Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Andrew had expected resistance. He had not, however, expected the particular expression with which Miss Norton received his proposal, if proposal it could be called.
It was not merely astonishment. It was affront, incredulity, and a species of insulted pride so vivid that, had circumstances been less grave, he might almost have admired it.
“Marriage?” she repeated.
The word came from her lips as though it were something both absurd and faintly offensive.
He kept his tone even. “It is the only sensible answer.”
Her color, already heightened by the cold air, deepened at once. “No.”
So immediate a refusal ought not to have irritated him. It did.
“No?” he echoed.
“No,” she repeated, with greater emphasis. “Certainly not.”
The wind moved lightly through the bare branches above them, stirring the edges of her bonnet ribbon and carrying with it the clean damp scent of earth and clipped hedges.
Somewhere behind them a rook called from the far trees.
The house stood at their backs, its tall windows reflecting pale morning light.
Though propriety was technically preserved, Andrew had never in his life felt himself engaged in a more private conflict.
“The damage is already done,” he reminded her. “You may refuse to acknowledge it, but that will not alter the fact.”
Her eyes flashed at him. They were clear, bright and quite indignant. “I do not refuse to acknowledge it. I refuse to surrender my life to it.”
“It is not surrender. It is management.”
She laughed then, though without amusement. “How very like a duke. Turn everything into an arrangement and imagine that settles it.”
Andrew felt his patience strain. “Miss Norton, this will not fade merely because you wish it to.”
“It will,” she replied stubbornly. “All gossip fades. Society finds something new to devour every week.”
“Not when it has been fed this well.”
She went still for half a beat, and he knew she had felt the rebuke.
Her chin lifted. “You are determined to make me regret defending you.”
“My dear lady, at present, I am chiefly determined to prevent you from being ruined by it.”
That checked her for a moment. He saw the slight change in her face, the flicker of uncertainty she would have hated him to notice. But it was gone almost at once.
“My reputation,” she spoke through clenched teeth, “does not require a husband to preserve it.”
“In an ideal world, perhaps not.”
She folded her arms more tightly. “And I suppose in your ideal world, I should thank you for the privilege of being rescued?”
He looked at her and wished, against reason, that she were less lovely when angry. The cold had left a fine brightness in her cheeks. Her mouth, so ready for sharp replies, was set in a line of determined resistance. Her eyes held intelligence enough to provoke and beauty enough to distract.
Standing so near her, he was absurdly conscious of the faint scent of lavender about her gloves, of the quick rise and fall of her breathing, of the way her fingers pressed into the sleeves at her elbows as if to contain all the indignation moving through her.
It was all extremely inconvenient.
“You mistake me,” he told her more curtly than he intended. “I am not offering romance.”
“I am relieved to hear it.”
“I offer a marriage of convenience,” he clarified.
She stared. “That does not improve it.”
“It actually improves everything.”
“For whom?” she pouted.
He was glad to elaborate. “For you, for your family, and for the peace of every person presently forced to speculate upon us.”
Her brows rose. “Us? There is no us, Your Grace.”
“There is now, in the minds of half of London.”
She turned away from him a little, looking out across the damp lawn as if the sight of winter grass might steady her. “I will not marry to correct a lie.”
“And I cannot admire your principle,” he retorted, “when it is so thoroughly impractical.”
At that she turned back, her eyes widened. “Impractical?”
“Yes.”
Her voice sharpened. “You are out of your mind if you believe I shall bind myself for life because society has amused itself for a few days.”
“And you,” he said, feeling his own restraint begin to give way, “are astonishingly stubborn for a woman who has, however unintentionally, made an already intolerable situation worse.”
The words hung between them. The color in her face altered. She did not show retreat, and he had not expected that of her. But what he saw in her eyes was something fiercer and far more dangerous.
“Worse?” she said softly. “I defended you because no one else had the courage to do so.”
He frowned. “You acted without considering the consequences this might have on us both.”
She took a step nearer him then, and the movement was so sudden and so charged that Andrew forgot the rest of his sentence. He could see the quick pulse at the base of her throat.
“And what consequences,” she demanded, “am I meant to have considered? That kindness toward a man is always interpreted as desire? That a woman may not speak without offering herself up for inspection? Those are not my failures, Your Grace.”
No, he thought, but they may yet become your punishment.
The thought came too swiftly and with too much force.
“This is no longer only about you,” he said, forcing calm into his voice.
“I have heard those same words from my father, so I don’t need to hear them again, thank you very much.”
“Your father is right in that at least.” He refused to pull back. “Your name is attached to mine. Your sister’s prospects may be affected. Your family’s standing may suffer. Would you have them bear the cost of your… noble impulse?”
Her expression changed again, and this time he knew he had struck home. She didn’t care about herself or her own reputation, but her sister’s did matter, and it mattered a lot. He saw it in the sudden tension of her mouth.
She recovered quickly. “That depends upon whether your original scandal is false.”
Andrew suspected with valid reason, that at some point, the conversation would be steered in those waters. Still, he said nothing.
She watched him too closely. “Is it?”
“That is not the issue,” he tried to deflect the question, although he knew her to be far too clever for that.
“It is exactly the issue,” she countered. “If I am to be lectured on consequences, I should at least know the truth of what I defended.”
He looked away toward the hedgerow, then back again. He could feel the weight of Mary’s voice as distinctly as if he stood once more in that dim cottage room.
You must protect the child. Let no one know.
The truth hovered at the edge of his restraint, unwelcome and dangerous. To speak of the child was to invite questions he could not answer, to loosen a thread he had sworn would remain tightly held.
And yet, Frances Norton was not the sort to accept silence.
She would question, observe and pursue relentlessly.
And if she did not hear it from him, she would hear it from society, distorted beyond recognition.
That, he thought, would be worse. It would be better to offer a measured truth than a reckless invention.
“I… am the guardian of a child,” he admitted, carefully selecting his words.
Her eyes widened. For a moment, the wind seemed to fall still around them. Even the distant rustle of branches faded beneath the importance of those words.
“So… there is a child?” she gasped.
He inclined his head once.
She stared at him, while her astonishment was plain and unguarded. “Then the story–”
“Is not true as printed,” he was quick to add.
“But there is a child.”
“Yes.”
Her gaze searched his face as if she might extract from it what he refused to say. “Your child?”
“No.”
The answer came sharp enough that she believed it at once. He saw belief and confusion arrive together.
“Then whose child is it?”
He did not reply.
“Your Grace.”
“I cannot say more.”
Her disbelief returned at once, now mixed with frustration. “You ask me to marry you and yet you expect me to accept mysteries in place of explanation?”
She was right, but he knew better than to admit that.
“I expect you to understand that there are matters I will not betray.”
She frowned, and yet, it made her even more lovely. He banished the thought, and focused instead on the tension that grew with each passing moment.
“And I am simply to trust you?” she demanded.
He met her eyes. “Yes.”
She gave a short breath of astonished anger. “How convenient.”
He ought to have resented the mockery. Instead, he found himself absurdly aware again of her nearness, of the brightness in her face, of the intelligence that made every word strike where it would do most damage.
He wanted, very much, either to shake her or to pull her closer, an impulse so irrational that it restored a portion of his self-command through sheer alarm.
“This is not convenience, Miss Norton,” he warned her. “It is necessity.”
“For you, perhaps.”
“For both of us.”
She shook her head at once, though her fingers had tightened upon each other. “No.”
“Think, Miss Norton.”
“I am thinking.”
“Then do so more usefully.”
Her lips parted in outrage. “You are insufferable.”
“And you are impossible.”
The words were spoken too quickly, too near, and for one extraordinary moment neither moved.
The cold air between them felt sharpened.
Andrew could hear her breathing. He could smell the faint freshness of the morning upon her hair.
Her eyes, lifted to his, seemed brighter now not only with anger but with something he had no business noticing.
He stepped back first.
“You need not answer me now,” he forced himself to say, while every syllable was controlled with effort. “But do consider what I have said.”
Her expression had not lost its fire. “I shall consider how best to refuse it.”
He almost smiled despite himself. “Try, if you can, to be serious.”
“I am entirely serious.”
“As am I.” His tone hardened once more. “And I urge you to think quickly. Because whatever hopes you place in the mercy of gossip, I place none. This will worsen. And when it does, sheer sentiment will not protect you.”
She said nothing. The silence stretched. A gust of wind caught at the hem of her pelisse and sent a few loose strands of hair trembling at her temple. She lifted her hand to secure them, and Andrew, against all judgment, followed the movement.
He drew a breath.
“Consider my offer,” he urged again, as he led them back toward the house. “Before it is too late.”