Page 4 of A Bride for the Ruthless Duke

That struck him. Henry looked down once more, and when he spoke again, his voice had lost some of its rehearsed finish.

“She is not unpleasant to look at.”

Theodore’s brows lifted. “That is the phrase you chose?”

Henry colored. “I am trying not to sound as if I am displaying her in a shop window.”

“You have already brought her to the street.”

The words did their work. Henry closed his eyes briefly, then opened them. “She possesses a very agreeable countenance, and few gentlemen would fail to acknowledge her charms. She is gentle, steady, and unspoiled by vanity. She has had little enough reason to be vain, given what our circumstances have become.”

“Your tenderness arrives late.”

“I am aware of it.”

The answer was quiet enough to be interesting.

Theodore sat forward, placing both hands flat upon the desk. Henry’s gaze fixed on them, then rose with visible reluctance.

“You will look at me while you answer this,” Theodore said.

Henry did.

“Does she possess any knowledge of what you purpose to do?”

The young man’s face changed. Nothing so useful as collapse or plea, only the small failure of his mouth to form an immediate answer, and the brief, miserable lowering of his lashes before he forced them up again.

“No, Your Grace.”

“She does not know that you are here.”

“No.”

“She does not know that her brother has offered her as a solution to his creditors.”

Henry’s voice thinned. “No, Your Grace.”

Theodore watched him without blinking. “Has she expressed a wish to enter into matrimony?”

Henry answered a shade too late.

It was less than a second, hardly more than the space between a breath drawn and a breath released, yet Theodore saw it. The boy’s eyes shifted past his left shoulder, toward the window and the grey afternoon beyond it, then returned with the guarded look of a man who had found a truth and chosen to step around it.

“There was someone,” Theodore said.

Henry’s fingers tightened around the brim of his hat. “There was no understanding.”

“That was not my question.”

“Nothing was settled, Your Grace. Nothing was promised on either side.”

“That is not the same as nothing.”

“It came to nothing.”

“Did she think so?”

Henry looked down at the hat in his lap. “I cannot answer for what my sister thought.”