Chapter 12
Stephen pushed the door with a knuckle, and it opened on the first try. He had carried in the Duchess with ease, despite her futile resistance on the way inside.
“Sit,” he said, and pointed at the leather couch angled toward the grate.
“I can sit without orders,” she said, and sat exactly where he’d indicated. “In fact, I would very much prefer it if you could stop ordering me around now.”
Stephen shrugged out of his coat. He looked for a second like he might think better of it; then he crossed the room and swung the coat around her shoulders.
“I have a cloak,” she said.
“You also have sense,” he said. “Use both.”
His voice didn’t match his face. His voice was firm and practical; his face betrayed annoyance at himself for caring.
He moved back to the table and braced his hands on the edge.
“Say it,” she said.
“What?”
“Whatever lecture you carried me here to deliver. If I sit through it, do I earn the right to speak?” she frowned.
“There was no lecture,” he replied in a simple voice.
“You could have left me to learn,” she said. “You have been leaving me to learn all week.”
“That’s different,” he said. “You were not freezing to death on my lawn all week.”
“I was not freezing to death now.”
“You were practicing,” he said dryly.
“You make rudeness sound like concern,” she said.
“It is concern,” he said.
He wasn’t angry because she defied him. He was angry because her fingers were the wrong color, and the cold had gotten past her coat.
She folded the coat tighter around herself and looked into the fire for a beat to decide whether to be moved by that.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll be careful with my hands and my lungs and my head. Now answer me.”
“About what?”
“About this marriage,” she said. “Why you married me when you were so opposed to the idea of marrying anyone.”
“I was opposed to marrying anyone foolishly,” he said.
“You were opposed to marrying me,” she returned, plain. “Then you weren’t. Something happened between those two sentences. Tell me what it was.”
He watched the fire as if it could buy him time.
“You’ll tell me anyway,” she went on. “In some form. I would rather hear it now, while I am warm and cross than later, when I am calm and the words will do more damage.”
“You think very highly of the timing of words,” he murmured.
“I think it matters,” she said.
He rubbed a thumb along the edge of the desk, not quite a fidget. Then he let out the breath he’d been holding and turned to face her fully.
“You spoke to Rondell,” he said. “I rode with him. He was pleased to be riding beside a duke who allegedly shares his tastes. He mistook me for a confessional, though.”
“And he confessed,” she said, “to what exactly?”
“He bragged,” Stephen corrected. “He told me his method. He promises marriage to a girl. He meets her at midnight. They drive north. They stop at the last sensible inn before the border, and he sleeps with her. Then he disappears before dawn.”
Maria’s throat closed on the last sentence.
“He said this to you,” she managed, “as if it were… clever.”
“He explained that no decent girl would confess the truth when she returned home. That she would say they had married and found some unbridgeable difference, because her father’s pride would put a hand over her mouth before she could tell him where she’d been left and how.”
Maria sat very still. Her body remembered cold; it had just begun to forget.
“He picked the girls?” she asked, after a breath.
“He picked girls who did not know enough to be afraid,” Stephen said. “Or girls who were so tired of fear they mistook him for a way out.”
“And you decided… what? That I would have been one of them?”
“I decided you were exactly the kind of woman he would find,” Stephen said, not softening it. “Someone who doesn’t like to bother anyone with what she wants. He would have said the right words and made you feel wise for agreeing to them.”
“I’m not a fool,” she said, because she had to say it at least once for her own sake.
“I know,” he said. “But you hadn’t had time to practice being not a fool in this world yet.”
She almost laughed, because it was such an exact sentence. “And so you…?”
“I told him to be quiet,” Stephen said. “I told him that if he spoke to you again without three people present, I would move the earth under his feet and make it seem like the weather did it.”
“That would be theatrical,” she said.
“I can be,” he said. “Then I rode home, and I went to your brother and I told him we were going to marry.”
“You could have told me first,” she said, the old anger flickering back.
“You had told me you had found your future husband,” he said. “I was not going to argue with you about a man I intended to throw out of the county before supper.”
“I would have liked to be given the courtesy of a conversation.”
“You would have insisted on seeing the best in him,” Stephen said. “And I would have said something unforgivable about your judgment. And then I would have married you anyway. I chose the shorter road with fewer bruises.”
“For whom?” she asked.
“For you,” he said.
“It didn’t feel like it,” she said.
“I am aware.”
Silence again.
“You gave your word,” she said at last.
“To you,” he said. “And to myself. I said if I could not find you a man worth the word husband, I would be that man. I failed at the first task. I am not going to fail at the second.”
“And in the meantime, you thought the kindest thing was to behave as if we lived in opposite ends of a ledger,” she said.
“In the meantime,” he said, “I thought the kindest thing was to leave you enough room to breathe before I took up space in your days.”
She looked down at his coat around her shoulders.
“You took up space in my days by not being in them.”
“I am learning that,” he said, “I am not quick where feelings are concerned, Maria. I am quick with problems. I know how to shovel snow. I do not know how to tidy weather.”
“You could have started with basic weather reports,” she said. “I am cross. I am managing. I am not all right. I would have taken any of those over a schedule.”
He looked at her without flinching.
“I am cross,” he said. “I am managing. I am not all right.”
She blinked, surprised into a laugh that was more breath than sound.
“There. Was it so hard?”
“Yes,” he said honestly. “It offends several rules I have been carrying around.”
“Then put them down,” she said.
“I am putting one or two down,” he said. “At a time, so I can recognize the floor when I see it.”
She pulled the coat tighter and studied him.
“So,” she said, “Mr. Rondell.”
“Yes.”
“If he writes to me,” she said, “I will burn it.”
“If he writes to you,” Stephen said, “you will give it to me and I will burn it.”
“You do not get to manage my correspondence,” she said.
“I do if the letter is a match,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes.
“I prefer you when you speak to me instead of at me.”
“I hear the distinction,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “Now. The money. You made a great show of not caring.”
“I do not care,” he said. “Spend what is needed. I will sign.”
“That is too easy,” she said.
“It is the truth,” he said. “I have more money than is healthy for any man with bad ideas. You have good ones. Spend it.”
She studied him.
“You are not worried, I am doing it to prod you.”
“I was,” he said. “Then I saw your hands.”
She went quiet.
He seemed to read her mind.
“That is my only condition,” he said, softer. “Be careful with your health. The weather is still too cold, and I do not wish for you to get sick. It is not spring yet, and I would rather that you not try to argue with the season with your bones.”
“Are these orders?” she asked, a little bristled.
“They are requests,” he said. “Made in a tone you may mistake for orders because I am bad at sounding gentle when I am worried.”
Maria’s chest did a small, treacherous jump. She covered it with irritation because that had served her well this week. “I will be careful,” she said. “On one condition of my own.”
He lifted a brow. “Name it.”
“You will spend time with me,” she said. “Not by sending a note from the next room but with me.”
He went very still.
“How much time?” he asked cautiously.
She held his gaze.
“An hour.”
“An hour,” he repeated, as if testing the weight.
“Every night,” she said.
“You do not set small terms.”
“I am tired of small,” she said. “I married a duke and got a schedule. I can run a house without seeing the man in it, but I do not want that marriage if a different one is possible.”
“What do you imagine we do for an hour?” he asked, genuinely curious, as if the concept of non-functional time were new.
“Talk,” she said. “Or read in the same room like people who are not strangers. Walk the long gallery. Play chess and let me lose with dignity. Teach me the names of your books and I’ll teach you the names of my shrubs. Anything that happens in the same square of air.”
“And if we quarrel,” he said.
“Then we quarrel,” she said. “In the hour.”
He considered that with seriousness.
“An hour,” he said slowly. “Every night.”
“You may choose the time,” she offered, magnanimously.
He glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Not after eleven,” he said. “I am worse than useless then.”
“Eight?” she suggested.
“I dine at eight when I cannot avoid it,” he said. “Nine.”
“Nine,” she agreed. “Here. Or in my sitting room. Or the library if you want to feel superior.”
“I never feel superior in the library,” he said. “Only repaired.”
“That is almost charming,” she said.
“Strike it from the record,” he said.
She smiled, small and quick. “Nine, then.”
“Tonight?” he asked.
“Tomorrow night,” she said. “You can tell me whatever you like, or fear for your health because of the cold.”
“I do not fear for mine,” he said. “Only for yours.”
She looked at him.
“You’re very direct when you are tired.”
“I am always tired around you,” he said before he could catch it, then amended, “That is not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant,” she said, and did not make sport of it. “Thank you for telling me about Mr. Rondell.”
He stared at her hands again as if convinced that staring could heat them. “You’re warm enough?”
“I will be,” she said.
He looked at the coat around her shoulders and made no move to take it back.
“Keep that.”
She considered him.
“Half and half,” she said.
“That seems fair,” he said. He glanced again at the clock. “You should eat something hot. I’ll get Mrs. Walsh to decide what to feed you.”
“She already decided that,” Maria said. “She has decided many things on my behalf this week.”
“She’s been doing it to me for years,” he said. “I survive.”
“I noticed,” she said. She stood, and he didn’t reach for her.
“At nine,” he said.
“At nine.”
She moved to the door. His coat slipped, and he stepped forward and lifted the collar back over her shoulder. His hands were warm from the fire. She felt the heat through wool and discipline.
“Thank you,” she said, because anything else would be dangerous and dishonorable to the good the moment had done.
He nodded.
“If you go back out, use boards.”
“I’m not going back out,” she said. “Even I can learn in one lesson when the teacher is rude enough.”
“I prefer persuasive,” he said.
“I prefer rude,” she returned, and his mouth twitched.
She left before he could get another word in.