She Was Invited to Tea, Never Imagining It Was a Blind Date With the Duke—Until She Found Three Cups on the Table, His Mother Missing, and the Most Eligible Man in England Waiting for Her Alone

 PART 5

After a dinner at which Arabella had held Theodore’s attention for the better part of half an hour, he found Evelyn alone on the terrace.

“You disappeared.”

“I walked twenty feet.”

“For you, that is apparently enough.”

She looked at him.

“Does Lady Arabella believe there is an understanding between you?”

He was silent. Evelyn waited.

“No.”

“You are certain.”

“I am.”

“Has there ever been one?”

“No.”

She nodded. “That is all I wish to know.”

Theodore stared at her. “That is all.”

“Yes.”

“You are not going to accuse me of encouraging her.”

“Should I?”

“No.”

“Then why would I?”

He moved closer. “Because you have seen us together.”

“I have also seen you help Mrs. Witcomb into a carriage. I did not assume you intended to marry her.”

“She is seventy-three.”

“Then I suppose Lady Arabella has an advantage.”

He laughed despite himself. And then Evelyn’s expression softened.

“I asked because I would rather endure an uncomfortable truth than manufacture a comfortable lie.”

Theodore’s amusement disappeared. He looked at her for a long moment.

“Then I will give you the truth whenever you ask for it.”

“Even when it is uncomfortable.”

“Especially then.”

She held his gaze.

“You are important to me.”

It was the closest either of them had come to an admission.

His voice dropped. “And you to me.”

There were people a few yards away inside the house. Music drifted out through the open doors.

Neither of them moved.

For one dangerous moment Evelyn wondered whether he would kiss her.

Theodore wondered the same.

He did not. And because he did not — because he had respected the fact that they had not yet spoken plainly of what was growing between them — Evelyn trusted him a little more.

That promise on the terrace mattered later, more than either of them understood at the time.

Arabella’s first strategy had failed because she had expected jealousy to accomplish what conversation had prevented.

So she changed her approach.

The opportunity came through Mr. Edmund Carroway — the gentleman who had proposed to Evelyn the previous year. He was wealthy, respectable, and kind enough. Evelyn had simply not loved him. When he proposed, her parents had left the decision entirely to her.

Jonathan had found her in the library afterwards.

“Did you refuse him?”

“Yes.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

He had kissed her forehead. “Then we shall never discuss whether you ought to have accepted.”

That had been the end of it, until Arabella learned of it.

Within a fortnight, a different version began to circulate. Miss Pembroke had rejected a wealthy gentleman because she expected a more advantageous match. And then the Duke of Alderwick had appeared.

The implication required no explanation.

Evelyn first heard it at Lady Somerset’s dinner. Two women stopped speaking when she approached. A third looked at her with exaggerated sweetness.

“I confess, Miss Pembroke, I admire patience in a woman.”

“Do you?”

“To wait so long for precisely the correct opportunity.”

The woman smiled.

Evelyn understood. She could have answered sharply. For once, she did not.

She endured the evening. Then she went home and cried in her mother’s dressing room — not because strangers thought badly of her, but because the lie had taken something she valued and turned it inside out. She had refused Edmund Carroway precisely because she would not marry for safety. Now her refusal was being used as proof that she had been waiting for something richer.

Marianne sat beside her. “Does Theodore know?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then tell him.”

Evelyn looked up. “What if he believes it?”

Her mother’s answer came gently. “Then it is better to discover that now.”

Jonathan was standing in the doorway. Neither woman had heard him come.

He looked at his daughter. “Your mother is right.”

Evelyn wiped her cheek. “You both seem alarmingly calm.”

“I am not calm.” He came into the room. “I am deciding which of my acquaintances I dislike enough to challenge to a duel.”

Marianne looked at him. “You have never fired a pistol in your life.”

“Then imagine how frightened they will be. A man with nothing to lose.”

Evelyn laughed through her tears.

Her father sat down beside her.

“People will say foolish things about you whether you marry a duke, a curate, or no one at all. You cannot spend your life chasing every tongue in England.” He waited. “The question is whether the people who matter know you.”