“But I like women who speak up.”
“Even if they challenge your decisions and rights?”
He paused for a moment that stretched out almost uncomfortably. “It seems to me that you're making it a point to list all the detriments to marrying you. I don't believe any other woman would do that.”
“It is difficult enough to be invisible among society. It would be soul-crushing among those to whom I entrust my life.” Her frown returned. “Which brings us back to the inevitable question. Why me? What exactly do I bring to a marriage with the son of a duke?”
He attempted his own grin. “Piano and deportment?”
Her frown, if anything, grew. “Not very much of a dowry.”
“To be perfectly frank, I don't provide much more.”
“Your house.”
“I consider that to be a gift from both of us. If I don't marry, I will lose it for another five years. And the duke has promised to let it languish, just to tighten the screws a bit.”
“Excellent,” she mused darkly. “Matrimony by extortion.”
“I do mean to make it a great success.”
“I don't doubt you at all. I don't doubt that you can make anything you wish a success.”
Flint felt as if he'd taken a blow to the gut. His skin actually went clammy. “That would not necessarily be a safe bet, my dear.”
She looked up, the bemusement clear in her eyes.
He kept his smile small. “Do you think the duke simply woke one morning and decided that it was time for me to marry? That he would throw a dart at a map and pick my bride for me?”
“Didn't he?”
“Certainly. After quite a few years of warnings, deadlines and ultimatums. I wager the old man could recite the demands in his sleep. 'Do something useful with yourself, boy. Get back in your uniform and act like a man. You're a disgrace to the family.' That sort of thing.”
She was silent for so long he thought he might have made a critical mistake and pushed her away. When she shook her head, he was sure of it.
He should have known better.
“Perhaps there are some benefits to not having a family after all,” she said. “No one to tell me I'm a disappointment, even if I'm not.”
By damn if she didn't simply take his breath away.
She tilted her head as if assessing him. “You were supposed to spend your entire life in scarlet regimentals, then?”
“Something like that. Third son and all.”
“You had a better idea, though.”
“No. I didn't. I just knew that I would not walk back onto a battlefield unless Sussex was under siege.”
Blast, his right hand was shaking. He dropped it to his lap, hoping she didn't see.
“When did you come to this life-altering decision?” she asked.
He tried so hard to sound off-hand. “If memory serves, I was face-down in the mud at Bayonne praying the last cannon blast had left the top of my head intact. Or it could have been a moment later when I lifted it to find that I got my wish. Except I seemed to have been the only one to have succeeded.”
Now his stomach was roiling. He could smell devastation. Charred flesh and blood, thick and musty and skin-crawling. He could see Johnson's brains spattering his right arm.
“But you were at Waterloo a year later,” she said, her voice softer.
