Page 38 of Five Nights to Claim His Duchess

A reward, he thought, going down the steps to the carriage, and it carried him the whole of the way into town in an excellent humor.

“Your Grace! What an unlooked-for pleasure.”

Octavia came out into the hall with her hands out and her face already arranged. “But how unlucky — my husband is not at home. He is gone into the City, and I do not expect him before four. Had you sent word I should have⁠—”

“I know.”

Her hands stopped in the air. Then the smile came back on, quite smoothly. She recovered beautifully. He gave her that much.

“Well. Then I am entirely at your disposal. Will you take some tea?” she asked.

“There is no need to trouble yourselves on my account.”

“Nonsense, Your Grace. What sort of hostess should I be, to send a duke away without so much as a cup of tea in his belly.” She led him down the passage as she spoke. “This way, if you please. The drawing room catches the best of the light this time of day.”

She settled him into the best chair with a small proprietary flourish and took the seat opposite. Within a few minutes the footman returned with a girl behind him bearing a laden with cups so fine the light came through them.

The girl set it down and began to pour.

“That will do,” Octavia told her. “I shall see to His Grace myself.”

The maid curtsied and withdrew, and the footman with her, and the door was drawn half shut in the way of a well-run house. To all appearances, entirely alone.

Octavia lifted the pot and began to pour.

“I have come to ask you for the child.”

There was not a flicker. The smile stayed exactly where it was, warm and grieved and perfectly weighted.

“Oh, Your Grace.” She said it gently, as one does to a man who has misunderstood something. “But I thought we had settled it between us. The poor lamb was asked, and said no. Whatever we may wish for, surely the child’s own choice must be the right thing? I could not go against her. I should never forgive myself.”

Valentine looked at her.

How does he not see it? It was the thing he could not get past. Levi Fernside lived in this house. He had a wolf sitting in his drawing room in Norwich silk, and he had never once looked at it properly.

Nothing about the woman was noble, not one thing, not when you knew to look. The smiles were placed. The clothes were placed; she dressed a half step above her rank and always had, and she knew precisely what it bought her. Even her eyes moved to a purpose. She had come at him three times in that quarter hour, and every attack had been chosen, adjusted, and abandoned with a coldness that a good many generals of his acquaintance could not have managed at Salamanca.

“Do you take it without sugar, Your Grace? Forgive me. I ought to have asked before I poured.”

“Black is fine.”

Octavia set the cup at his elbow and settled herself opposite. She was obviously a woman who has arranged a great many tea trays for a great many men and knew how to make the ritual of it last. Valentine sipped, watched her over the rim, and said, quite idly:

“Tell me about your life before you met Westleigh.”

Her hand paused on the teapot for the smallest fraction of a moment.

“Why, Your Grace, should that interest you?”

“You are my mother-in-law.” He set the cup down. “It seems a reasonable enough thing for a man to want to know something of his wife’s family.”

“How thorough of you.”

“I like to know my people.”

Octavia smiled and poured her own cup, unhurried. “There is very little to tell. I was married before, to a gentleman of good family. A quiet life. Nothing that would interest a duke.”

“And your first husband. What became of him?”