“If only your father will release it.”
“Yes. If only that.”
His admission did nothing to ease the growing tumult in her chest. She didn't want to be his answer. She didn't want him to require nothing more than her name on a form so he could gain his inheritance.
On the other hand, how else could she ever expect to have a family of her own? And she did want one. It was a dream she had kept carefully tucked away with her saved shillings and the whitework she had so painstakingly practiced to include in her trousseau. The trousseau her classmates had all already used while hers languished untouched at the bottom of her trunk.
“What do you expect?” she asked suddenly.
He looked up, startled. “Of what?”
“Marriage. What exactly are you hoping for?” She gave her hand a little wave. “Besides the estate, of course. From me. What do you expect from me?”
She wasn't certain how she expected him to respond. She should have known he'd surprise her. It was he who reached out and curled his fingers around her hand. It was he who stole her breath with just the brush of his skin.
“What doyouwant?” he asked, those soft green eyes intense.
What did shewant??She wanted to remember how to breathe again. She wanted enough space to actually consider what he was asking of her. What he was offering. Shewantedto not be backed into a decision that would change her whole life.
“A voice,” she said, surprised at the admission, not the breathy quality of her own voice.
He stared at her a moment. “A voice?”
Briefly she squeezed her eyes shut. She was about to offer up the desire she'd tucked away even below the dream of a family. She was about to share it with a man she didn't know, not really. Only really being acquainted with him a day, she was entrusting him with the only dream that had never died.
Chapter 9
This wasn'twhat Flint meant to be talking about at all. He was supposed to be talking of her last governess position. The people she'd known, things she might have overheard. Instead he was sitting here waiting for her to tell him a truth he suspected she didn't want to tell and he didn't want to hear. He was rubbing his thumb over her slightly-callused palm that should have been satin soft and somehow was more appealing for not being so, waiting for her to confirm his suspicion that she had been dragged into a conspiracy that wasn't hers.
“A voice?” he prompted, knowing he was heading down the wrong road.
And yet, he wanted to know what that hesitation in her giant brown eyes meant.
As if hearing his thoughts, she looked away to where the barmaid was flirting with one of the old men at the table. It was harmless, sweet even. The barmaid had the old codger blushing with her bright, easy smile. It was the kind of familiar interplay that happened between people who knew each other well. Who knew where they belonged in the village, in the nation, in the world.
Flint lived in just that kind of world. Even if he didn't know the people with whom he interacted personally, he knew, and more importantly they knew, exactly where he belonged in the hierarchy. He was a duke's son and accorded appropriate respect. He was a brother who knew exactly where he fit in the family. He could insult his brothers at will and know he'd get a cuffing and a grin. He was an Eton man, a Balliol man, a member of Whites, Brooks, Gentleman Jackson's and the Coldstream Guards, and knew exactly how he would be treated in all those places. Whom he should ignore or invite closer. Whom he owed respect and by whom he was owed it.
What, he thought, would it be like to never know? How would someone navigate the shoals of society when she had been given no more than a ticket to a boarding school where all the other girls knew their place? How did she overcome the—what had she called it?—terror of uncertainty?
“Felicity?”
She looked up, and that quickly the shadows fled. Flint had a feeling the act was deliberate.
She smiled. “Oh,” she said, gently pulling her hand free, “I suppose the easiest way to put it is that I would far rather not be the supplicant in my own marriage.”
Flint almost gaped at her. God, who was this woman, and where did she come by such knife-edge awareness? How did she have the courage to speak it out loud?
“You think I would hold my offer over your head?”
“Many would.”
He thought his smile was probably a bit rueful. “But I am Igneous.”
“You are also still the son of the Duke of Lynden. I am—”
He waved off the rest of that sentence. “Yes, yes. So you have been at pains to tell me. Are you afraid of being silenced because you have so little to say, or so much?”
This time her smile grew. “Oh, so much. Definitely so much.”
