His quiet words were loud in her ears. “You always did know me best.”
She’d thought so too. Once.
Anna stared straight ahead, refusing to look—tosee—the man she’d thought had known her better than anyone. “We should discuss what will happen going forward.”
“Back to business already.” He sighed. “I thought we would pour a few whiskeys and find warm seats by the fire before the inevitable argument ensued.”
She scowled. “This isn’t a friendly reunion.”
“Would it be so bad if we were friendlier?”
He’d done that since they’d been children too: pout.
Anna pursed her lips together to keep the traitorous things from curling upward at the corners. “Would me smiling and staring up at you with adoring eyes make the unpleasantness to come more bearable, Duke?”
He winced. “Smilingandadoration? I’d never sleep for fear of what evil you’d unleash when I’d least expect.”
There was no stopping her smile now. “For a clumsy lord, you grew into some sense.”
“You wound me.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “As if I would forget the time you fed me worms on toast.”
She bit her lip. “Onlyafteryou called my cooking ‘an ogre’s attempt at Parisian cuisine.’”
“Those cookies you baked had so much salt in them, I couldn’t taste anything for a week!”
She laughed, remembering. “It wasn’t my fault the salt and sugar jar looked so much alike.”
“Thank God you’ll never need to step foot in the kitchen ever again.”
Anna tilted her head, another smile dancing along her lips... until his words sank in.
No need to enter the kitchen when a duke had half a dozen kitchen staff under his employ. A full dozen for all she knew.
The reality of her situation washed her lingering humor away. Not any old lowly lord’s wife. She was to become a duchess. The pomp, the rules, theinsufferabledos and don’ts—she’d be expected to cut all ties to her past, like a razor slicing her in two. Forced into a life where she was to be more but always found less.
“I am a locksmith’s daughter,” she said, chin raised. “A title won’t change that.”
“I’ve never been ashamed of where you come from,” he said, his words a balm she wished she didn’t warm to hearing.
When they’d been children, meeting in secret late at night where no one would see had been atherinsistence.
“Your view is the minority. Others will not be so revolutionary in their opinions. Taking me for a wife will bring ridicule, speculation, and gossip.”
His grin said he wasn’t worried. “You’ll bear it like a queen.”
More heat, sinking low in her belly.Thiswas the man she knew: kind and encouraging, with that devil-may-care smile. It would be so much easier if he would remain the cold man fromMrs. Dove-Lyon’s office. She’d best remember it was the latter who’d left her in the Grandfellow’s grove six years ago, without a glance back before he’d walked away. Left her. Not a sliver of his confidence in her showing then.
“You don’t belong here.”
Those four icy words he’d spoken were as true now as they had been then. She may have been the sister to a viscount. She may have dressed in the silks and the linen of her betters. She may have spoken with rounded vowels and rouge-dusted cheeks, but no amount of paints or perfumes would change the person she was underneath.
He’d left her once already.
What would stop him from leaving her again? Only, it wouldn’t be her life that hung in the balance this time; it would be Will’s.
Anna’s heart steeled. She wouldn’t be caught unaware this time, wouldn’t allow a pinprick of betrayal to touch her when Jackson’s loyalty changed with the next breeze. “I was referring to the scornyouwill receive for marrying below your station, Duke.”
“Hardly scorn. You are a viscount’s sister now, remember?”
