“I understand you are frustrated with my brother,” Lady Deering was saying. “However, he was only acting in your best interest as he was charged, carrying out your father’s wishes. As Greycote Abbey has been sold, and you have been compromised, there is nothing that can be done to change what has been set in motion.”
She moved away from the window at last, her agitation sending her feet flying across the Axminster. “He cannot force me to marry him. I’ll leave Hunt House and absolve him of all duty related to me.”
She opened her wardrobe and began hauling her belongings from it and laying them systematically across the bed. Where were her cases? She’d have to see her books properly packed. Naturally, they would come with her wherever she went.
Lady Deering followed her, placing a staying hand on her arm. “Don’t be foolish, my dear. Where would you go, a young lady alone in the world, with no one to protect you? You haven’t even access to your own funds.”
Blast him! Her chaperone was correct. How neatly and thoroughly Virtue was trapped. Ridgely was her gaoler. She hadn’t enough pin money for rooms of her own; she’d used almost everything he had given her to buy books. And to obtain more money, she would need the duke’s aid. The very man she was intent upon escaping.
She wilted onto the bed, atop her morning gowns and petticoats, and stared at the ceiling with its Roman-inspired plaster medallions. It was stunningly lovely. A regal prison. She hated it.
“You will accustom yourself to the notion of marriage,” Lady Deering suggested with a reassuring tone.
“I won’t,” she said to the ceiling.
The mattress dipped as Lady Deering settled herself primly on the edge. “I do believe he possesses the ability to be a good husband to you. He has been wild, heaven knows, but I’ve never seen him so attentive with another lady before you. When you are in a room, you are all he watches. His reputation is well known, but it isn’t like Ridgely to dally with innocents. He usually prefers widows and unhappy wives.”
Virtue hated the thought of anyone else he had kissed. Anyone else who had received his smiles, his knowing caresses, anyone who had been held in his arms. It made no sense, because she certainly didn’t wish to have any claim upon him herself.
Did she?
No. Of course she didn’t.
Still, however…
“I shouldn’t like to think of anyone else the duke has preferred just now,” she said grimly.
Because hewasa rake. He was the sort of beautiful, charming, devil-may-care scoundrel to whom women flocked. And she had been no different. Wooed by those wicked lips and dark eyes filled with sinful mystery.
“No other will be his duchess,” Lady Deering told her softly. “That right will belong to you alone.”
And she understood then, the magnitude and gravity of what Ridgely’s sister was telling her without directly speaking the words. A chill swept over her as she turned her head to face Lady Deering, whose elegant profile showed no hint of her true emotion. She was so still she might have been a statue, and had Virtue not previously witnessed her shocking display of passion with the guard, she wouldn’t have believed it possible.
“He will take mistresses, you mean,” Virtue said.
“He may,” Lady Deering agreed. “It would be his right.”
Virtue sat up, her stomach feeling as if it had been cinched into a knot. “Did Lord Deering have mistresses?”
Lady Deering flushed. “No, he did not.”
“How would you have felt,” she asked, “if he had taken one?”
“It would have broken my heart,” Lady Deering answered solemnly. “Ours was a love match. But you are not in love with Ridgely, are you, dear?”
Yes.
No.
Oh, she did not know.
“Of course not!” she denied, with perhaps far too much emphasis. “And what would my match to Ridgely be? A pity match?” She hated the thought. “I’ll not do it.”
“Not a pity match, but a match of good sense,” Lady Deering said. “You require a husband. Ridgely must marry eventually anyway. The two of you clearly share some manner of connection, or else you would not have found yourselves in this predicament.”
They had indeed shared a connection. One he had severed the moment he had sold Greycote Abbey without her knowledge or consent. And to think he had dared to reprimand her for trespassing in his chamber. His sins against her were far greater.
“I cannot forgive him for what he has done,” she told Lady Deering. “Nor can I bind myself to him forever. We would never suit.”
