“Awhat?”
“You lack a spine,” the duke replied stonily as he stalked around the desk. “You’re here to do the thing you think you’re meant to do only because you’re meant to do it, with no regard for Grace’s feelings on the matter. As I’ve said, I have refused better men on her behalf. I’m refusing you, too.”
Henry surged to his feet. “I would like to speak with her first,” he said.
“No.” Just a tight, derisive refusal. That unflinching glare burrowed into Henry’s soul.
“Please,” Henry said. “I have apologies to make. I gave her a mistaken impression, which I would welcome the opportunity to correct.”
“As it was told to me, your exact words were ‘I own up to my mistakes,’” the duke said. “For future reference, Lockhart, when one is tendering a proposal of marriage to a woman, one is best served not to give the impression he does so against his better judgment.”
Henry’s stomach clenched. Slowly he sank back into his chair—like the invertebrate the duke had accused him of being. “I was…overwrought,” he said. “Idowant to marry her. I regretted only that I had made it a necessity.”
“Not a necessity, as it happens, Lockhart,” the duke said lightly, mockingly.
“You must know as well as I do who it is that suffers the judgment of society for an illegitimate child,” Henry said. A man could always walk away, reputation intact. No matter how many bastards he sired, a child born out of wedlock had always been viewed as a moral failing on the woman’s behalf. His mother had been proof enough of that. “I don’t want Grace to suffer that,” he said. “I should not have put her in such a position. Thatwas my mistake.” But not Grace. Never Grace.
“Yes,” the duke said, “it was.”
“So I may see her?”
“No,” the duke scoffed. “You broke her damned heart, you wretched son of a bitch. What, did you think she would blithely give you another go at it?” The duke stopped before him and sneered down into his face. “She’s worth a dozen of you, Lockhart. A hundred. And what’s more, she knows it. She’ll get over you soon enough.”
Overhim? He didn’t want her to beoverhim.
“She had all three of her sisters in stitches evening last when she made it home,” the duke continued. “They were drinking in the library until nearly dawn, concocting new and eloquent appellations for you. I’m particularly fond ofpigeon-livered arse-licker, myself.”
Henry blinked, astounded. “What the devil does that mean?”
“Haven’t the faintest, but it does roll off the tongue. Not one of them is in a fit state for company this morning, needless to say, and I wouldn’t force Grace to see you even if she was. So, Lockhart—kindly get your sorry arse out of my goddamned house.”
Henry rose to his feet, his heart thudding in his chest. Invertebrate, the duke had called him.Spineless. Weak, he supposed, he had meant to imply. Not his own man at all, but one driven by the expectations of others. By the opinions of others more so than his own. And it was true that Grace’s familywas large and intimidating. That probably he’d been judged and found wanting by most of them already.
He’d lived most of his life in fear. So many of his actions had been driven by it. Grace feared nothing; not even the social ruin that would come if she happened to bear an illegitimate child. She didn’t fear what would be said about her, just as she hadn’t feared what had already been said about her. She lived beyond such judgments. Did he have it in him to do the same?
“I’ll call again,” Henry said.
“No, you damned well—”
“I will hear her refusal fromher,” Henry said, and this time his voice carried a weight it had lacked before. “I have given her a mistaken impression of my regard, and she deserves a proper apology for it. And afterward—afterward, she will be within her rights to curse me to perdition, if she so chooses. But that will beherchoice, and I will not allow you to rob her of the satisfaction of it.”
“The satisfaction of it,” the duke repeated, briefly stunned by Henry’s audacity. Almost as if that weak little creature he had dismissed only moments ago had startled him by cobbling together the spine he had thought he lacked.
For a moment they simply stared at one another; a silent battle for dominance. But for once in his life, Henry was not going to bend. Not in this. Notever.
A reluctant laugh seared the air, and the duke shook his head in exasperation. “Get out, Lockhart,” he said. “And it ought to go without saying that if you should breathe a word of this to anyone, there will be nowhere for you to hide, nowhere to run. We have got friends—family, practically—well-versed in the subtle art of making people disappear.”
∞∞∞
“Meow.”
Grace heaved a sigh as she slapped one hand over her aching eyes. “Tansy,” she said as she turned onto her side. “I saidno.”
The cat, undiscouraged, leapt down from the window sill which she had been occupying, sauntered by the couch upon which Grace had dramatically draped herself earlier in the afternoon, and swished her fluffy tail directly in Grace’s face.
“You cannot go to his lordship’s garden today,” Grace said. “I’m afraid we are presently at odds with his lordship, and you must, naturally, be on my side. Here,” she said as she patted the couch. “Come sit with me.”
For once, Tansy responded appropriately to the request and jumped nimbly upon the couch. She padded gingerly along Grace’s side toward her head, at which point she delicately placed her two front paws directly on Grace’s chest, and thrust most of her considerable weight upon them.
