Chapter 8 #3
For all that she had tried to steer him toward this very decision, she did not appear pleased by it.
Her jaw tightened as she rose and crossed to the window overlooking Fortune’s Fall.
Alistair let the silence stand. He had learned long ago that pressing an unwilling opponent rarely hastened an agreement.
“I wed one man already and lost every scrap of my own voice for it. Now you would have me wed a second who feels no need to even hear my answer.”
A smile with no warmth in it pulled at his mouth as he weighed the irony of her sudden resistance.
“I hear you. I hear you perfectly well. You wish me to serve as your champion. To take up the reins of this crumbling dukedom and build it back into something worth having. A title that provides for you and the girls both. That grants you genuine authority and strips the old woman’s power away entirely, so that you might remake this household as you see fit.
Tell me how I am to manage that if you will not now cooperate by taking vows with me.
If my protection is what you want, marriage is the only certain path to it. ”
Only the rain against the glass disturbed the silence. Her hand rested on the stone sill, and Alistair watched the tension gather in her shoulders, the slight bow of her head, and held himself back from crossing the room to her. His case was made. What came next was her’s to decide.
When she finally spoke, her voice had steadied, quiet but free of the trembling from before. “You speak of this as though drafting a contract.”
“What would you rather I called it?” He kept his voice even, though her words found a tender place he had not known was there.
“I am a man of commerce, Josephine. Terms and obligations are the language I know best. But I understand loyalty too, and it is loyalty I am offering you now. Without any conditions attached.”
She glanced back at him over her shoulder, her expression searching.
He held it without wavering, letting her see whatever she needed to see there.
If she went looking for falsehood in his face, she would search in vain.
Alistair Fraser-Oxley did not know how to dissemble.
The aristocracy would call it a flaw. He counted it among the few traits he took real pride in.
“And if I say yes, will you truly stand between us and the dowager? See the girls brought properly into society? Give Seraphina and Arabella their real chance? Be … father to—” She gestured toward her belly instead of finishing.
“You have my word on it. And I do not give my word carelessly.”
Something eased behind her eyes. Wariness lingered still, as stubborn as the weather outside, but underneath it he caught the first tentative stir of belief. It was not trust yet, but she appeared willing to consider it.
“Then I accept.” She said it gravely, a tone that acknowledged both what she surrendered and what she stood to gain by it. “I accept, Your Grace.”
She crossed back toward him, close enough now that the chamomile sweetness of her skin reached him. He stared down into those remarkable gray eyes and felt his chest unwind.
“Thank you.” He meant it with a sincerity that caught him unprepared. The negotiation was over, leaving behind a fragile accord that felt far more personal than either of them had intended.
She lifted her face toward his, and for one suspended moment the rain, the crumbling estate, the obligations waiting in London all fell away entirely.
There was only Josephine, carrying a courage that humbled him.
He raised a hand to brush a loose strand of honey-blonde hair back from her temple, his fingertips grazing the silk of her skin, and felt her breath catch at the touch.
I am being selfish.
The thought troubled him not at all. Selflessness had ruled the greater part of his adult life already, and it had left him with a prosperous mill, loyal brothers, and a persistent hollow space no ledger entry could ever fill.
He had walked away from the only woman he had ever courted, back at university, a rector’s daughter with clever eyes and a fondness for Virgil, because his father’s death demanded he come home to the mill and become a man before he had finished being young.
He had never regretted that choice. He had simply never made a second one.
The years since had filled themselves with work and obligation, and a dull loneliness that crept in each night when he came home to a house built for a family he had never once let himself want.
If wanting Josephine made him a selfish man, then selfishness was long overdue.
There remained more to settle between them yet. But for the moment, standing in the gray light of the west library with rain streaking the glass and Josephine watching him with those remarkable eyes, Alistair discovered he was in absolutely no hurry to settle any of it.
What he did not know was how she would receive the rest of what he had to tell her, whether it would bring her pleasure or provoke her anger entirely.