Page 98 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

She pressed her palm flat against the door and heard his voice inside the hall, giving instructions to Phelps about forwarding the post.

The door opened.

Phelps stood in the frame, fully dressed despite the hour, his expression showing genuine alarm at the sight of the young woman on the duke’s doorstep before dawn.

“Miss Fairchild.”

She took a courageous step forward. “I need to see him.”

“His Grace is preparing to depart, miss. The carriage is…”

“I know that he wants to leave. I need to see him now.” Her voice softened slightly. “Please.”

Phelps hesitated. Behind him, the hall stretched toward the staircase, candlelit, smelling of beeswax and boot polish. A travelling cloak hung over the banister. A pair of leather gloves lay on the console table beside the morning post, sorted and tied, ready to travel.

Oliver’s boots sounded on the stairs before she saw him. He descended in his travelling coat, a letter in one hand, his attention on the page, speaking as he came down.

“Phelps, tell Hargreaves the second trunk can go on the boot. I will not need the books until…”

He looked up.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Oliver stood on the third step from the bottom, the letter hanging loose in his fingers. Louisa stood in the open doorway, her collar crooked and her hands trembling. The dawn light fell across the checkered marble between them, grey and cold, and the hall clock counted three seconds in the silence before Phelps, guided by forty years of service, stepped backward and vanished through the servants’ passage.

“Louisa.” Oliver’s voice came out rough. He cleared his throat. “What are you doing here?”

“You were leaving?”

“I am leaving. The carriage is loaded.”

“I know. I can see it.” She stepped inside. The marble was cold through the thin soles of her shoes. “You were going to leave London without telling me.”

He came down the remaining steps. He set the letter on the console table beside his gloves and stood at the foot of the staircase, six feet of checkered floor between them. The skin beneath his eyes was shadowed, and his cravat was tied with less precision than usual, as though he had knotted it in the dark.

“There was nothing to tell you,” he said at last. “Your engagement ended. I heard through the servants’ gossip, not from you, which told me everything I needed to know about where I stood. I assumed Frederick discovered the truth about the arrangement, and I assumed you blamed me for the consequences, and I decided the kindest thing I could offer you was my absence.”

Her heart twitched at his words, and she nearly took another step forward, but her body would not obey.

“You assumed wrong.”

He stared at her.

“Frederick did not end the engagement,” she said. “I did.”

Oliver went very still. His hand found the newel post behind him, and his fingers closed around the carved wood.

He cast his eyes down, though not before she saw the light flicker in them. When he looked up, his voice was lighter. “You ended it?”

She nodded.

“Yes. I am the one who ended it. Because you see… I realized something. I can’t… I can’t marry him.”

“Why?”

Outside, one of the horses stamped and the harness jingled. The coachman’s voice carried faintly through the door, asking the footman whether the departure time had changed.

“Because the ring never fit,” she said. “He guessed my size and never asked. And I wore it for weeks without telling him, because I had spent so long wanting to be chosen that I convinced myself the wrong fit was close enough.”

Oliver said nothing. He stood at the foot of the stairs holding the newel post as though releasing it would cost him his balance.