Page 11 of A Match Made On Duchess Square

Well, where was the harm in his learning more about her? He needed to trust her, and that would not happen unless there was complete honesty between them.

“What should Fiona have told me about you?” he asked, frowning.

She did not think he was annoyed with her for concealing her history. In truth, there was nothing scandalous or improper to hide. “I assure you, Milbury, there is nothing sinister in my past. What has Fiona said about me?”

“That you were kind and clever, an excellent judge of people. This was why she recommended you as a matchmaker. She claimed you were very good at finding love matches for others.”

Gwendolyn laughed lightly. “And you are doing your best to prove me wrong.”

He chuckled in return. “Yes, I know I have been difficult.” He studied her a long moment. “But you are difficult, too. For someone so good at spotting love, why have you not done this for yourself?”

She squirmed under his intent gaze.

“You are charming and beautiful, Gwendolyn. Yet you are… Forgive my bluntness, but you are also of a certain age.”

“Two-and-thirty,” she said, not shy about revealing her age, since he was no youth himself and about ten years older. “Which is why the ton has dismissed me and considers me firmly on the shelf. I would be heartlessly discarded as a sad spinster of no importance were it not for my wealth. Indeed, having a fortune is quite an attractive quality that endures despite one’s advancing age and fading good looks.”

He shook his head. “Hard to think of you as old or unattractive. If you hadn’t just told me your age, I would not have believed you were above your mid-twenties. Surely you must realize that you are quite beautiful.”

She blushed. “No one has told me that in quite a while.”

“Well, you are,” he insisted. “I’m sure you must have had a line of suitors out your door after making your come-out, all of them heaping gifts and compliments upon you. Frankly, I am surprised they are not still lining up outside your door.”

“I’ve chased them all away,” she admitted.

“Why, Gwendolyn? Do you not wish to marry? Any man with half a brain would want to scoop you up. Truly, I am not saying this simply to flatter to you.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I am about to ask you an utterly rude and intrusive question. You can tell me to mind my own business, but I still wish to ask it.”

“Don’t.”

He ignored her. “Have you ever received a marriage proposal? Is this what Fiona neglected to tell me?”

She frowned at him.

“No, do not put me off. How am I to trust your judgment otherwise? This is important, and you know it.”

This was about his marital prospects, not hers. But she sensed he would break off this marriage hunt if she were not honest with him.

She released her breath in a gust. “I have received several, in fact.”

He nodded. “How many?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Indulge me,” he said. “They could not all have been fortune hunters or wastrels.”

“They weren’t.”

He seemed momentarily confused. “But you rejected all of them. Why?”

“I did not refuse every marriage proposal.” She let out a soft, pained breath. “In fact, I accepted the man I had always hoped to marry.”

Her betrothal was no secret. Why had Fiona not told him?

She was also surprised he had not heard rumor of it from the notorious ton gossips. Oh, he would get the juiciest news from them.

Mostly lies. So many of them had mocked her misfortune.

“Gwen, I—”