Page 85 of The Truth About Love and Dukes

If he’d hoped for an immediate and decisive negation of that possibility, he was disappointed. Instead, his sister turned toward him and studied him, pondering the question for a long moment before she answered.

“A little, I suppose. You are very strict, and you can be very severe, sometimes. So was he. But . . .” She paused to consider further, then she said slowly, “But you’re different from Papa, and that’s because I know, I have known throughout every moment of my life, that you love me. Knowing that makes all the difference.”

“Does it?” He stared at her, and suddenly, he knew just what he had to do, and what he had so dismally failed to do. “Angie, you’re a darling,” he cried and grabbed her arms. Laughing at her astonishment in the wake of this fervent declaration, he gave her an appreciative kiss on the forehead. “And I hope like hell you’re right.”

Chapter 21

Irene was doodling flowers and hearts and little stick men on the sheet of notepaper in front of her. The stack of work to her right hand remained untouched. Her face, she hoped, was no longer puffy with tears after her crying jag this morning. On the other hand, since it was the latest in a week-long stretch of crying jags, it hardly mattered. And given the pain in her heart, she hardly cared what her face looked like anyway.

She ought to be glad—glad, damn it—that he’d come back to town for his mother’s wedding. At least some of the things she’d said had gotten through his thick skull. And the breach in his family was apparently healed. How could she not be glad?

The fact that three entire days had passed since then and he had not come to call on her was not at all surprising. His sisters had come twice to see Clara, but he had not come with them. Still, what else could she expect? He had offered her honorable marriage; she had refused him, giving him a blistering tongue-lashing in the process. From his point of view, what more was there to say?

She doubted she would ever see him again. Even if he might, perhaps, want to see her, there was probably some stupid rule against it in the ducal book of ethics.

Her throat closed up, and a tear plopped on her sheet of paper, blurring the lines of her stick man.

It wasn’t as if she regretted her decision, or the things she’d said. It wasn’t as if she wanted to be a duchess. She didn’t. The problem was that she’d fallen in love with a duke. One couldn’t, it was evident, have one without the other.

And the duke, worse luck, did not seem to be falling in love with her. He probably still wanted to bed her. He might still be prepared to marry her so that agreeable situation could continue. What girl wouldn’t swoon at such an offer?

Just thinking about it made her angry all over again. And more convinced than ever that she’d done the right thing. Refusing him, in fact, had been the only thing in this crazy three weeks she was absolutely sure of.

She nodded, decisively, and felt no better. Instead, she felt even more dissatisfied, not only with him, but also with the world and everything in it, including her own life. She’d been perfectly content with her life just as it was, happy even. Until Henry had come along.

As a result, she’d lost her virginity and gotten her heart broken. Just as catastrophic, she’d lost all interest in her work. Now, it seemed pointless and trivial. Why should anyone care how many silly ghosts were supposedly floating around Berry Pomeroy Castle? Did it matter if Lord Bransford was attending Sir John Falk’s house party? Lady Mary Bartholomew’s engagement had been called off? No matter. Irene scowled. There was a duke, eligible, wealthy, and impossible, who was available at present. Perhaps Lady Mary could throw in her lot with him. Lady Mary was the daughter of a marquess, after all. A perfect duchess in the making.

Irene paused in her doodling and wondered if maybe she ought to take a real holiday. Give up the paper altogether. Go to America and see Jonathan, or defy Papa’s wrath and bring Jonathan here. He could run the paper, and she could go off to Paris and regain her zest for life. She could sketch, or something.

Irene looked at her stick men and flowers with doubt. No, she supposed, a life of sketching wasn’t the best idea. And if Jonathan entered their house, Papa would probably call the police. Besides, she doubted going off anywhere in a fit of heartbreak would solve anything. She wanted to go back to being the person she had been before, someone who’d been happy and fulfilled and perfectly content here, in her own sphere. But one could not go back.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but the moment she did, she had to open them again, for thinking of secret nights in hotel rooms with Henry was not going to make her feel better. He was ashamed of those nights, torn by self-recrimination and guilt, and she’d had only the vaguest idea of it. How could she marry a man when most of the time she had no idea what he really thought and felt?

Why, she wondered for perhaps the hundredth time in the past week, couldn’t she have fallen in love with someone comfortable? Someone easy and amiable. Someone who loved her? Henry was impossibly stuffy and arrogant as the devil, and in his entire marriage proposal, there had not been even the barest mention of love. The closest he’d come had been one short reference to his heart. And any man who could not even see his way to allowing a daughter of his to go to university, even if it was the dream of her life, didn’t have a heart.

Another tear plopped onto the page, turning her painstaking sketch of a daisy into a gray cloud, bringing a pair of gray eyes to mind. With an abrupt move, she shoved her pencil behind her ear and put the sheet of doodling aside.

This had to stop. For heaven’s sake, she had work to do. She had to stop being this unholy mess of a girl. She had a life to live, and it did not, it could not, include him. His life did not include her. It was as simple and awful as that.

She reached for the list of companies that had advertising contracts up for renewal, but before she could peruse it, there was a knock on her open door, and she looked up to find Josie in the doorway.

“You wanted to see me?”

Irene straightened in her chair. “Yes, Josie. Come in, and close the door behind you.”

The gossip columnist’s dark brows lifted in surprise at her request about the door, but she complied, shutting it and coming to sit on the other side of the desk. “What’s all this?” she asked, peering at Irene over the rims of her spectacles, no doubt noting her puffy face and despondent air. “Missing high society, are we? Or perhaps,” she added, her shrewd gaze meeting Irene’s, “just one particular member of it?”

“Not at all,” she lied, working to put Henry out of her mind and don the brisk demeanor a newspaper publisher ought to have. “I wanted to see you because I’m going to be making a change to the content of the paper. A change that will profoundly affect you.”

“That sounds ominous.” Josie took a deep breath. “Just tell me straight out . . . am I getting the sack?”

“No, no,” she hastened to say. “Although after this conversation, it would be perfectly understandable if you wanted to leave, and if that’s the case, rest assured you’ll receive the most gushing, praiseworthy letter of character you can imagine.”

“Thanks, but now you’re really alarming me. What’s in the wind?”

“I’m changing the editorial content a bit.” She took a deep breath, bracing herself for what she knew she had to do. “I’m getting rid of all the gossip. No more Delilah Dawlish, I’m afraid.”

“My column?” Josie stared at her, understandably stunned. “But outside of Lady Truelove, it’s the most popular column you’ve got. Everyone loves it.”

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