Theonlyreason a duke would consider marriage to someone like me.“Prepare for the gossip mills to turn, Your Grace.”
“Gossip will be a welcome improvement from the obsequious sycophants,” he said with ducal arrogance. He frowned. “Must you refer to me by such an informal title?”
“It will mean we will never mistake the line between us. You will refer to me as ‘Duchess’ when the deed is done.”
“Like a military designation,” he grumbled. He sighed again and waved a hand for her to proceed. “You have terms, I take it, General?”
“You need not make fun.”
“No, we wouldn’t want that. It’s only the rest of our lives we’re discussing. Much better to be congenially hostile.”
More humor tugged at her mouth. His wit, his vitality, thosethighs. It would be so easy to care for him, to fall fast and hard all over again.
But she hadn’t agreed to wed to assuage the fantasies of her past self.
“I wish to see my brother.” She’d have his promise now. Because marriage wouldn’t change her mission to find William. “No matter where he goes or how much time passes, I will not be kept from him.”
“I would never keep you from your brother,” Jackson said, his tone insulted. Then, “What else?”
“Nothing.”
“Ha!” He waved a hand before his face. “You must take me for a fool.”
“There is nothing else,” she repeated.
Too bad the stubborn man wouldn’t relent. “You are not a woman to compromise in anything. I half-expected a row over who would take the duke’s suite and the right to use the coach and four.”
“Keep your gilded walls and fringed ponies. I have no need for such frippery.”
He sputtered and ran a hand over his face. “Onlyyouwould dub luxury as ‘meaningless frippery.’”
“Does the gold inlay keep the cold out better?” she asked. “Do the fine manes of your horses make the beasts more biddable?”
“You make the aristocracy’s pleasure out to be as shallow as a thimble.”
“Then you misunderstood me. I had no intention of being so generous.”
He laughed, the honeyed sound curling her toes inside her boots.
She kept walking, determined to outrun the warm feeling spreading through her veins. “I’ve resigned myself to continue my etiquette lessons. There will, of course, be stricter and more laborsome expectations placed on someone of a duchess’s station, which I will do my best to meet.”
“‘Resigned,’ you say.” A sour note thrummed in his usual rich baritone.
“Dinner parties, soirees”—worse—“a ball or two during the season. It may take me a few months to acclimate, but I’m sure I can manage the occasional big affair.” Though it would be absolute hell.
“Martyrdom doesn’t suit you.” He sounded positively miserable now.
Anna ignored him. It took all her concentration to swallow. “Then there is the matter of producing an heir.”
His head swiveled around. “‘An heir’?”
“I know my duty,” she said, unable to meet his gaze. “I will not lock my door should you wish to extend your marital rights.”There, she’d said it. And it was a miracle her cheeks weren’t flaming. Of all the unpleasantness she’d be expected to perform, going to bed with Jackson was not the one to twist her stomach into knots.
Physical attraction had never been a question between them.
But what was intimacy without trust?
She stepped into the street to take the next left but stopped when Jackson jabbed his thumb in the opposite direction.
