Page 82 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

“There is truly no need.”

She frowned and looked at him. “It is my settlement, Frederick. My name will be on it.”

He smiled. “And I shall make certain every clause protects your interests. That is my responsibility. You need not worry about any of it.”

She looked down at her hands. Was this what she had been dreaming of? He was offering her safety. He was offering her comfort. He was offering her a life in which she would never be asked to make a difficult decision, because Frederick would make them all for her.

Oliver would not have chosen for her.

The thought arrived unbidden and cut cleanly. Oliver would have handed her the settlement and asked what she wanted changed. He would have argued with her about the clauses, laughed when she cited precedents she had read in her father’s old legal almanac, and spent the carriage ride home debating whether the pin money was sufficient or insulting. He would have treated her opinion as though it mattered.

The curricle turned out of the park onto Park Lane. Frederick did not notice that she was quiet.

“We are invited to dinner with Lord Ashford,” he announced. “On Thursday.”

Louisa simply nodded.

“Excellent. I shall send word.” He glanced at her. “Fresh air suits you. You have more color than usual.”

He said it warmly, approvingly, surveying her the way he might survey a newly purchased garden showing its first bloom. Louisa looked at the houses passing on her left. Frederick hummed faintly under his breath, and he did not ask what she was thinking because it had not occurred to him that she might be thinking at all.

He pulled the curricle to a halt outside her door and climbed down first, then offered his hand. She took it. His grip was firm, correct, practiced. He handed her down exactly as instructed, exactly as he always did.

“I shall call tomorrow at four,” he said, and kissed her gloved knuckles. His lips barely touched the leather. “We must discuss the wedding breakfast. My mother has opinions about the menu, and I should like us to present a united front.”

Louisa frowned slightly at this. “A… a united front? It is a menu for our wedding.”

He nodded pleasantly. “Precisely. Good evening, my dear.”

She watched the curricle turn the corner. The sound of hooves on cobblestones faded, and the street was quiet, just a lamplighter working his way toward the far end of the road and a cat watching him from a windowsill.

Inside, her mother was writing acceptances at the parlor desk, a fresh pot of ink beside her and the good stationery fanned in an arc. She looked up when Louisa entered. “How was the drive?”

“Lovely. Frederick sends his regards.”

Her mother frowned slightly. “You do not sound like a happy woman, Louisa.”

Louisa shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I am tired, Mama. That is all.”

“You are engaged to a fine man, Louisa. A little fatigue is natural. There is so much to arrange.” She dipped her pen and returned to her letters, already composing the next line before the ink was dry.

Louisa climbed the stairs. In her room, she closed the door and stood in the fading light from the window. The Guizot treatise sat on the shelf beside her bed, between two volumes of poetry. She reached for it, opened to the page she had marked, and read the first line again.

Every child possesses, from the earliest age, the capacity to learn, provided the opportunity is not withheld by the indifference of those who govern them.

She read it twice. Then she sat on the edge of her narrow bed, still wearing her gloves, the sapphire hidden beneath the leather, and pressed the open book against her chest.

Frederick admired her. He would provide for her. He would give her a well-ordered home. He would never know her. And until this moment, sitting in the grey dusk with a French treatise held tight against her breastbone, she had not realized how much that mattered.

CHAPTER 25

“Why does it look as though you are about to attend your own funeral?”

Sebastian dropped into the chair beside Oliver and stretched his legs toward the fire, crossing his ankles on the brass fender. The club was quieter than usual for a Thursday evening. Half of London had gone to the Davenport ball, which was precisely why Oliver had come here instead.

“I am reading,” Oliver mumbled, turning a page to prove his point, though he could not say for the life of him what the words had said.

“You are holding a newspaper, and you’ve been reading the very same page for over thirty minutes.” Sebastian plucked the paper from his hands and glanced at it. “Corn prices. How riveting.”