Page 168 of The Duke’s Bargain

Radnor cast him a dark look.

Apparently the name was catching.

“And you know I can help too,” the Dowager Duchess chimed in. “Pembroke is my home, after all. Miss Dawson may remain here for as long as necessary. I should enjoy the company.”

Arthur regarded Laurence thoughtfully before turning his attention to Eliza. It would be her choice.

Eliza’s face betrayed the conflict within her. The very thought of entrusting the search for James to somebody else seemed to cause her pain, as though accepting help were somehow equivalent to abandoning him.

Yet these were not strangers offering to take her place.

They were family.

And perhaps, Eliza realised, this was something she needed to give to her sister.

For weeks, she had watched Cecily closely. Fashioning gowns brought her alive in a way Eliza had rarely seen before; there was something almost magical in watching scraps of fabric become beautiful beneath her hands, in seeing her eyes brighten whenever an idea took hold. But beneath that passion lingered an uncertainty neither sister had quite dared to name.

Cecily would return to servitude. Eliza knew that her sister had never been made for the background of somebody else's life. She was too clever, too full of opinions and ideas and impossible dreams to spend the remainder of her days quietly emptying another woman’s chamber pot.

She deserved the opportunity to discover what her own life might become.

And although Cecily regarded marriage with something between suspicion and outright contempt, and had spent much of the morning behaving as though Eliza had succumbed to a particularly ridiculous affliction, Eliza wanted the same thing for her sister that she had somehow stumbled upon herself.

Something that made her feel alive.

It need not be marriage. Good heavens, Cecily would probably object to the very suggestion.

Perhaps it would be her gowns. Perhaps an adventure.

Whatever shape it took, Eliza wanted Cecily to have something that belonged entirely to her. And for now, all she could offer was recovering James.

“Very well, thank you sister.” She gave Cecily a small smile.

Cecily’s shoulders relaxed.

“But Laurence, there is not a chance on this earth that I would leave Cecily in your care.” Arthur turned instead towards the Dowager and Radnor. “Mother, Giles, if you would both be so kind?”

“Consider her my ward,” the Dowager declared with an enthusiasm entirely unsuited to the fact that Cecily was a grown woman of three-and-twenty.