Chapter 2 #2
“However,” he interjected, his voice quiet enough to make the next words feel dangerous, “I have an urgent need for a duchess. So, I’d like to make a new proposition.”
Nicholas had made the proposal badly.
He knew it the instant Miss Fairbourne stared at him, color high in her cheeks, her honey-brown eyes wide as if he had set a pistol on the table between them.
There ought to have been delicacy. A few civil sentences to soften the blow.
Some gentlemanly preamble about mutual advantage, protection, suitability.
Perhaps he could have approached the topic from a more elegant angle, but there was very little elegant about her, and truth be told, the proposal had been a spur-of-the-moment decision.
She very obviously sought a husband. Alone and unchaperoned, she had no more sense of self-preservation than a lamb strayed from its flock, and every vulture in Mayfair would have her within a fortnight if he let her go off to London.
He would rather not send this slight creature away from the house, knowing she might come to harm.
Yet he could not buy back the gown she wore, either.
Even seeing it on her now came as a fresh jab to his healing heart.
Making the decision to dispose of Grace’s clothes and belongings had been a challenging one, and once he had made it, he could never go back on that decision.
Cut for a taller, slighter woman, it pulled tight where it oughtn’t, the bodice straining over more than the fabric had ever meant to hold.
Sunlight caught the fraying lace at her collar, gold against tired satin.
He dragged his eyes back to her face. Seeing that gown on her, filling it out in ways Grace never had, turned something over hard in his chest.
“Do you… like children?” The question came out rougher than he’d meant it.
She blinked damp lashes as she peered at him. “Children—?”
“—that are not your own,” he quickly put in. “I have a daughter.”
“I… yes.” She cleared her throat, and a flush chased itself down the long line of her throat toward her collarbone.
She was pretty, with auburn hair in tight curls and those dark eyes set in contrast to her oval face.
Very different from Grace’s ethereal spun gold, blue-eyed beauty.
Good. He could not have stomached a wife who reminded him of her over breakfast every morning.
“I have a great fondness for children,” she said, quietly.
“Excellent. If you accept my proposal, you will find me a generous husband. Anything that will add to your happiness, I shall do my utmost to provide. You need not even reside with me after Sophia has come of age and found a household of her own.”
“You… need a nursemaid for your daughter?” she puzzled out slowly, comprehension lighting her eyes.
Her fingers tightened on her lap. She ought to be wearing gloves, but for some reason she wasn’t, and he could see the reddened skin beside her nails where she had evidently chewed.
She brought her bottom lip into her mouth and sucked, hollowing her cheeks as she mused, and he directed his gaze away before he could notice anything else about her.
If it came to be, their marriage would not be a passionate one. They would keep separate beds, separate wings if necessary, and in time, they would part forever.
That was the only way he could survive another marriage—if it was not a true marriage at all.
“I require a maternal figure,” he pressed on carefully. “Someone who can navigate the world and teach Sophia—my daughter—all a girl of her station needs to know, while being a constant in her life when I am not there. I am not... hmph, let’s just say, I make a poor companion for a young girl.”
Miss Fairbourne looked down at her gown, smoothing the skirts with an absent hand.
That yellow truly did nothing for her, and he wanted her free of the gown entirely.
In her damnable shift would’ve been less distracting.
He’d thought selling the dress would be a kind of closure, but instead, it had somehow wound itself back to him, and now it felt like a different sort of torture.
He locked the thought down hard, same as everything else worth feeling these days.
The only room he ever let such things loose was in a grimy, rundown tavern, both fists swinging at a man who wanted his blood nearly as much as he wanted the violence itself.
Grimacing at the reminder, he rolled his shoulder where the bruise he’d endured from the earlier bout had begun to take root.
Her eyes flicked to him there, but the otherwise loquacious chit did not bring it up. Another positive in his books.
“This is… rather unexpected,” she murmured instead, glancing up at him again, then looking back down, teeth finding her lip a third time. “I confess I was not thinking—I never assumed you would… but why me?”
Because she had happened on him when he finally gave the notion of taking a mother for his daughter a thought. Because she came in wearing a dress he recalled vividly marrying Grace in, which naturally made him think of marriage—once he recovered from the shock.
And because she was not someone with whom he fancied he could ever form a romantic attachment, thus making her eminently suitable to be his wife—a mother to Sophia—and nothing more.
“Would you like the romantic lie or the plain truth?”
Puzzled, she said, “Plain?”
“Because you happen to have everything I am looking for,” he said after a moment of consideration.
“You are young, of decent birth, you are not a fortune hunter—plainly not—and you deem the company of a child suitable. I have no more requirements for a wife of mine. The convenience of being in my house, already dressed for the occasion, is of course, a plus.”
“You… you have no familial obligations to weigh?”
“No,” he said bluntly.
“I see.” Her gaze dropped to the raw place beside her thumbnail, then lifted, and for one unguarded second, he let his eyes travel the whole of her, voluptuous bosom to collarbone to the stubborn set of her chin, before he remembered himself.
Her entire body looked tight, as though she was an instant from throwing herself to her feet.
The only thing he did not know was whether she would throw herself at him in gratitude, or if she would throw herself out of the house because he had most certainly overstepped.
“Must I give my answer instantly?” she asked.
That took him back. “No, of course not. You may have time to consider my proposal,” he put in instead. That seemed wholly reasonable under the circumstances. “A week should serve.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t need so long—” she said hurriedly; too fast that a pink blush colored her cheeks at her eagerness, and he thought of her cousin’s house and exactly what pride cost a woman with nowhere else to go.
And yet she still desired time to think his offer through. No, she was most certainly not a fortune-hunter.
“The offer will stand for that long, nevertheless. Not a minute more after midnight Saturday. I look forward to your answer.” He nodded once and rose, ringing the bellpull. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
She opened her mouth, and he had the bizarre thought that she might demand once more that he accept the dress. But, to his relief, she merely said, “No, sir. I think—I have everything I need.”