Neil closed his eyes briefly, forcing the thought away. The memory was perilous. Miss Winter was a woman with secrets, a woman cornered and vulnerable. She needed safety, not desire.
He, of all men, should have known better.
And worse—he had not told her the truth. He had not told her that he knew her real name, nor that Lord Bramwell had been asking questions about her in London. She thought herself hidden. He had allowed that illusion to stand. Was it mercy, or deceit? Was withholding the truth a lie, if it was done to protect someone?
A discreet clearing of the throat broke through his thoughts. Neil looked up. Lord Farendale was staring at him with the resigned determination of a man about to do something unpleasant.
“We shall be departing your house very soon, Your Grace,” he announced, in the solemn tone of a man delivering a verdict. “It seems to me our welcome is… rather worn thin.”
“If it was ever truly extended,” Lady Constance interjected sharply, her gaze flashing up at Neil at last.
Her mother reached out, as if to touch her daughter’s arm and quell her, but Lady Constance was not to be quieted. She rose, every inch of her quivering with affront.
“Why did you invite us here, Your Grace?” she demanded, her voice trembling between fury and humiliation. “Was it your intention to make a spectacle of us? To humiliate me?”
Neil set down his cup with a calmness he did not feel. “I never intended to humiliate you, Lady Constance,” he said, his tone level. “If you feel wronged, I am sorry for it—but you would do better to direct your anger at my aunt. She, if I recall correctly, was the architect of this visit.”
Aunt Harriet went very still, her expression cooling a degree but not breaking. Lady Constance, however, turned away from both of them, her face blotched with colour.
“My father may wish to stay,” she said in a high, tight voice, “but I do not. There is no future for me here.”
Neil studied her face for a long moment. He tried, truly, to summon dislike—to remember every petty slight, every cruelword she had spoken about others when she thought no one was listening. But what rose in him instead was something closer to pity.
She had been raised for this, after all—bred to hunt and be hunted in drawing rooms, taught that her worth began and ended with the ring on her finger. The fault was not entirely hers. How many women of her class had been told the same thing, had been ruined by the same narrow measure of value?
“No,” Neil said quietly, “there isn’t. I am sorry, Lady Constance. I should have been clearer from the start. But the truth is this—we are not suited, and we never will be.”
“This is hardly breakfast conversation,” Lord Farendale sputtered, his face reddening. Neil ignored him, keeping his gaze on the young woman before him. He owed her that much.
“In time,” he continued, “you may look back on this and be glad it ended as it did. You’ll see how ill-matched we were—how wretched we might have made each other. I wish you well, truly. But I cannot marry you, Lady Constance. I am sorry.”
Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. Then, to his surprise, she sank back into her chair with a single, decisive motion.
“Very well,” she said at last. Her voice was composed now, the hysteria gone. “Thank you for your honesty, Your Grace.”
Neil inclined his head once, gravely, then rose. He felt the eyes of everyone in the room following him as he walked the length of the table—the steady creak of the floorboards, the faint clink of porcelain marking his retreat.
At the door, he paused only long enough to address Crawford, who waited, as ever, at silent attention.
“Send for my cousin Simon,” he said. “Tell him I wish to see him in my study at once. The matter is urgent.”
And without another glance behind him, the Duke of Burenwood strode from the room, leaving the heavy silence to settle once more—this time fractured, but oddly clean.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Youkissedher?” Simon echoed, his voice betraying a mixture of incredulity and that particular pleasure men take in scandal that is not their own.
“Don’t look so scandalised,” Neil snarled, pacing up and down. “I invited you here for your advice, not to hear my confession. Not for—” He cut himself off, aware of how suddenly defensive he sounded.
Simon pursed his lips and folded his arms. “Well, it is alittlescandalous—the Duke of Burenwood conducting himself in such a fashion with his governess. I confess, I find it rather rich coming from you, who scolded me for thinking of Jenny. And yet—” He shook his head with mock solemnity, then a hint of real irritation threaded his next words. “And let me say at once: Jenny has no wish to wed a gentleman. Don’t worry on her account.”
Beneath the surface of Simon’s jest, there ran a thin seam of bitterness. Neil, watching his cousin’s face, saw it: an unexpected creasing at the corners of Simon’s mouth, a shadow that hadn’t been there before. Had Simon been nursing some private disappointment? Had he, too, been letting himself hope for something that would never be?
Neil felt a sudden, cold shame. I have neglected him, he admitted inwardly. I have been an inattentive cousin. He stepped closer, trying to find the gentler tone that might unpick the tension. “Has something happened between you and Jenny, Simon?” he prompted, trying to sound gentle.
Simon shook his head quickly, decisively. “No. That is not the point. The point is this: you must understand, as the master of this house and as a duke, you cannot pursue a servant.”
“Maggie is not a mere servant.” Neil interrupted sharply. Simon shot him a look.
