Page 40 of Five Nights to Claim His Duchess

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Bring the child. I am taking her with me.”

“And what am I to tell my husband?”

She had already written off everything but her own skin, and she had done it in under a minute.

“Madam,” said Valentine, “you contrived to persuade the man to marry you. I cannot imagine this will trouble you.”

Octavia held his eye for a long moment.

Then she turned her head. “Fetch the young lady down. At once.”

The maid went. The door closed. Octavia turned back.

“And what guarantee have I,” she said, “that you will not repeat any of this?”

Footsteps in the passage.

The maid came back with the child, and behind the child came the older woman. She was a woman with gray hair and flat, watchful eyes, who had a hand on Arabella’s shoulder and was not taking it off.

Arabella stopped in the doorway. She looked at Octavia. She looked at the Duke. She looked, mostly, at the floor.

Valentine crouched down.

“You are coming with me,” he said.

The small head came up. “To — to Diana?”

“To Diana.”

He straightened and looked at the older woman.

“You are her maid?”

She dipped a curtsy without letting go of the child. “Betsy, Your Grace.”

“Pack her things. Everything she has and bring it to Rosewood this afternoon.” He glanced at Octavia. “She will give you the coin for a cart.”

Betsy’s mouth opened.

Octavia’s face had gone the color of the wall.

“Yes, Your Grace,” said Betsy, and turned, and went, and did not once look back at her mistress on the way out.

Valentine took Arabella’s hand. It was very small, and it took a moment to decide, and then it closed on two of his fingers and gripped.

He turned in the doorway.

“You have no guarantee,” he said. “But I am a man who finds gossip a great deal too tedious to trouble with. I should have to remember it. I should have to be interested.”

He did not stay to watch her face. He did not need to; he could feel it on his back the whole way across the hall, and it was, he thought, the most sincere thing about her.

He turned to Arabella.

“We are going to see your sister,” he said, as the carriage pulled away.

Arabella looked up at him. Her whole face came open.