Page 34 of An Innocent Bride for the Duke

“But it cannot be!” blurted out their now-discomposed neighbor. “My cousin has always intended…”

“I have never met your cousin, Lady Huxley,” pointed out the duke, entirely unruffled, “and I believe Lady Louisa knows him only slightly. If Lord Ashbourne failed to offer his hand at some earlier point, that is his affair. Lady Louisa is engaged to me now. All is fair in love and war, as they say.”

Lady Huxley goggled at him. Whatever she had expected to find when she came marching over to Rosemere this morning, it was not this self-assured nobleman laying claim to Louisa’s hand. Lady Esher and Louisa herself were only slightly less astonished although they managed to hide it from Lady Huxley.

“I must go home at once,” the blonde woman announced, putting her gloves back on with far less deliberation than she had taken them off. “I am most surprised by all this, Lady Esher. I did think that matters were arranged between our families, even if they were moving slowly.”

“Thank you for calling, Lady Huxley,” Aunt Beatrice responded blandly, rising and going to the bell pull to summon the butler. “Harper will see you out.”

“I shall be writing to my cousin at once,” added Lady Huxley as though this was a threat to be feared. “I expect Edmund will be most unhappy. Good day to you all.”

Louisa shivered again as she watched their neighbor go. While she barely remembered Lord Ashbourne personally, and was still amazed to find he had thought even dimly of making her an offer, she was still beginning to dislike the man, only from Lady Huxley’s mentions of him.

A large warm hand came to rest over hers on the table and Louisa turned to look at the man beside her, still glad of his presence and still bewildered by his behavior.

“All will be well,” he said softly, squeezing her hand and making her feel for at least very short moment as though it really might be true.

When Aunt Beatrice turned back to the table again and raised an eyebrow at the sight of their hands conjoined on the table, the duke did not pull back. Instead, he met her aunt’s gaze steadily.

“Lady Esher, with your permission, I would like to walk in the gardens with Louisa – alone. There are things that must be said this morning and they are best said privately.”

Things that must be said…

Given that the Duke of Northwick had already begun telling people that they were betrothed, was this his way of referring to some sort of grudging proposal of marriage that neither of them really wanted?

Such a thought was bitter to Louisa, who had dreamed of grand romantic gestures and a heroic rescuer kneeling before her to offer his hand by the edge of the sea, or in some other dramatic landscape. Not like this…

“Of course, Your Grace,” replied Aunt Beatrice after some moments of consideration.

Like Louisa, she might have considered refusing, but then accepted that there was no real choice.

“Shall we?” Benedict asked Louisa, offering his arm after receiving her aunt’s approval. “Or would you like to finish your breakfast first?”

“I couldn’t eat anything,” she replied with resignation, getting to her feet. “I had no appetite even before Lady Huxley arrived.”

“If your neighbor returns, with or without her cousin, I would be glad to deal with her,” noted Benedict.

In a grim way, he had enjoyed that confrontation with Lady Huxley. The breakfast room door having been left open, Benedict had overheard the conversation from the moment Louisa had disavowed any understanding on her side with the dilatory Earl of Ashbourne.

“Thank you,” she returned quietly, and laid her hand on his arm, sending an unexpected frisson through his body with this simple and unassuming touch. “Lady Huxley’s visit this morning was unexpected and she…took me by surprise.”

“I gathered that, and you need not thank me, Louisa,” Benedict told her as they proceeded into the hallway. “I know my duty.”

Speaking of duty, Benedict had intended to come straight into breakfast and lay his cards on the table in front of the Rosemere ladies. He had lain awake for most of the night, waiting for the dawn. It was not a decision that he agonized over because it was already made it in the moments after the drawing room door opened last night.

Benedict had known then that that he would offer his hand in marriage to Louisa. It was the only honorable course, regardless of his feelings about matrimony, or hers. This morning, he had meant to be calm, businesslike and reassuring in proposing a small, quick wedding, expecting that Louisa would wary of him personally and frightened for her future.

Lady Huxley’s presence had thrown Benedict’s rational plans somewhat. Her assertions of some claim to Louisa on behalf of this absentee cousin, had particularly stirred Benedict’s blood. How dare these people so blatantly and roughly question the virtue of a sensitive young woman to whom they had no real connection?

Lady Louisa Ascot was not some young mare at the horse sales to be critically examined and haggled over. She deserved better than Lady Huxley and Lord Ashbourne. Frankly, she deserved far better than Benedict, but he had only himself to offer.

They walked through the house and towards the conservatories where the doors to the gardens would be open, temporarily silent but both on the edge of speaking.

“I must ask you why, Your Grace,” Louisa put to Benedict at last. “Why did you tell Lady Huxley that we were betrothed? The servants will have overheard too and it will be out in public already, just like…”

Shyly, she dropped her words and her eyes from him, but the sentence was easy to complete in his head. Just like last night, and their ill-advised embrace in the drawing room…

“It was best to get word of our marriage out as quickly as possible,” Benedict told her. “That is the only way to scotch whatever rumors are already running after last night. If we had waited a week, the stories could have been entirely out of control and the wedding only a coda to the destruction of your reputation.”