“The new Wycombe has yet to ask for my hand,” she could not resist clarifying.
“You said he wishes to speak to your father, however,” Mama pointed out. “The outcome of such a conversation is clear.”
“As long as he agrees to my conditions.” Elysande nodded. “The outcome is what I wish.”
Or rather, the outcome would be what she was forced to accept.
Because while Mama and Papa were quite unlike most London society, and they had allowed Elysande and her siblings to come of age with a complete disregard for propriety, they still expected all their children to marry. It was a curious nod to the rigid constructs of their world that Elysande would never completely understand. And because they did not want the marriage of one sibling to unjustly affect the others, their rule was that the eldest must marry first. Which meant that Elysande must find a husband. Isolde could marry her Mr. Penhurst next. And after, their twin sisters Criseyde and Corliss could marry whomever suited them.
Their brother Viscount Royston, being the only son, did not have to suffer the hierarchy in his marital choices. And thus far, he had shown no sign of wanting to marry anyone. Yes, Tristan was something of a rake and a scoundrel, and were he not such a devoted brother, Elysande may have been tempted to box his ears over his scandals.
Still, his escape from the marital noose was something of a course of contention between Elysande and her brother.
“Izzy is quite right. Your conditions were accepted by the former Wycombe,” mother was pointing out now, “but there is no certainty the present duke shall also agree.”
“If he does not agree, then I will not marry him,” she said with more bravado than she felt.
In truth, the notion that the duke might reject her conditions was an unwelcome source of vexation. If she had to begin the nonsensical process of finding a suitor on her own, she would lose precious time away from her work. Time she could not afford to forfeit, not when she was so near to making her electrical frying pan function properly.
“I do not think you should marry him at all,” Izzy grumbled. “He cannot even carry a proper conversation over tea.”
“He did seem…reticent,” Mama said weakly.
“He seemed like a man unaccustomed to being a duke,” Elysande countered. “He seemed like the sort of man who will not expect me to host lavish affairs for him and order new wall coverings and make certain everyone is seated according to the proper precedence at the dinner table.”
In a word,perfect.
That was what New Wycombe was. A man who was clearly out of his element in the country, wearing the mantle of duke. A man who was likely eager to return to London and leave his estate in the capable hands of his steward. A man who would not demand an heir and a spare or force her to London to twirl about at balls and host teas.
He may have been more intelligent than Old Wycombe—she did not think she was wrong about the gleam of intelligence in his stony stare—but he was perhaps an even better candidate. A man who was amenable to leaving her to do as she wished in the country was the ideal husband indeed.
Oh, yes. The new Duke of Wycombe was, without a doubt, the husband she needed.
Chapter 2
Chief Inspector Hudson Stone had hunted down murderers and thieves. He had ensnared criminals with carefully laid plans. He had interrogated monsters masquerading as men. He had nearly lost his life when a criminal had sunk his blade between his ribs. The scar remained, the skin puckered and shiny, a sign of how close he had come to his own end. On more than one occasion, he had stared into the depths of the devil’s own stare.
But he had never, not once, sat before the father of the woman he intended to marry, a marriage contract before him. The last occasion upon which he had contacted Leydon had been a mere courtesy: a letter. A shot fired before the beginning of this war, as it were.
You are no longer Chief Inspector Stone, whispered an insidious voice.
A voice which had taunted him with increasing fervor as each day passed that he moldered in Buckinghamshire.
“You are certain you wish to discuss the marriage contract now, Wycombe?” the Earl of Leydon asked, interrupting the stilted silence which had fallen.
Wycombe. He still expected to turn and find a stranger behind him, one more deserving of the title. A man who would be pleased to have been made to bear all these bloody responsibilities. There was no one but him in the cavernous chamber, however. He knew to quell the impulse.
“Is there a better time?” he asked the earl.
Possibly, Hudson was breaking another unspoken rule by approaching Lady Elysande’s father with the contract. It would not be the first misstep he had made since reluctantly becoming duke. Nor, he knew, would it be the last. Although he had befriended members of the aristocracy in the past, some through chance and some through his work, he could not claim to understand their myriad edicts.
Nor would he ever.
“Brandy?” Lady Elysande’s father asked instead of answering the question Hudson had posed.
Grimly, Hudson wondered which of them Lord Leydon supposed was more in need of fortification.
He inclined his head. “None for me, thank you.”
