She Climbed Out of a Second-Story Window at Dawn to Escape the Man She Was Being Forced to Marry — But When She Fell Into the Arms of a Feared Duke Who Had Buried His Heart for Twelve Years, Neither Knew That One Desperate Fall Would Change Their Lives Forever

PART 5

Ashworth’s words lodged themselves beneath Turald’s ribs and would not be dislodged. He told himself Ashworth spoke from ignorance — from not having stood in that lane and felt the whole ordered architecture of his careful life shift half a degree the moment Alfreda Trevenian landed in his arms. But some small, disciplined, ledger-keeping part of him, the part that had spent twelve years distrusting every impulse that had not first been tested against cold arithmetic, could not entirely silence the question.

Was this love freely chosen? Or was it merely the relief of a man who had spent so long being needed by an estate that he had mistaken being needed by a woman for something deeper?

He was still turning the question over three days later, unresolved, when his grandmother’s carriage rolled up the drive of Ashford Priory unannounced — four days ahead of any letter warning of her arrival, precisely as the Dowager Duchess of Nethworthy had always preferred to arrive anywhere: swiftly and entirely on her own terms.

“Turald.” She emerged from the carriage in a cloud of black bombazine and formidable perfume, tapping her cane once upon the gravel drive as though summoning the whole estate to order. “I have heard the most extraordinary story from three separate correspondents, each more improbable than the last, concerning a window, a rope of bedsheets, and a young woman of no family whatsoever. I have come to see for myself whether my grandson has finally lost the last of his good sense, or whether there is, buried somewhere in this absurd tale, a woman worth the scandal she has caused you.”

Alfreda arrived at Ashford Priory an hour later in her second-best gown, having received Turald’s hastily written note with considerably more alarm than she allowed to show on her face. She was shown into the drawing room where the Dowager Duchess sat enthroned upon the best chair like a general awaiting a report from the field.

“So,” the Dowager said without preamble, before Alfreda had even completed her curtsy. “You are the young woman who climbed out a window and landed herself a duke.”

“I climbed out a window to escape a suitor I did not want, your grace.” Alfreda rose from her curtsy with a steadiness that Turald, watching from beside the mantel, found himself intensely proud of. “The landing on a duke was entirely unplanned. And I confess I have apologized to him for the inconvenience of it at least three times since, though he assures me he has forgiven the collision.”

“Entirely,” Turald said. “Though my ribs took some days to recover their opinion of the matter.”

The Dowager’s sharp eyes flicked between them, missing nothing — the easy warmth in his voice, the quick unguarded smile Alfreda did not quite manage to suppress. Then she fixed upon the younger woman with renewed severity.

“You have no connections of any consequence. Your father ruined what little fortune your family possessed before you were sixteen. You cannot dance the quadrille without instruction. You have never been presented at court. And you have, by your own admission, spent the better part of a decade mending linens and keeping household accounts rather than acquiring the accomplishments that might recommend you to a man of my grandson’s consequence. Tell me, Miss Trevenian — why in heaven’s name should I not use every influence at my disposal to see this engagement quietly and permanently dissolved?”

The silence that followed was absolute. Turald felt his jaw tighten, felt the old familiar instinct to step forward and end the interrogation. But something in Alfreda’s bearing — the way she drew herself up rather than shrank — made him hold his tongue.

“You should not dissolve it, your grace,” Alfreda said, “because I have not asked to be a duchess. And I have not pretended accomplishments I do not possess. And I have not, at any point since falling into your grandson’s arms, given him a single reason to doubt that I would rather tell him an unwelcome truth than a comfortable lie. I cannot dance the quadrille, it is true. But I can keep an estate’s accounts without a single figure out of place, for I have kept my aunt’s for six years on a budget that would have defeated a lesser bookkeeper twice over. I cannot claim fashionable connections, but I know the name of every tenant on my aunt’s small holding and the health of every child in three cottages, because I have visited them myself rather than sending a servant in my place. I have no fortune to bring to your family, your grace. But I have never in my life taken anything I did not earn, and I do not intend to begin by taking your grandson’s regard under false pretenses. If that is not enough to satisfy you, then I am sorry for it. But I will not pretend to be other than I am merely to win your approval — for I suspect, from everything your grandson has told me of you, that you would think rather less of me if I tried.”

For a long moment, the Dowager said nothing at all. Then, slowly, the corner of her mouth twitched. The same small, reluctant movement Turald recognized from his own face in the mirror.

“Well,” the Dowager said at last. “At least you have not lied to me, which is rather more than I can say for most of the young women who have angled after my grandson these ten years past.”

She tapped her cane once against the floor.

“Sit down, Miss Trevenian. If you are going to marry into this family, you had better learn to take tea with me without flinching. For I intend to visit rather more often than my grandson will find convenient.”