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 6 

The two women talked for the better part of an hour — of the estate of Alfreda’s aunt, of the tenant families and their troubles, subjects on which Alfreda spoke with an easy, informed compassion that seemed gradually to entirely disarm the Dowager’s formidable reserve. Turald sat by the window and watched, and found himself thinking not for the first time that Ashworth’s warning had been wrong in every particular that mattered. This was not a man mistaking relief for love. This was a man watching the woman he intended to marry win over the most difficult audience in England through nothing but honesty and warmth.

When the Dowager at last rose to be shown to her rooms, she paused at the drawing room door and fixed her grandson with a look that held rather more warmth than her words had allowed all afternoon.

“You have chosen well, Turald. Better than I expected, and rather better, I think, than you yet know.”

Left alone with Alfreda as the last of the afternoon light slanted gold across the drawing room floor, Turald found himself crossing to where she sat, still slightly flushed from the ordeal.

“You were magnificent. I have seen seasoned diplomats fail to hold their ground against my grandmother for half so long.”

“I was terrified,” Alfreda admitted, laughing a little unsteadily. “I thought my knees might give out entirely before I finished my first sentence. But I could not bear to have her think me some scheming creature who had fallen out a window on purpose to catch a title. I would rather she dislike me honestly than approve of me for a lie.”

“She does not dislike you. Quite the opposite, if I know her at all.”

He reached for her hand, the gesture so natural by now that neither of them remarked on it, though he felt, as he always did, the small catch of awareness that passed between them at the contact.

“May I tell you something, Alfreda, that I have not yet found the courage to say plainly?”

“Please.”

“A friend warned me some days past that I might be mistaking relief for love. That a man who has spent his whole life disciplining every feeling in service of duty might easily confuse the two — the first time he permitted himself to feel anything at all.”

He turned her hand over in his, studying the small scar still faintly visible on her palm where the rope of sheets had burned her the morning they met.

“I did not entirely dismiss the warning. I turned it over for three days, honestly examining whether what I felt for you was truly love, or merely the comfort of finally being allowed to want something for myself rather than for the estate.”

“And what did you conclude?”

Her voice had gone soft, careful, as though she were bracing herself for an answer she feared.

“That I have watched you this past hour face down the most formidable woman I know without once compromising who you are. And I did not feel relief while I watched it. I felt pride. And tenderness. And something considerably closer to awe. And none of those, Alfreda, are the feelings of a man merely grateful to have discharged an obligation. Those are the feelings of a man who has fallen in love with his own good fortune, and knows it, and does not intend to waste another day pretending otherwise for fear of what it costs him to say so plainly.”

She looked at him for a long moment, her eyes bright with something that might have been tears if she had let them fall. And then she laughed — soft, unsteady, entirely without artifice.

“I climbed out of a window three weeks ago to escape a marriage I did not want. And I find myself now hoping with my whole heart that this one — which I never sought at all — will never end. I love you too, Turald. I think I have known it since the lane, though I did not dare name it until this very moment.”

He raised her hand to his lips, the touch light, reverent, and felt in the warmth of it the last of his old careful distance dissolve entirely.

It was into this fragile, newly spoken happiness — the first hour either of them had allowed themselves to fully believe in it — that a servant entered with a folded letter bearing a seal Turald did not immediately recognize.

“Your grace,” the footman said, “a message has arrived from Sir Aldus Puit. He begs an urgent interview on a matter he describes as concerning Miss Trevenian’s honor. And he awaits your answer in the hall below.”

Sir Aldus Puit stood in the entrance hall with the particular stiffness of a man who has rehearsed his opening speech and is determined not to be thrown from it. When Turald descended the stairs with Alfreda beside him, Puit’s eyes went first to their joined hands with an expression of such naked calculation that Turald felt his temper fray a degree further.

“I have here a letter, Miss Trevenian, in your own hand — or a hand very like it — in which you accepted my proposal of marriage some six weeks past, before the unfortunate incident in the lane. My solicitor informs me that a written acceptance, however later revoked, may constitute grounds for a breach of promise action.”

Alfreda stared at the letter for a long, disbelieving moment before taking it from his hand. She read it once, then again, her expression shifting from confusion to something harder, more precise.

“This is not my hand, Sir Aldus. It resembles it, I grant you. Someone has taken some care over the loops of the letters. But I have never in my life accepted a proposal of marriage from you, written or otherwise, for the very good reason that you never formally offered me one before that morning at Belcroft.”

She looked up at him, and there was nothing in her face now but cold, clear-eyed contempt.

“I think, sir, you had this written before you ever set foot in my aunt’s breakfast room. As insurance against the possibility that I might refuse you honestly — and you should require some other means of compelling my compliance.”