Page 28 of Five Nights to Claim His Duchess

“Bella. Are you certain?” she said quietly. “Quite certain? You need only say the word, and I shall have you in that carriage before anyone in this house can draw breath to stop me.”

Arabella looked at the floor.

“I’m certain,” she said.

Diana closed her eyes.

I thought this would do it. That had been the plan for the afternoon; if she was honest, she thought an hour of her playing with Arabella would make the child’s resolve go soft. That she would say yes and it would be finished. She had been so sure. She had watched her sister laugh until she could not breathe, and it had changed nothing at all; there was nothing more Diana could do, and she had never in her life been so completely without a plan.

A hand came to rest on her shoulder.

“Do not fret.” His voice was low, just above her. “I shall see to it.”

She looked up at him.

“Trust me,” said Valentine.

And the strange thing, the thing she would turn over later in the dark, was that she did.

She nodded. She gathered Arabella up and kissed her hard on both cheeks and on the top of her head, and Arabella held on for a long moment and then let go.

“Don’t you fret either, Your Grace,” said Betsy from the window seat, not looking up from her stocking. “I’ve got her.”

They went down through a house that had gone quiet and dim.

Her father and Octavia were in the hall. Both of them bowed and curtsied as the Duke passed, and Valentine gave them a nod and kept walking.

Diana passed Octavia. She did not look at the woman’s face. She could feel the glare land between her shoulder blades and travel the whole way to the door.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Your Grace! We’d nearly given you up.” Mrs. Fletcher was at the top of the steps with a lamp before the carriage had stopped moving. “There’s a supper gone cold this hour and more. Shall I have it put back on the fire?”

“Yes, please,” said Diana. “Thank you.”

They ate late in a small room, the two of them, and Diana found she was ravenous and had not known it; neither of them said much, and it was not uncomfortable in the least.

They returned to the room, and soon she sat on the edge of the bed in her nightgown, her hands folded in her lap.

He came in and sat down beside her, and he had changed too, and the mattress dipped and tilted her a fraction toward him the way it always did.

Diana cleared her throat.

“I wished to thank you,” she said. “For today. For — all of it.”

“Do not.”

“Your Grace⁠—”

“I have not done anything yet.” He said it without looking at her. “The child is still in that house. When she is out of it you may thank me, and I shall accept.”

Diana turned that over.

He does that, she thought. He does not take credit he has not earned, and he does not pretend to modesty he does not feel.

She had spent her whole life among people who said what a moment required. Her father, who called her ungrateful and meant I am ashamed. Octavia, who said my dear girl and meant get out of my house. And here was this man, who said what he meant, in the fewest possible words, and let it stand.

She liked it. She liked it enormously, and the discovery was not entirely welcome.