Mrs. Page. The widow. How to say it ... “You said your feelings haven’t changed since you were younger, and I wonder—how can you be certain what you feel now is affectionand not just responsibility? Something more than a desire to protect this woman you once knew and cared for.”
Toole looked surprised. He turned thoughtful for a moment, clasping his hands behind his back. He smiled to himself. His lips parted, then closed. Then he looked me straight on. “I’d be wise to invent some grand revelation in answer, Your Grace, to convince you to allow the marriage. I assume you are still considering it. But the truth is simple: loving her was easy. It still is. As effortless as breathing. Not that she is without flaw or has never made me unhappy or upset. No, she simply fits with me in a way no one else ever has. I understand how she thinks and feels, and she, likewise, understands me. After all this time, I have never stopped loving her. Never stopped thinking about her. Now that she is back in my life, I simply want to be near her. Whether or not the marriage is to my detriment, I am incomplete without her. And I do not wish to live another day that does not end with going home to her.”
I watched the man, two decades or more my senior, his heart overfull for this woman in a way most men would die for, and dash, if I wasn’t halfway taken with emotion. I certainly didn’t feel an inkling of that for Lady Diana.
I envied my butler. Badly.
“What does it feel like? This love you speak of?”
“Sweet.” His gaze softened. “Painful.”
I nodded, looking down at my desk.Distracting? I wondered.
“It will change you. Perhaps even come as a surprise. Make you question everything. And you’ll never be the same.”
One moment, he made the idea sound like pure bliss, the next, like a disease. I could not fathom it. “Thank you, Toole.”
He bowed, stepping back. Then, before he rounded the door, “Your Grace?”
He looked determined. Perhaps he’d ask for my decision on his marriage. I’d have to make one soon. In truth, I’d only been thinking about myself asking after the whole arrangement. He made a dashed good argument, but could I let him follow this folly potentially at the expense of the dukedom?
I met his gaze. “Toole?”
“Do not make the same mistake I did. If you find yourself fortunate enough to find such a love, follow it the first time.” A nod, and he was gone.
Something flickered in my chest. Desire, perhaps. Hope?
I harrumphed to myself. Folly. That was all love was. A fool’s errand. A fiction.
No matter, for I had a duty, and that duty came above all else.
I realized my legs had started to bounce, and quickly ceased them. Whatever these strange new feelings were—likely some minor infatuation from having a beautiful woman in my home—I determined not to let them distract me from my duty. No woman was worth that.
“Work,” I muttered to myself, lifting a stack of correspondence I’d neglected.
The hour passed quickly, and just as quickly, I dressed and made my way to the drawing room to assuage my mother’s nerves. A short walk in Hyde Park several paces away from Georgiana ought to quiet theton’s rumor mill.
I didn’t need to look in the mirror. Didn’t need any extrapolishing. I took the stairs with renewed confidence in finding a proper wife. Perhaps she’d be out walking Hyde Park. Perhaps, I thought as I descended the last step and crossed the foyer, she’d even be distracted byme. I was the Duke of Marlow, after all, and any woman I had any intention of courting would—
I stopped in the drawing room doorway.
Georgiana was laughing at something Gabriel was saying. Her eyes lit up, her smile so wide her entire face changed. I watched her, mind utterly blank, in some sort of trance. Ifeltthe sight of her.
The soft ringlets of her golden hair pinned back were an ache in my fingertips. Full lips glossed with the slightest rouge, just enough to draw a man in, were a hitch in my breath. And her eyes ... her light, green-and-gold-speckled eyes were a rampant beating in my chest.
“There you are!” Mother called, stalking toward me from the settee. “You are late by a quarter hour.”
Maggie moved closer. “Are you unwell, Marlow? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
Georgiana’s lips twitched. Our eyes locked, and her smile was an arrow soaring through my chest.
I stared.
Mother took my arm and spun me toward the foyer. “We are already pushing the Fashionable Hour as it is. Come, now! Let us depart at once.”
I let her lead me to the carriage steps. I helped her up, unseeing, unfeeling. Gabriel helped himself.
My every sense was trained on Georgiana. Her footsteps. Her exact distance away.
