Page 92 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

The words tumbled over her lips, and she breathed a sigh of relief when they were out.

Frederick did not move. His hand rested on the back of the good chair, his weight balanced on one heel, his expression arranged into polite attention. He looked as though he were waiting for the second half of a sentence.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I cannot marry you, Frederick. I am breaking the engagement.”

He laughed. A short, startled sound, more reflex than amusement. He crossed to the window and back, three paces each way, then stopped and faced her.

“You are nervous. It is perfectly natural. My mother was terrified before her wedding. She told me she nearly fled to Bath.” He smiled, kind and patient, already solving the problem by explaining it away. “These feelings will pass, Louisa. Once we are settled at Langley Park, you will wonder what all the fuss was about.”

“I am not nervous.”

“You are overwhelmed. The Season has been long, the preparations exhausting. I have been asking too much of you.”

“You have not been asking enough.” She held his gaze. “That is the problem.”

The smile faded. She watched it leave his face in stages, the warmth receding from his mouth, his brow, his eyes, replaced by a stillness she had never seen on him before. His hands settled flat against his knees.

“Tell me what has happened,” he said. “Tell me what has changed.”

“Nothing has changed. That is precisely what I am trying to say.” She remained standing. She needed to stand. If she sat, the chair would catch her, and the cushions would soften the edges of what she had to say, and she could not afford softness. “You have been the same man since the day we met. You are kind. You are generous. You are attentive in all the ways you believe matter. And you have never once asked me a question you did not already know the answer to.”

Frederick’s fingers pressed into the upholstered arm. “I have asked you a great many questions.”

“You have asked me about the conservatory. About the wedding breakfast. About whether I prefer glass panels or sash windows. You have asked whether I enjoy roses, whether I ride, whether I take sugar in my tea.” She heard her voice climbing and forced it level. “You have never asked what I read, or why. You have never asked what I think about when I am quiet. You told Lord Cresswell I was boring him when I tried to share a story about a boundary dispute, and you did not understand why I stopped talking for the rest of the evening.”

“That was a dinner party, Louisa. I was trying to protect you from”

“From being heard. You were protecting me from being heard.” Her fingernails pressed into her palms. “At every gathering, you have praised my composure, my sensibility, my capability. You have told me I am restful. You have told me I would make a fine wife and a sensible mother. You have listed these qualities as though reading from a catalogue, Frederick, and not once have you asked whether the woman in the catalogue is the woman standing in front of you.”

He was quiet. The clock measured five strokes of its pendulum before he spoke again.

“This is about Ashford.”

She could feel the heat rise to her cheeks.

“It is not about Oliver.”

He scoffed and barked out a laugh. “You are breaking an engagement three weeks before the wedding, and you expect me to believe the Duke of Ashford has nothing to do with it.” Frederick rose from the chair. He crossed to the fireplace and stood facing the empty grate, his back to her, his shoulders rigid beneath his coat. “He spent the entire Season at your side. He danced with you, walked with you, whispered to you at every gathering in London. Half of society believed he was courting you before I ever proposed. And now you tell me this has nothing to do with him.”

“Oliver did not make this decision. I made it.”

“When? Tonight? Or weeks ago, while you were sitting beside me at dinners and letting me believe we had a future?” He turned from the grate. His voice had changed, each word clipped and precise. “Because it does not sound like you, Louisa. The woman I proposed to did not argue. She did not make demands. She did not accuse me of failing to ask the right questions.”

“No.” Louisa kept her voice level. “She did not. And that should trouble you, Frederick, because you chose a woman who would never argue. You were not looking for a partner. You were looking for a wife who would agree, and nod, and sit quietly while you arranged her life without consulting her. And when I finally stopped being quiet, you blamed Oliver rather than ask yourself why I had been silent for so long.”

He gripped the mantelpiece. His knuckles whitened against the marble.

“You put milk in my tea for six weeks,” she said. “I pushed the cup aside every single time. You never noticed. You never noticed because noticing would have required curiosity, and you were never curious about me. You were satisfied.”

“I have been more than generous with you.”

“You have been generous. Generosity is not the same as interest. You told me where we would live, how often I could see Eleanor, which charities I could support. You wrote a schedule for every day of our marriage and handed it to me as though I were a new housekeeper learning her duties.” She took a step toward him. “You never asked what I wanted because it did not occur to you that my answer might differ from yours.”

“I was building us a life, Louisa.”

“You were building a life for yourself and installing me in it. You wanted a wife who would run your household, host your dinners, produce your heirs, and never once disrupt the order you had planned. And I nearly agreed to it, Frederick, because I spent so long wanting to be chosen that I forgot to ask what I was being chosen for.”