The Duke Heist (The Wild Wynchesters #1) - Erica Ridley Page 0,68
the role of duchess. It wasn’t as if a husband and wife were expected to spend lazy afternoons discussing art or debating politics. Not as he’d done with Chloe.
Miss York would bear him an heir—and, if not, a daughter or two—and he and his wife would be as happy as…as…
All right, perhaps they wouldn’t be easy company.
They’d be indifferent strangers.
Lawrence would be hard at work on parliamentary matters. And Miss York would be…reading, perhaps. He’d restore the ducal estate with her dowry, beget a few children, and then enjoy an extraordinarily dull, loveless marriage, like those of their class often did.
It was not what Lawrence wanted at all.
Anxiety crept beneath his skin like ants. He tried not to let his steps falter in the dance. This was the moment he’d been preparing for. He was Wellington, poised to win or die trying at Waterloo. Miss York was…Napoleon Bonaparte? What was happening with this metaphor? Marriage wasn’t war. There was no reason for proposing to feel like being run through with a bayonet.
He was Lawrence Gosling, eighth Duke of Faircliffe, and he, like all but one of the previous holders of the title, would do what was right.
He performed the steps in silence to give a sharper look at Miss York. An unsettling sensation twisted in his stomach. Did she wish she could choose someone else?
Perhaps she’d been unenthusiastic about the prospect of becoming a powerful duchess married to a virtual stranger because she, too, had been hoping to find love.
Was that the man he had hoped to become? One who improved his own lot at the expense of others? He could not live with himself if he did right by his title only to do his bride terribly wrong.
“Do you want to marry me?” he asked suddenly.
She stumbled. “Are you asking me to marry you?”
“I’m asking you if you want to marry me.”
“If you ask, I’ll say yes.”
“Because it’s what you want?”
“Because it’s my duty.” Her eyes were tired. “Isn’t it yours?”
Not like this. He was desperate, but not a monster.
“It is not my duty to beget children on someone who would prefer I not visit her bedchamber.”
The words were crude and ungentlemanly, but neither of them deserved a future in which he must force himself upon her to do his duty, and that she must allow herself to be violated to do hers.
“I know my responsibility,” she mumbled.
That did not sound promising at all.
“If you were not honor-bound to obey your parents,” he asked, “how interested would you be in pursuing wedlock to me?”
She completed a few steps of the minuet in silence, her eyes never leaving his.
And then she sighed. “About as interested as I imagine you are in me. In that, at least, we are well matched.”
He couldn’t do it. Not to her and not to himself. He would not become the devil she feared in the night. Not even for a dukedom.
“Then let me ease your mind.” He gave a tight smile. “I shall refrain from asking a question to which you would be forced to assent in opposition to your own wishes, thereby saving us several decades of misery. You’re free, Miss York. At least, as free as I have the power to grant you.”
An uneasy prickle slid down his spine. He pushed it aside. He would find a way to save his estate and his standing without hurting anyone else in the process.
Somehow.
“Thank you.” Miss York’s tight posture relaxed, and her steps resumed a steady rhythm. “Are congratulations due to Miss Wynchester?”
“No,” he said with a sigh. No matter how passionate he felt. “Since you’re familiar with duty, you understand why not.”
“Mmm,” was all Miss York said in reply.
Since he couldn’t choose Chloe, it was bloody good fortune he wasn’t in love with her or anything inopportune like that.
Miss York kept time with the music. “When will you take your painting back?”
Lawrence nearly tripped. “You don’t want it?”
She smiled. “I was only interested in your library.”
His neck flushed. “Until you noticed it contained fewer books every year?”
“No, that would be the best part: filling up the blank spaces with whatever I pleased.” Her steps were light. “I could tell you cared more about the artwork than the gala.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Is that why you said you liked the dancing hobgoblins?”
“Anyone liking it should have raised suspicion,” she chided, her eyes twinkling playfully now that she needn’t fear being burdened with Lawrence and his questionable taste in art. “I doubted anyone had complimented you