Page 69 of The Duke's Sinful Deal
“No,” Arabella said, stepping fully into the doorway, “only publicly.”
The silence that followed was immediate and complete.
Both women turned at once.
Arabella recognized neither of them by name, though one was older, perhaps the wife of a gentleman with enough standing to make her confident in every room she entered, while the other seemed a little younger, though not young enough to be excused for foolishness. Behind them, half concealed by a table layered with trims and ribbons, two debutantes stood utterly still, their eyes widened with the unmistakable alarm and fascination of girls who knew at once that they were present at something they would remember.
The older woman recovered first. “Your Grace,” she said, color rising visibly beneath her powder. “I had not realized?—”
“No,” Arabella replied, her tone even, “I do not believe you had.”
The younger woman lowered her gaze at once, then lifted it again as though uncertain whether retreat or explanation might better serve her.
“If we have given offense—” she began.
“If?” Arabella repeated, though the word came without sharpness. She stepped further into the room, not hurriedly, not in anger, but with the calm deliberateness of someone unwilling to leave anything unfinished. “Let us not pretend confusion where there is none. You were speaking of my marriage. Freely, and with sufficient confidence that one might mistake rumor for truth.”
The two younger girls had gone so still that even the ribbons at their sleeves no longer moved.
The older woman pressed her lips together. “It was not my intention that you should hear such a discussion.”
“I imagine not,” Arabella said. “That does not lessen the convenience of your having had it.”
The younger of the two society women took a breath, trying for composure. “Your Grace, we spoke only from concern. It is natural that such a sudden marriage should invite discussion.”
“Discussion,” Arabella said quietly, “is one thing. Declaring that my husband was compelled to marry me is quite another.”
Neither woman answered at once.
Arabella let the silence rest upon them, not because she wished to humiliate them, but because she wished them to feel, if only briefly, the weight of words they had treated too lightly.
“There was no compulsion,” she said at last, and her voice was not raised, yet it carried through the room with a clarity that stilled even the faint sounds from the outer shop. “No one forced his hand. No one cornered him. No one placed him in a position from which he could not withdraw. My husband made his decision as I made mine. Deliberately. With full understanding of what was required.”
The older woman swallowed. “Of course, Your Grace, we would never presume?—”
“But you did presume,” Arabella said, still without losing that calm, steady tone. “You presumed upon my marriage, upon my husband’s judgment, and upon my own reputation, all while relying upon the account of a half-sister whose regard for me has never been generous.”
This time, the younger woman’s color deepened to something near crimson. “We were misinformed.”
Arabella inclined her head slightly. “You were willing to be.”
That landed more clearly than anything else she had said.
The pointed silence that followed was not empty. It felt as though the whole room had shifted around her, every eye fixed,every breath carefully measured. One of the debutantes looked from Arabella to the two older women and back again with such transparent intensity that Arabella knew at once the matter would travel far beyond this room before the week was over.
Good.
Let it travel properly, then.
The older woman found her voice first. “You are right to correct us, Your Grace. I offer my sincerest apologies. We had no intention of doing you injury.”
“No,” Arabella said, and the faintest hint of tiredness entered her expression now, though not her voice. “I do not think injury was your object. Curiosity was. But curiosity is seldom harmless when it concerns a woman’s character.”
The younger woman nodded at once. “You have every reason to rebuke us. I am ashamed of what you overheard.”
Ashamed, perhaps. Convinced, Arabella doubted.
She could see it in the older one’s face most of all, the careful rearranging of features, the social instinct to retreat with dignity once one had been caught. The apology was genuine enough to preserve appearances. Whether belief accompanied it was another matter entirely.
