Page 75 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

“One moment, miss.”

He closed the door. Louisa stared at the polished brass knocker, shaped like a lion’s head, its mouth frozen mid-roar. She pressed her thumbnail into the seam of her glove and counted her breaths. After what felt like forever, the door opened.

“His Grace will see you in the morning room.”

She followed the butler through the entrance hall quietly, all the way to the drawing room.

Oliver stood at the window with his back to the door. His right hand hung at his side, and even from across the room she could see the bandage wrapped around his knuckles, white cotton stained faintly at the edges where blood had seeped through overnight.

The butler withdrew, and the door clicked shut behind her.

Oliver did not turn.

“You should not have come,” he said, still staring at the window, his shoulders stiffened.

“And yet here I am.”

He turned then, and her prepared speech collapsed. She had rehearsed it during the walk from Curzon Street: thank you for intervening, the gossip is intolerable, we must discuss what this means for the arrangement.

But suddenly, she found that she could not.

“How is your wrist?” he asked, his eyes darting to her wrist, then back to her face.

She glanced down at her left hand. The bruise from Dacre’s grip had deepened overnight into a band of mottled purple and yellow that circled the bone like a shackle. She had covered it with her glove, buttoned to the wrist, but the fabric pressed against the tender skin and she had been conscious of it with every step.

“It will heal.” She kept her voice steady. “Oliver, I came to talk about what happened.”

“What happened is that a man put his hands on you and I stopped him.”

“You struck him.”

“Yes.”

The word held no apology.

“Half of London is talking about it,” Louisa said softly. “Mrs. Pemberton’s footman told my mother’s cook before breakfast. My mother received two calls before nine o’clock, both from women who wanted to know whether the Duke of Ashford had been defending my honor, and if so, whether that meant what they believed it to mean.”

He scowled slightly. “Let them talk.”

“I cannot let them talk, and you know it. The arrangement, the progress with Frederick, the credibility I have spent months earning in rooms where I used to be invisible, all of it now sits beneath a story about a duke brawling in a corridor over Miss Fairchild.”

He crossed the room, not toward her but toward the writing desk, where he picked up a letter opener and set it down again without purpose.

“Dacre will not speak of it,” he said. “He was drunk, and he knows that if he contradicts my account, I will ensure every club in London hears exactly what he did in that corridor. His reputation is already thin. He cannot afford the cost.”

“That is not the point, Oliver!” She had raised her voice slightly, and his eyes narrowed at this.

“Then what is the point, Louisa?”

She took a breath, attempting to calm her racing heart.

“You cannot keep doing this,” she said at last. “You cannot appoint yourself my guardian every time the world becomes difficult. I managed a household at sixteen. I managed three Seasons of being overlooked without anyone coming to my rescue. I managed Frederick Langley smiling at me as though I were wallpaper for two years, and I did it alone, and I am still here.”

“This was not Frederick failing to notice you at a ball.” He set down the letter opener with a deliberate click against the desk. “This was a man with his hand around your wrist in a dark corridor.”

“I know what it was. I was there.”

“Then you know why I did what I did.”