“Quiet,” he replied. “I’m away a lot. I have a house in the north that needs work. I’m not good at conversation, and I eat too fast, and I forget to come to bed at a reasonable hour because I’m used to keeping watch.”
“That is not a very convincing proposal.”
“I’m not trying to convince ye. I’m trying to tell ye the truth. Ye’ve had enough of men who tell ye what ye want to hear.”
She stared at him. He stared back. The rain had stopped completely now, and somewhere a bird was singing, absurdly cheerful, as though nothing strange were happening at all.
“You would not try to control me,” she said. It was not a question.
“I would not know how to begin.”
“And you would not take my money.”
“I don’t need yer money.”
“And the heir.”
“I told ye, I don’t care for one.”
“Every man cares.”
“I am not every man. And ye know that already, or else ye would not be standing here in the mud, having this conversation.”
She looked at him,reallylooked. His coat was still damp, and his face was open in a way she had not seen from any man in years. He was not trying to charm her. He was not trying to sell her anything. He was standing in the rain, telling her the truth about himself, including the parts that were not flattering.
The plainness of it made her chest hurt.
“You said you want to help orphans,” she said. “And the poor.”
“Aye.”
“Why?”
“Because I was one. Before the Crown found me. Before I became the Hound, I was a boy sleeping under bridges in Edinburgh, eating whatever I could steal. Nobody helped methen. I will not be the man who has the means to help and chooses not to.”
She had not known that. She had assumed he came from money, from a respectable family, from the kind of background that produced dukes. She had been wrong.
She looked at him for a long time. A boy from under a bridge who had become the most feared man in England, and was now standing in her garden asking to marry her so he could help orphans.
“You are serious,” she said slowly.
“Deadly,” he affirmed.
“It seems we are to be married, then,” she declared.
She stared at him. Looked for the joke, the trick, but found nothing. His green eyes were steady.
He was serious.
The thought did not scare her. But it should have.
“This agreement is much better than being snatched, for sure,” she murmured. “And if the Hound were my husband, no one would even dare to think of touching me.”
“Ye flatter me, Duchess.” His voice was dry enough to soak up the rain.
“I’m sorry, but it’s true.”
“It is.”
