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“No one will say disparaging things about my wife.” Dominic folded his arms, looking for all the world as if he could stop the tide from coming in to shore.

“In case you’re hoping, you will not be able to teach me to read. It won’t work. I cannot read. I will never be able to read.”

“I understand.”

“No, you don’t,” Torie said. “It’s not merely the question of accepting me as a substitute for my more desirable sister. They’ll mock you for marrying me. If we ever have children, they’ll be judged witless before they speak their first word. What’s more, I can’t cipher, so you’d have to hire someone to keep the household accounts.”

“My steward keeps them now, and he can continue. You’re overlooking a key point.”

She frowned at him. “Which is?”

“Your family should have been defending you. Instead, they left you to face society alone. In fact, they joined in the mockery. That will not continue when you are my wife.”

Torie couldn’t hide her curiosity. “Just how would you hope to suppress belittling on the part of non-family members?”

“Do you see this rapier?”

Since he was still in deep mourning, Dominic was clothed in black; his black sheath lay almost invisibly against his leg. When he drew out the blade, it wasn’t a gleaming silver color, but black as midnight.

“Is that a mourning rapier?” Torie asked, rather fascinated.

“Dull black for the first stage of mourning. I have five rapiers for the various stages.”

“You must be joking.”

“I never joke about rapiers.”

“Leonora said—”

“She thought I should give up the practice as it was causing my muscles to be ‘gracelessly bloated,’” he said dryly. “A direct quote. Added to your revelation about admiration for golden lads with slender thighs, my deplorable physique presumably led to her hysteria regarding our wedding night.”

“My sister can be very blunt at times,” Torie murmured. “Are you proposing to slash your way through polite society in defense of my wits?”

“I won’t stand for anyone hurting my wife’s feelings,” Dominic said, sliding the blade back into its holster. “A duel or two will solve that problem. I won’t fight to wound but to make myself clear.”

He was mistaken—such a duel would cause gossip to flourish—but Torie rather liked the idea of someone offering to defend her. She habitually fended off mockery through charm, humor, and self-deprecation, but the experience was never pleasant. She’d rather not label herself silly and frivolous.

“You will marry me because you love Valentine and Florence.” There was a surprisingly warm glint in Dominic’s eyes, given that he usually looked as chilly as the north wind.

Torie shook her head, somewhat regretfully. “As I said, I do love them, but I cannot give up my life for them. You want a nanny, not a bride.”

“We can have our own children, and by then the twins will be yours too.” He hesitated. “Though I do intend to send them to school.”

“I have different ideas about how to raise Valentine and Florence. My ideas do not involve Eton, Latin, Greek, astronomy, or ciphering half the day, as they are doing now.”

He frowned. “They need to be stimulated. They are brilliant.”

“And quite bizarre,” she pointed out. “I know something about being strange in the midst of polite society. It is not a pleasant feeling.”

Dominic’s eyes softened. “I’m sorry. But taking away their books won’t make them any less intelligent.”

Torie suppressed a snappy observation about the fact that her intelligence was constantly in question merely because she had no book-learning. “They are suffering from lack of attention. You should eat with them every single day.”

“In the nursery?” He seemed dumbfounded.

Torie belatedly realized that she did sound like a nanny. She shook her head. “Becoming a nanny would be so belittling, don’t you see? As if I was inadequate to be someone’s wife. As a duchess, I’ll know my husband prized me, not my child-raising skills.”

“You wouldn’t be a nanny,” he said stubbornly. “You’d be a viscountess.”