Page 6 of A Virgin to Tempt the Duke

She had thought, during the long walk through the back streets, about what she would say if it came to this.

“I am asking for a few days. Perhaps a week. Long enough for me to write to my great-aunt in Edinburgh and make some kind of arrangement. After that, I will be entirely out of your way.” She held his gaze. “I have no wish to bring scandal to this house, or to Rachel. She is my closest friend. I would never deliberately put her in harm’s way. Everything I am asking is designed to limit the damage to your family.”

“If you cared about limiting the damage to my family,” Frederick said, “you would not have come here at all.”

The words landed hard on Anna’s chest. She felt them, but she did not flinch.

“She is here, Frederick,” Rachel snapped. “She has already come. Sending her away in a carriage does not undo that!” Rachel took a step closer to her brother. “It only ensures she has nowhere safe to go. And you know what Birchall is.Everyoneknows what Birchall is.”

“What I know about Birchall,” Frederick said, running a hand through his full, trim beard, “is not the point.”

“Then what is the point? That the law says she belongs to him? Is that your argument? She could beyoursister; would she be only property under the law then?”

“The point is that there is no clean solution here. I do not make the rules, or the law. There is no version of this story in which your friend stays in this house and walks away without some consequence.” He looked at Anna. “I am trying to limit how much damage is done.”

“Anna is already damaged.”

The words hung in the room. Anna studied him in the silence. The strong jaw beneath the beard hinted that she couldn’t easily win her case, but the amber eyes were guarded rather than cold.

He was, she noted distantly, a handsome man. She might have dwelled on it properly if her body wasn’t trembling. She drew her arms over her chest.

In her trying to soothe herself, her sleeve slipped.

Her face grew hot as she realized what was laid bare.

She did not look down but watched him look at her. It was only a moment. His gaze moved to her wrist, to the marks there, the dark mottled purple of a hand that had clamped and dragged upand down steps. Then it moved back to her face, very quickly, and something in his expression shifted.

Not pity. Not sympathy either. Something harder than both, and closer to the bone. Almost as if he understood.

Anna held very still, and said nothing.

And then, from the entrance hall came voices all too recognizable.

“Where is she? Anna! Anna, come here this instant!”

Loud and sharp, multiple, all at once, and beneath them, one, smooth and carrying, the voice of a man who considered his own volume an act of courtesy to whatever room he was entering.

Anna went cold from the feet up.

Rachel’s hand found her arm. “Is that…?”

“Yes,” Anna nodded frantically.

A door, somewhere. A butler’s voice, precise and smooth, an array of diplomatic phrases designed for stalling. And then Jonathan’s, pitched to carry.

“…entirely within my rights, and I suggest you reconsider?—”

“His Grace is not expecting company?—”

“You will see to it?—”

“Frederick. Do not make this worse,” Rachel pleaded.

Anna watched Rachel look at her brother, her eyes bright and direct. The Duke stood in the center of the room, his expression unreadable, and his eyes still firmly on Anna.

He did not speak. She could hear footsteps now, more than one set, moving toward them down the hall.

Please.