Page 9 of Five Nights to Claim His Duchess

“Then we must have a great many more,” he said, “so that you may learn.”

She felt it go through her like something warm poured slowly down her spine. It was a kind of helpless enchantment, as though he had said some word over her that she had not caught and could not now undo. She shivered and stood still as she inhaled him. He was so close; she wanted to hate it, but she could not. She wanted his touches.

“It is a hard thing,” he said against her skin, “to keep my distance, when a man’s own wife sits before him looking as you look now.”

She turned her face away. But her heart was drumming. Why did she miss the warmth of his breath on her skin? Why was she aching for their bodies to meet again even if by accidental contact?”

He gave a low chuckle at that, and, to her confusion, to her shameful disappointment, released her, and drew back, and let the cool space open again between them. She fought not to stare at his lips or at any improper part of him.

“I am a man of my word.” He settled the fallen sleeve back upon her shoulder with one careless finger, as though he had never disturbed it. “So. Your terms, and mine. You asked me for a room, Duchess. For your sister. I will do you one better than a room.” His eyes held hers. “I will take the child into this house as my ward, my goddaughter, before God and the ton both. She shall have my name to shelter under, and a place here that no one may question, and a governess, and an education befitting a duke’s own kin. And I will see to it that you stand as her guardian, with a mother’s full authority over her, so that never again, so long as you live, need you beg any man’s leave to keep your own sister safe.”

It was everything. It was more than everything. It was every fear of the past seven days answered at a single stroke, and Diana’s throat closed on it.

“All I require in return,” he said, “is an heir.”

And her heart, which had risen so high, fell straight through the floor.

Of course, she thought numbly. Of course. The one coin I have not got to pay.

She did not know what possessed her then. Some small broken sound escaped her, a whimper, half swallowed, and the words came out of her all in a rush.

“You need not have it of me. Your Grace, there are ways. You might take another woman to your bed, discreetly; I would never speak of it, never make it public. And when the child came, I would raise it as my own before all the world, and no one the wiser. You might keep whatever mistress, whatever pleasures you liked. I would not interfere. I would not be the smallest trouble to you, I swear it.”

He had gone quite still.

“Are you refusing,” he asked slowly, “to bear my child?”

Diana wondered if it was rage or curiosity that she saw brewing behind his eyes.

She swallowed. Her hands twisted in her lap.

“I have no intention—” Her voice shook. “I have no intention of lying with any man, Your Grace, let alone of bearing a child. This marriage came upon me in a matter of days. I⁠—”

She stopped because she had no way to finish it without shame. The truth was that she had put the whole question of a husband out of her mind for years, had waved off marriage and its duties as a trouble for some far-distant morning. How childish that seemed now. How perfectly, ruinously naive.

“Might I ask you something, Duchess?

She did not trust her voice, so she only inclined her head.

“Why will you not give me a child?”

The question landed almost gently, without cruelty in it, which was somehow worse than if he had asked it unkindly. She could have armored herself against unkindness. She had no armor at all against a man simply wanting to understand.

She said nothing.

How could I tell you? You are a stranger I married this morning. You would hear it and think me weak, or foolish, or unfit to be anybody’s wife at all.

The silence went on long enough that he spoke.

“You need not answer,” he said, at last. “I do not ask to shame you. Whatever the reason, I do not doubt it is a sound one, you do not strike me as a woman given to whims.” He paused. “I do not blame you for it, whatever it is. I want you to understand that, before anything further is said between us tonight.”

Diana looked up at him.

“But I want an heir,” he said. “That has not altered, and I will not pretend to you that it has. It is the one thing I asked of this marriage before I ever laid eyes on you, and it remains the one thing I cannot do without. I fear our hearts do not align,” he said, “and this union of ours will not answer.”

Then I shall not stay to see it fail. She would send to Betsy this very week; she would have Arabella spirited out of her father’s house before the ink was dry; she would beg Henrietta’s help, and take what little was hers, and vanish into some quiet corner of England before the man had time to set the machinery in motion to have the marriage put aside. There was still time. There was still⁠—

“Might I change your mind?”