“You Should Marry My Sister,” the Girl Told the Duke — The Duke Smiled at the Child’s Bold Proposal

Chapter 7

He did it at breakfast, which was the boldest possible hour.

Ottilie was present. So were the steward, the housekeeper, the chaplain, and four guests who had stayed over. Adrian stood beside his chair before anyone had been served, and Maren, watching from her seat, saw him steady himself with a hand flat on the tablecloth.

“Yesterday, at luncheon, I made a promise broader than my present authority,” he said. “My intention was honourable. My wording was careless. I told you that no ward of this house would be removed without being heard, and I told you so before I had verified the powers under which such a removal could be ordered. That was not a kindness to anyone in this room. It was a comfort I gave myself.”

Not a single chair moved.

“Until the trust is settled,” he continued, “every matter concerning a ward will come before me personally, and I will answer publicly for each decision. That is less than I said yesterday. It is what I can do today.”

He sat down.

No one applauded. Ottilie looked at her plate with the placid expression of a woman filing something away. The chaplain, who had known Adrian since he was six, looked at him with an interest Maren could not read.

Under the embarrassment she saw relief, and she understood that she had been right: he had traded a shining promise for a small one he could keep, and he knew exactly what it had cost.

Later she found him beside the schoolhouse with a list of repairs in his hand, in the grey hour before dinner, when the wood went blue with dusk.

“What else do you require?” he asked.

The old answer rose first, the way it always did. Nothing. Asking had once given people the exact measure of where to hurt her.

Maren looked past him at the cottage — at Nell, who was chasing a yellow butterfly along the fence by the gate, her skirts muddy to the knee and her hair coming down — and then back at Adrian.

“I require you to listen before you promise.”

“I will.”

His answer held no ornament at all. No of course, no you have my word, none of the furniture a gentleman uses to make a small concession sound large.

“And when I fail,” he said, “I will tell you.”

His smile came back slowly, like weather clearing.

“That seems a fairer mercy than I deserve.”

It was not a declaration of love. Maren had received one of those once, from a man whose hands had not stopped moving while he said it, and she knew the difference in her bones.

This was worse, in a way. This was not a feeling. It was a way of living, offered by someone who appeared to have decided on it deliberately, and it frightened her more than any passion could have.

She said nothing. He let her say nothing.

And in the morning Nell came running into her chamber before breakfast, white-faced and crying, and Maren learned precisely why a child of eight had looked at a room full of strangers and thrown flowers at a duke.