Page 23 of Caught by the Forbidden Duke
“Well,” he cleared his throat, but obviously did not back down, “the kind of woman with a brother worth knowing…and a name that smooths certain paths. I can be very certain that he is not after your dowry or, at least, not only that.”
Annabelle cocked her brow. “Oh? And what other reason is there, pray tell?”
Dominic eyed her for a full second before he opened his mouth. “He is after what you open for him. The rooms you are admitted to, the introductions that follow, the particular quality of being seen beside a sister of a duke. Particularly the Duke of Fairmont.” He set his glass down. “In a year, he will have what he came to London for. You will have a husband who was genuinely pleasant to you the entire time, and the slow, faint awareness that you were the third woman on his list.”
Now, Annabelle stopped and turned to face him. They had drifted to a quieter stretch near the far wall during this exchange, out of the room’s main current. It was not quite private, but itwasout of range of anyone with the inclination to listen.
“You have found a flaw in every man I have spoken to this entire season. Lord Caverley’s estranged father. Lord Hartfield’s broken engagement. Lord Selway’s inadequate town house. And now Lord Penmore’s finances.” She looked at him steadily. “By your standards, there is no acceptable man alive.”
The Duke cleared his throat, but he shamelessly did not relent despite her directly calling him out. “There are…acceptable men.” He agreed, “I have simply not yet identified the right ones.”
Annabelle narrowed her eyes at him. “On what basis? You have disqualified everyone who has approached me.”
“And I am not doing this for sport, either, Lady Annabelle,” he said, turning his glass once. “You told me what you wanted: a decent man, honest character, someone who treats people well when nothing is to be gained from it. That is a clear standard. And I am telling you that a man in Lord Penmore’s situation is careful about everything he does and says, because he cannot afford otherwise. That kind of care is very easy to mistake for honesty.”
“You think I can’t tell the difference,” she said.
“I think most people can’t.”
“Did Lucien not tell you what kind of house I grew up in?” She looked toward the middle distance. Her voice stayed even, without grievance in it.
He bristled. “What do you mean?”
“My father valued order above everything. My uncle was worse; he valued obedience,” she answered. “You learn early what it costs to want things openly, and you learn to keep what matters to yourself. Approval was not given freely. It was withheld, or granted, and you learned to read every room before you spoke in it.” She turned back to him. “So when you tell me Lord Penmore is careful, I know exactly what that looks like. I know what it looks like at close range, over years. It does not look like him.”
He turned his glass in his hand again. “Penmore is not wrong for you in character,” he said. “He is wrong for you in circumstance.” He set the glass down on the ledge. “I’ll lookproperly before the Greyton masquerade and tell you who is worth your time.”
She had offered him something true about herself, and he had listened and had given her nothing in return. But she found, standing here now, that she did not want to press him for it. Not tonight.
“Thank you,” she said instead. “For this evening.”
He simply looked at her, and his eyes were very blue and entirely still, and the back of her neck went warm in a way she could not account for and did not particularly welcome.
“Good night, Lady Annabelle,” he said, inclined his head, and walked away.
Annabelle turned toward the nearest window and gave her head one small, deliberate shake, as though she could dislodge the sensation by force of will. She could not, quite.
She pressed her fingertips briefly to the cool glass and kept her eyes on the street below until Helena appeared at her elbow, and by then she had decided, firmly, that it was simply the heat of the room.
Chapter Seven
“Was that right?” James asked.
He was turned toward her on the bench, hands folded in his lap now, with the careful stillness of someone who has finished something and is waiting to be told whether the thing was real.
Annabelle had not moved. She had been watching his hands and listening, and she was quiet for a moment longer than he expected, because she had learned early that he always noticed a false response and weighed it accordingly.
“Yes,” she said. “All the way through. Both hands.”
He looked back at the keys with the expression he wore when he was verifying a conclusion he had already arrived at privately. He pressed C once, softly, not practicing, only checking that the note was still where it had been.
“There was a gap,” he said. “After the third phrase.”
“There was. You closed it.”
“I pushed through it.”
“That is how you close it,” she said. “You’ll push less each time.”
