She Fled Her Faithless Suitor Into a Dark Room, Unaware England’s Most Feared Duke Was Hiding There — Before She Even Learned His Name, He Did Something That Left Everyone Speechless.

PART 2

Mr. Aldous Renwick — handsome, smooth, entirely pleased with himself — came through the door already talking, and got three words into don’t be foolish before he saw who stood beside Pride Ambrose at the fire, and the words died in his throat.

“Your Grace,” he stammered. “I beg your pardon. I did not — I was looking for — that is, Miss Ambrose is my — your what?”

“Your what, Mr. Renwick, is it?” said the Duke pleasantly. The pleasantness was the most frightening thing Pride had ever heard.

“We have an understanding,” Renwick managed.

“Do you?” said the Duke. “How curious. Because Miss Ambrose has just been telling me — and she strikes me as a truthful young woman, far more truthful than yourself, on the evidence — that not half an hour ago she found you in the conservatory, on your knees before her cousin, delivering word for word the identical proposal of marriage you delivered to Miss Ambrose herself a fortnight ago. The same speech, twice, to two women, in a fortnight.” He tilted his head. “I confess I am torn, Mr. Renwick, between disgust and a kind of admiration. Disgust for the obvious reasons. Admiration because it takes a truly remarkable poverty of imagination to compose only one proposal speech in an entire lifetime, and then use it as a master key, trying it in every lock in the house.”

“This is — Your Grace, with respect — this is a private matter between Miss Ambrose and myself.”

“It stopped being private,” said the Duke, “the moment you began hunting the young lady through the house, shouting her Christian name in the corridors like a farmer after a strayed heifer. Half the party heard you. It is very nearly a public matter, and it is about to become entirely public” — and indeed Pride heard it too now, footsteps and voices approaching, drawn by Renwick’s shouting — “because I hear a number of your fellow guests coming to investigate the commotion. So let us settle it publicly, since you have made it so. Here is what you will do, Mr. Renwick. You will withdraw your understanding with Miss Ambrose tonight, plainly, before witnesses, in language that leaves no stain whatever upon her. You will say that your affections were engaged elsewhere, that you behaved badly, that the fault was entirely yours, and that Miss Ambrose is blameless and ill-used. You will apologize to her, and then you will go and propose to her cousin properly, and marry her, and be faithful to her for the rest of your natural life. Because if I hear that you have served that young woman as you served this one, I will take a personal interest in your affairs, Mr. Renwick. And you do not want the Duke of Jarnis taking a personal interest in your affairs. Do we understand one another?”

And into that moment — the Duke looming, Renwick cornered, the firelight low — the door Renwick had left ajar swung fully open, and a knot of guests appeared in it, candles held high, Lady Bracewell foremost among them.

And they beheld the tableau: Mr. Renwick, red and stammering. And Miss Pride Ambrose, standing alone in a dark room, with the Duke of Jarnis, the two of them close by the fire, unchaperoned, at night.

There was a collective indrawn breath.

Pride understood, in one sick lurching instant, exactly what it looked like — and exactly what it would mean.