CHAPTER ONE #4
She carried an empty vase against her hip with one hand, as if it were a thing she had carried a thousand times.
She moved toward the back of the house without waste and without hurry.
She did not see him. The light came from a window behind her, giving him the line of her more than the detail, a slight figure in a grey day dress with a darn at the shoulder catching where the new thread sat proud of the old cloth.
Her light brown hair was pinned with a certain charming negligence, tumbling softly at the nape of her neck, the unmistakable mark of a lady who had dressed her own tresses before a single servant was stirring.
Beneath those straying curls, her clear, hazel eyes held a quiet brilliance.
She turned the corner and was gone.
Theodore had observed her for four seconds, and it should not have been enough for anything at all.
She had not spoken to him or looked at him.
She had crossed a passage with an empty vase and the unhurried authority of a woman who had held a household together so long that no one inside still noticed it was being held.
It was irrational to make anything of it, and calling it irrational did nothing to weaken it.
He was not a green boy to be caught by a pretty profile, and beauty had never been an argument that moved him.
A soft voice and a worn grey gown had no business exerting force on a man who had spent his life refusing force from anyone.
And yet he wanted, for one strange moment, to see her face fully. To hear whether her voice changed when it addressed rank. To know whether the gentleness in it would survive surprise.
The footman returned, still holding the card. “Your Grace, I have informed Mrs. Bell. My lord is indeed from home and is not expected soon.”
Theodore said, “Is Miss Middleton within?”
The words were nearly out.
The footman’s eyes lifted.
Theodore stopped.
There it was: carelessness, appetite got up as inquiry.
He had nearly asked to be admitted to the presence of a young woman who knew nothing of the arrangement being made around her, a young woman whose brother had forbidden nothing because Theodore had given him the order himself, a young woman who would know him only by reputation.
And what a reputation it was.
Severe. Cold. Worse than severe, as Henry had been too prudent to say aloud. A duke who had just considered the purchase of her future and had the arrogance to stand in her hall pretending that his curiosity was moral caution.
Anger moved through him, sharp and clean, and it was directed wholly at himself.
“No,” he said.
The footman hesitated. “Your Grace?”
“I shall not wait.”
“Shall I say Your Grace called?”
“You shall say nothing until Lord Middleton returns.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“And when he does, you may inform him that I will write.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Theodore took back nothing of his composure. He inclined his head, turned, and went out into the street. The door closed behind him with the soft completeness of a door recently rehung.
He walked back the way he had come.
The thought would not arrange itself into anything useful, which was unlike his thoughts.
She was young. She moved through her own house like a woman holding something together with both hands, holding it so steadily and for so long that no one inside had noticed it was being held.
Least of all the brother who had come to a stranger’s study that afternoon to sell her.
An hour ago, she had been a name on a report and three lines of fact. Twenty years of age. No fortune. Keeps a house well.
Now she was a person who had crossed a hall carrying an empty vase, ordering the withered flowers thrown out before they could spoil the air for whoever came next. Seeing her had not made the thing easier to do. It had made it worse.
He had known it would, and he had gone to look anyway.
That was the part he would have to live beside.
Back at Grosvenor Square, he gave the footman his coat and hat.
“Will Your Grace require anything further?”
“Brandy.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
In his study, Theodore poured himself a measure before the decanter had properly settled against the tray. He did not want it. He drank it standing.
Then he rang for Pearce.
The secretary entered with quill and pocket-book already in hand. “Your Grace?”
“Draw up a settlement on Miss Middleton.”
Pearce’s quill hovered for the briefest moment before it touched the page. “Miss Middleton.”
“The full sum against the brother’s debts, every note and every private one of them, paid clean and paid at once.”
“At once, Your Grace?”
“Once verified.”
Pearce wrote. “Every debt verified and satisfied.”
“The matrimony at St George’s, within three weeks, by licence. No banns and no fuss made of it.”
“Within three weeks, by licence,” Pearce repeated, writing steadily. “Shall I prepare the usual language regarding the lady’s allowance?”
“No.”
The quill stopped.
Theodore turned from the window. “Mark this part particularly, Pearce. Her allowance comes from my own purse. Not from an estate, not from a trust, not from any settlement that lawyers can argue over.”
“From Your Grace personally.”
“From me,” Theodore said. “So that it answers to no one living and can be taken from her by no one, whatever should one day become of me.”
Pearce wrote it all down without expression, which was why Theodore kept him.
“Anything more, Your Grace?”
“Yes.”
Pearce looked up.
“Fresh flowers in the lady’s rooms at Pillard House.”