago, Eleanor and Booklover had been a handful of interesting conversations, and that was all.
“What I wanted was a woman whose company I enjoyed, whose conversation was engaging, and who had ambition that matched mine.” He’d wanted a woman who could heat the space between them.
“What I now realize is that such a woman is also disagreeable, shrewish, and entirely infuriating. I need her out of my life for good.”
Jac crossed her arms. “And you would settle for a wife you barely respect and whose company never gives you joy? That sounds lonely.”
“She must keep my house and bear my children.” That was it. Why did his sisters expect more from his marriage than he did? “I don’t require company. I have the three of you for that.”
That addendum mollified Jac somewhat, though after a moment, she reached for his hand. “We will not be here forever, brother,” she said. “We will all marry, eventually. Even Winnie, Lord help whoever takes her on.”
“Mean!”
“Truth.”
Meg tsked, then returned her focus to him. “Do you have a list of these men who’ve offered up their daughters? It will be easier to whittle down the number of”—she coughed—“eligible candidates from the names you have rather than starting fresh.”
Peter retrieved another page of notes. “Thank you.”
She eyed him warily as she accepted the list. “Don’t thank us, brother. I’m not at all sure we’re doing you a favor.”