“I beg your pardon?” her father carefully addressed, lowering his utensils.
Jane set her fork down as well. “We have only been married for two months. I am not prepared to–”
“These matters are not about preparedness,” her father stated, seemingly irritated over having to explain something so simple. “They are about duty. The duke requires an heir–”
“That is up to us!” Jane snapped, starting to feel angry “And what I am or am not prepared for is not–”
“Jane,” her mother said softly.
“–is not your concern,” Jane finished, looking at her mother.
Harriet glanced between her husband and daughter, leaning forward with a look of disapproval.
“We are saying this for your benefit, Jane. You should know what your duties are and be eager to perform them. Because you have been rather slow at things like these, we have had to interfere, and that is why you are happily married now,” Harriet pointed out.
Jane folded her arms defiantly, but more so because she needed to feel grounded, lest her rage run away with her.
“Your interference should have stopped there, then. What comes after does not concern you and it has not been your concern since you agreed to this arrangement without consulting me.”
“You will watch how you speak to us, you disrespectful little –” her father started.
“You would be wise to swallow those words, lest I feel inclined to cut your tongue out and feed it to you,” Thomas interjected calmly, his voice cutting through the air sharply.
Arthur fell silent immediately, his face turning pale. Thomas sat back, glancing between Jane’s parents.
“If anyone is being disrespectful here, it is you. After honouring your invitation, you proceed you question my wife – my duchess, as though she owes you any answers. How foolish of you, to value propriety and then forget your place so quickly. You have no right to dictate the progression of our marriage, nor is your input welcome. I already have an heir, in any case, so whatever desire you hold should be advised to perish.”
Thomas rose to his feet and walked around the table to where Jane was seated, holding his hand out to her.
“Come, my love. Let us return to our home.”
Jane easily slipped her hand into his as she stood, not evening glancing back at her parents as she left the dining room.
She stared at her hands in her lap during most of the ride back to their estate, eventually working up the courage to speak up.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“No one has the right to speak to you that way.” He stated simply. “Not while I am present.”
She nodded and shifted her gaze out the window, barely noticing the passing landscape as she thought about how strange it was – how deeply, inconveniently strange – to feel so thoroughly safe beside a man she had been prepared to spend three months tolerating.
She didn't want to feel safe. It made everything harder. It complicated the clean, manageable shape of their arrangement and bent it into something she didn't have a name for yet.
And worst of all, it frightened her considerably more than her father ever had.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The butler's face said everything before the man opened his mouth.
When his particular expression – faintly resigned, professionally neutral, with a suggestion around the eyes of someone who had delivered enough unwelcome news to have developed a method for it – appeared in the study doorway, and Thomas set down his pen, knowing to expect the unexpected.
“Well?”
Mr Johnson cleared his throat, his expression apologetic as he announced,
“His Grace, the Duke of Montford, has arrived, Your Grace. He is –” There was a brief pause that contained multitudes. “He is in the entrance hall.”
Thomas closed his eyes for approximately three seconds, and when he opened them, he found that he was not any less annoyed, but had only strengthened his capacity not to let is show outwardly.
