2. Miss Linton’s Terms #2
“I know what the ton whispers about you. I also know that you cannot be content with your situation. No heir. Living alone in that house. You could have companions if you wished. But it is not the same as a wife.”
Henry opened and closed his fists. “You presume to know me well, Miss Linton.”
“I only know what I hear. I am willing to be corrected.”
He looked at her then. Properly. He had not, since Margaret, looked at any woman with even ordinary attention.
A strand of her hair had escaped its pins, curling against her flushed cheek, the brown reddening in firelight.
Her lips pressed into that gentle, unyielding line.
The neckline of her dress had slipped with wear, exposing the sharp angle of her collarbone and the hollow beneath it. He forced his eyes back to her face.
“Miss Linton, are you saying you are willing to risk your life?”
She regarded him with her chin lifted, attempting bravery and nearly succeeding at it. The fear lived in her throat—in the small, repeated motion of swallowing—rather than in her face. He watched her jaw set against it, and looked away a beat too late.
“I am, Your Grace.”
His finger tapped against his teacup with steady beats.
“You realise you will be expected to accept me into your bed.”
“Yes.”
“From the wedding night. I have no time to waste.”
“I am aware.”
He rose and went to the window. The glass was blurred with rain. Beyond it the drive was a dark line between dark trees and the sky above them had not yet decided whether to lighten.
“What do you know? Exactly.”
She hesitated, biting the inside of her cheek. “The ton calls you the Reaper of Iredell on account of having buried three wives.”
The anger came up fast as the memory of the ton’s condemnation surfaced. He recognised the heat behind his ribs and pressed down before it reached his face. He turned, then: “And you are willing to be the fourth.”
She swallowed, opened her mouth then closed it, then opened it again. “Did you kill them?”
He pinned her with his gaze, unblinking. No one had dared to say those words in his presence. Yet this woman in her worn dress and bare hands, who was negotiating for her own marriage in a freezing room, had said them.
“No.”
“Forgive me, but the rumour is that you drowned your second wife. Poisoned the third. And the first…”
“Continue, Miss Linton.” His voice had gone quiet. She flinched. “I find your accounts informative. Refreshing, even.”
She sat up straighter. “That you shot your first wife. And before you decide to lash out at me, please remember that I have every right to ask the man I might marry whether he is a killer. I can live with a cursed duke, Your Grace. I cannot live with a murderous one.”
A single laugh came out of him. Short, rough, startled out of him before he could catch it. He had not made that sound in front of another person in longer than he could remember. He saw her expression shift, and he turned to the window before she could read whatever had come across his face.
“I need a settlement, Your Grace.” Her voice had changed.
She was on solid ground now. Numbers, terms, survival.
“Upon my mother and my sisters. Of an amount sufficient to lift this house from its present state, to dower my four sisters, and to bring Primrose out properly this Season under a respectable roof.”
He angled his body to meet her eyes. “Name your price, Miss Linton.”
She held his gaze. “Two thousand pounds, Your Grace.”
Reasonable. Perhaps she was not entirely mad.
“Half on the day of the wedding,” he said. “After the consummation. The remainder upon the birth of a living child.”
“No.”
“Miss Linton.”
“All of it. Before the wedding.”
“You ask me to pay in full before I have received anything.”
“I do.”
“And what prevents you from changing your mind at the door of the church?”
“Pay my family the night before the wedding, I shall have no time to run.”
“No. Something tells me you are too clever for me to trust without collateral.”
“Then upon payment, install me in your townhouse.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“That is not an invitation to bed me before the wedding, Your Grace.”
He leaned back in the settee and looked at her. “Rest easy, Miss Linton. No prudent buyer damages goods further between payment and delivery. Whatever is left of your virtue would keep quite safely under my roof.”
Her throat moved. Rosy colour spread from her neck to her face.
“I do not think laying such insults would benefit you in any way, Your Grace.”
“You negotiate as though you have options, Miss Linton. We both know all you have is a price. I have bought horses with more ceremony.”
The teacup met its saucer with a clean, deliberate sound. She was on her feet and across the distance between them before he understood her intention, and then his cheek was burning, and the sound of the slap was still sharp in the room.
He caught her wrist before she could draw it back. His grip was not gentle. He brought her close enough that he could feel the heat of her breath and see the golden specks in her amber eyes. Her throat was near enough to taste. He did not speak until whatever had risen in him had settled.
“You will never strike me again.” His voice was very low, very even. “Do you understand me, Miss Linton?”
“Then you will never again speak to me as though I am for sale,” she gritted through her teeth.
She had not pulled away. She did not drop her gaze.
Her pulse hammered against his fingers, and the fear she would not show on her face lived in her body instead.
He held her wrist a beat longer than necessary, and in that beat, fear moved through him—that this woman would command his respect, and perhaps more.
With that startling knowledge on his mind, he released her wrist and stepped back. The distance between them filled with something he had no word for.
She turned away and stood with her back to him. Her hands were at her side, and he could see that they were shaking. His own hand closed at his side. Guilt. Shame.
When she turned back, her face was composed. “Now, where were we?”
His cheek throbbed and felt hot.
“Do you still wish to be my wife?”
“Yes, Your Grace. I am no fool.”
“No. I imagine not.”
A door slammed somewhere at the back of the house. Both turned toward the sound. Footsteps, rapid and uneven, came through the passage behind the drawing room. A woman’s voice, high and exultant, called out.
“Violet! Violet! I have found it. The Helleborus viridis. I told Bickle it grew along the Regent’s Canal and she would not believe me. I have found it. Three specimens, and a Daphne laureola besides. I am soaked through, but it does not signify.”
The door to the drawing room swung wide.
The woman standing in the doorway was perhaps fifty, though the years sat on her unevenly.
She was barefoot. Her dress was soaked to the hem and above it.
Her hair had come loose from its pins and hung in wet ropes over her shoulders.
In her arms she carried a bundle wrapped in sacking, from which protruded stems and leaves and a quantity of dark wet earth.
Her face was flushed. Her eyes were bright and triumphant.
She stopped when she saw Henry.
Miss Linton was already moving. She took her mother’s hands between her own and rubbed her warmth into them.
“Kit, the blanket from the morning room. And the valerian, the brown bottle, second shelf.” Her eyes returned to her mother who had been staring at him.
“Mama, we have a guest. This is the Duke of Iredell.”
“A duke.”
“Mama. Please sit by the fire and warm up.”
“Do not fuss, Violet. I am perfectly well. I walked from Regent’s Park. The rain is very mild for February.”
“You are barefoot again, Mama.”
“I left my shoes at home. They are not helpful.”
From the corridor, Harris materialised with a blanket and a brown bottle. After Miss Linton tended to her mother, he nudged the baroness toward the staircase.
Miss Linton returned to the drawing room.
“I shall put the funds in a trust in your mother’s name. My solicitor as trustee.”
The fire had gone out. She crossed her arms and slowly rubbed her shoulders.
“Do we have an agreement, Miss Linton?”
“The full sum.”
“Acceptable.”
“Before the wedding.”
“Acceptable, so long as you stay at my townhouse from that same night.”
“Agreed.”
She held out her hand. Henry held her gaze and took it. Her grip was firm, and her hand was cold.
“Miss Linton.”
“Your Grace.”
“You will, I think, find me a less satisfactory husband than you have allowed for.”
“I have allowed for nothing satisfactory, Your Grace. I am not marrying you for satisfaction.”
He had been hated. He had been feared. He had been whispered about in every drawing room from Mayfair to Edinburgh. None of it had cut quite like being accepted, without expectation, by a woman.