“Have you an understanding with anyone else?”
She was still smiling, her beauty taking on an ethereal quality.
This, too, annoyed him.
“I do not, Your Grace,” Lady Elysande said.
Good enough, he supposed, tamping down his resentment. “Would you object if I spoke to your father?”
The smile deepened, and she was even prettier now. He had the vague impression her previous smiles had been false and that this one alone was real.
“That would be wonderful, Your Grace.”
Wonderfulwas not how he would describe the prospect of such an interview. An ill feeling settled in his stomach. He had to do this, he reminded himself. He had no choice.
“Shall we return to your mother and sister?” he asked, flicking another glance toward the empty fountain, a symbol of why he had proposed marriage to a lady he had only just met.
“Of course,” she obligingly agreed.
But then, everything about Lady Elysande was so bloody obliging. Fortunately, he had no intention of having a real marriage with her. When they were wed, they could happily carry on with their separate lives.
He escorted her back to the golden salon in grim silence.
* * *
The carriage ride backto Talleyrand Park began in silence punctuated by the rumbling of the carriage wheels on the terribly pitted Brinton Manor drive. The thoroughfare, like the rest of the estate, was in a tragic state of decline. But that was why Elysande had come.
Life, like a machine, was composed of parts. The parts needed to be aligned, the outcome not assured until all components functioned together. But even then, nothing was certain. Through a series of trials, errors, prototypes, testing, and trying anew, the ultimate objective was achieved.
That was one of the many life tenets Elysande had learned from her father.
The components in this instance were clear. A ruined manor house. A squandered fortune. A newly inherited duke who was every bit as forbidding, brooding, and ragged about the edges as the rumors had suggested. Not just a London man, but a man who had lived a common life—the utterscandal! Not that Elysande particularly cared about the latter.Éclatdid not concern her.
But her futuredid, and so did her sister’s future. Isolde wanted to marry her beloved, The Honorable Mr. Arthur Penhurst. But to do so, she needed to wait until Elysande was settled.There is a proper order for everything, Papa had told Elysande when she had objected to her parents’ antiquated edict that she must marry as eldest Collingwood daughter before Isolde could. But she was also excellent at solving problems, and she had settled upon the solution for The Marriage Dilemma, as she had come to think of it, when the former Duke of Wycombe had come to call at Talleyrand Park.
Only, the last Duke of Wycombe had possessed the effrontery to die before her problem could be solved, quite disrupting the entire process.
“What did you think of the new duke, Ellie?” Mama asked as the carriage rocked and swayed and bounced over the dreadful road.
An excellent question, and one to be expected from a doting mother nevertheless hoping to see her eldest daughter obtain a coronet.
She pinned a smile to her lips, mostly for Isolde’s sake. “I think he shall make an ideal husband.”
“That is what you said about the last Duke of Wycombe,” Isolde pointed out tartly, a frown marring her otherwise faultless loveliness.
So she had. And the former Wycombe had been as ideal a prospect as the current, albeit in different ways. The last duke had been a dunderhead. The current duke was icy and somber and aloof. Neither had been romantic. Isolde would have been horrified.
But Elysande did not need to be courted and wooed. Her mind was perhaps too much like Papa’s: methodical, devoted to rational thinking and calm reasoning. Of course, Papa had fallen wildly in love with Mama, but Elysande had no doubt she was incapable of similar vulnerability. That was what rendered a union between herself and the Duke of Wycombe—anyDuke of Wycombe—so perfect.
She would be conveniently located near to her family, yet beyond Papa’s well-intentioned shadows, Isolde could finally marry Mr. Penhurst, and the duke would carry on with life as he saw fit, leaving Elysande quite happily alone to work on her projects and spend time where she was happiest—in the country. She was not a London lady, and nor would she ever be.
Elysande shrugged. “One Duke of Wycombe is just as well as another.”
“You do realize the two are not interchangeable, do you not, darling?” Mama fretted.
“Of course I do, but you also know that I was not in love with the last duke,” Elysande reminded gently.
Indeed, the last duke, while kind, had been distressingly obtuse and possessed a penchant for gambling which had led her to ask for specific provisions in the marriage contract offering her protection. They had been clear in their expectations—she required him to leave her alone, and he required her dowry, but a more-than-generous stipend would continue to be hers, unfettered. She was nothing if not practical.
