When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,73
should make the investment.”
I had planned to be in Rome this time next year.
Duncan had not planned on falling in love with Matilda. “Draw me up a proposal, complete with budget, site plan, and estimated operating costs. Better still, buy this property from me and turn your talents to making it profitable.” He took the reading chair Matilda favored, closest to the fire, rather than examine Stephen’s sketches.
“What has turned your reliably dull disposition so rotten?” Stephen asked, tucking a pencil behind his ear. “You’ve barely made a start on this place and already, you’re ceding the match.”
Duncan rubbed his knee, a futile undertaking once the damned thing decided to ache. “Have you ever tried to hold authority accountable for wrongdoing?”
Stephen capped a bottle of ink and set it on the standish. “Yes, and that folly inspired my dear papa to break my leg. He said he’d done me a favor. If I was so intent on begging for food, I might as well have a twisted limb to evoke the sympathy of passersby.”
That was more than Stephen had ever said about the origins of his injury. “He broke your leg on purpose?”
“As much purpose as Jack Wentworth had about anything when he was three sheets to the wind. I expected him to share with me the first food he’d brought to the house in three days. This time of year…” Stephen’s gaze went to the window. “I hate this time of year. I don’t hate England, but I hate the darkness.”
He also hated pity—probably more than darkness, cold, snow, or his late father—so Duncan temporarily ignored the disclosure of Jack Wentworth’s evil.
“I’ve asked Matilda for permission to embark on a courtship.”
Stephen stared at him for a good five ticks of the mantel clock. “You are begging for heartbreak. Damned near demanding it at sword point. I expect you alone of all people to behave rationally, and yet, you offer your name to a woman who is likely wanted for hanging felonies.”
Hence the uneasy roiling in Duncan’s gut. “I’ll take her to the Continent where the king’s men cannot pursue her.” Though what Matilda wanted more than anything was a home and family of her own, not life as a fugitive.
“And what if her troubles follow you there? Will you change your name, cut off all ties to family, expect her to do likewise?”
This conversation was extraordinary, not for the content—one Wentworth making a futile attempt to talk sense into another—but for the fact that Stephen was the party counseling prudence.
“Most criminals are safe enough if they can elude justice for any length of time,” Duncan said. The runners and patrollers preferred to go after game laying a fresh trail, when the motivation to pay a reward was still high.
“Matilda has been running for months, Duncan.”
“You don’t know that. You reach that conclusion based on her slenderness and her secretiveness.”
“She might never tell you what mischief follows her, until it has become your mischief too. Abetting a felon, becoming an accessory after the fact, will see you hanged, and that scandal is no way to repay the loyalty of your cousins.”
Duncan rose and closed the curtains, for only cold and darkness lay beyond the window. “Tell me, Stephen, did my many attempts to persuade you to moderate your behavior ever succeed because I’d made you feel guilty?”
“Of course not, but why Matilda, Duncan? Why a woman about whom you know virtually nothing? You can have your pick of heiresses, bluestockings, well-read widows.…I could line women up from here to London who’d accept a proposal from a ducal Wentworth, regardless of his age or mental condition. You instead choose a woman who might be led away in chains tomorrow. Why?”
The question had no logical answer, and Duncan had come to this parlor for solitude. He’d wanted to savor the intimacies he’d shared with Matilda, not fall into a brown study over a past he could not change—another past he could not change.
“Matilda is intelligent,” he said, “learned, well traveled, and favorably disposed toward me, despite my dull character and ancient years. She is unmarried and her heart is not elsewhere engaged. Should I turn my back on her because of events that don’t concern me?”
Stephen wheeled away from the table and shifted to the chair near the fire. Duncan knew better than to offer assistance.
“You speak as if you have only two choices,” Stephen said, propping his leg on a hassock. “We are Wentworths, and we don’t meekly endure what life