When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,75
tale of disappointment and betrayal at the hands of the church only made the decision more imperative. He did not deserve to be entangled with a woman who’d quite possibly lead him to the gallows. Then too, his family was planning a visit.
Better for all concerned if Matilda decamped before they arrived. “I won’t leave tonight.”
Stephen peered at his wine. “Duncan could divine the reason for that assurance, and he could do so without even thinking about it.”
Daunting thought. “Today is Tuesday,” Matilda said. “The laundry was done yesterday, and the dress I wore when I arrived will not be dry until tomorrow at least. I would not leave in a damp dress.”
He lifted a glass a few inches in Matilda’s direction. “I take your point. Nor will you leave in a borrowed dress—because if the rag you arrived in is found here, that’s evidence you were on the premises—but you will leave. Why?”
Matilda toyed with her torte. Cook had used the honey liberally, though Duncan’s piece sat untouched on his plate.
“I am not safe here.”
Stephen snorted. “He’d die for you. I’d die for you because he’d expect it of me and I haven’t anything more pressing to attend to at the moment.”
Matilda put aside her fork. “Then you and he are not safe because of me. When I leave, I will not take my Book of Common Prayer. You will burn it for me, please.”
“If you like, though that has to be a mortal sin. I haven’t committed one of those in quite some time.”
“So glad I could provide you a bit of diversion.” She rose and curtsied, ignored the apple torte and cheese on the table, and left Lord Stephen to enjoy his dessert.
A prudent woman would go straight to her room, count up her coins for the fifth time that day, and ensure her meager belongings were neatly stowed in the wardrobe, ready to be tossed into a spare shawl and bundled together for travel. Matilda had been prudent, before fear and confusion had sent her down cow paths and game trails, into overgrown woods, and into Duncan Wentworth’s arms.
She tapped on his door, then let herself in. He sat before the fire in a dressing gown and silk trousers, his feet bare. His hair was damp and he remained seated when she closed the door.
“Madam.”
“I was Matilda to you yesterday in that bedroom.”
He held out his hand, and she took a seat on the hassock before his reading chair. “I was courting you yesterday. Why allow me that fiction, Matilda?”
Had he determined her motives from one stolen dinner roll? “I told you nothing can come of your ambitions where I’m concerned.” She folded her fingers over his and pressed the back of his hand to her heart. “I do not have a choice, Duncan. I have studied the board from every perspective, and very few moves are left to me.”
He kissed her fingers. “You have committed treason.”
Four words Matilda barely allowed herself to think, and he offered them calmly. “On what do you base your conjecture?” Matilda took heart from their joined hands. Duncan had reached a conclusion; he did not sit in judgment of her.
“You admit that you have involved yourself in trouble of the highest order. You are fleeing the authorities, but not the magistrates and their parlor sessions. Your crime is thus an embarrassment to the Crown, if you have committed a crime. I think it more likely that you are protecting your father, or possibly your erstwhile fiancé.
“I flatter myself,” he went on, “that you also seek to protect me. From one perspective, I am a nobody. A failed clergyman who has racketed about the Continent in the guise of a tutor, when in fact I am a duke’s poor relation. The poor relation, the tutor without students, might need some protection. From another perspective, my family is titled, we have wealth beyond imagining, I hold land in my own name and have assets many would envy. And yet, you believe that your misdeeds could bring me low. What wrong has as much power to ruin as treason?”
He rose, and Matilda was certain he intended to summon the footmen to lock her in the butler’s pantry.
He twisted the latch on the lock. “You have the privacy of the confessional. If I can help you, I will. I hope that is a statement of the obvious.”
The suitor had departed, in other words. In his place was the decent gentleman who’d first captured Matilda’s