Page 99 of His Arranged Duchess
I am the luckiest man on earth.
She was immaculately dressed, as always, in a plain green silk gown, her hair artlessly but becomingly pinned up on top of her hair. Nobody would imagine that they’d been energetically making love a mere hour ago.
He paused before the closed parlour door, breathing in deeply. Frances squeezed his hand.
“Ready?” she whispered.
He nodded. “I am ready.”
Pushing open the door, he stepped inside.
A woman and a man sat side by side on a sofa. The man, clearly ill at ease, leaped to his feet. The woman rose more slowly, eyeing Lucien squarely.
“Lucien,” she stated. “You’re here.”
He nodded. “Yes. It is good to see you, Mary-Jane. You have changed.”
An eyebrow flickered. “You have not.”
While James and Lucien had resembled each other strongly, Mary-Jane was something else. She was fair-haired and blue-eyed, with pale skin and a petite, delicate frame.
The eyes and hair were the same, but she was so changed that Lucien could scarcely recognize her. She was stronger-looking, with stockier limbs and tanned skin from working outside. She wore a plain grey dress, almost a peasant’s gown, and there were rough patches on her hands from manual labour. There were lines at the sides of her mouth, too. Smile lines, he realized. Mary-Jane had been smiling and laughing a good deal over the past few years.
Before he could speak again, the man stepped grimly forward. He was tall, well-built, with dark hair, dark eyes, and a well-kept beard.
“I am not sure you remember me. I am Thomas Baker,” he said firmly, and Lucien noticed that he clutched Mary-Jane’s hand as if clutching a lifeline. “Mary-Jane and I are married.”
“Yes, so I heard,” Lucien responded coolly. “And of course I remember you, Thomas. We’ve met when you worked in the stables, isn’t that right?”
Thomas flushed. “I’m no stable boy now. We own our own farm and work it ourselves. It’s very profitable.”
“You make my sister work on a farm?”
“No, Lucien, I choose to work on a farm,” Mary-Jane spoke up. There were traces of her soft, genteel accent, but her voice was different to what he remembered, too. “I work on the farm, and I take care of our children. Twins, four years old.”
Lucien bit his lip, nodding. “Well, I’m glad to see you. You took a great deal of finding, you know.”
Mary-Jane had the grace to look embarrassed. “I wanted to leave it all behind. A fresh start, you know. If I’d known that you were back in England, I would have come to see you. But we live out in the country, and we don’t hear what goes on in London. I like it that way.”
“I’m glad.”
An awkward silence spread between them, the four of them looking uncertainly at each other.
At that moment, the door opened, and Gray bustled in, beaming, bearing a tea-tray.
“I took the liberty of bringing tea and cake, Your Graces,” he explained, happiness radiating from him. “To celebrate Lady M… Forgive me, to celebrateMrs. Baker’sreturn.”
“You must call me Mary-Jane, Gray,” Mary-Jane said, laughing. “I think I have missed you more than my brothers.”
Gray beamed. He set down the tray and left, closing the door behind him. Lucien cleared his throat, taking a step towards his sister. Frances followed at his side, and he noticed that Thomas Baker stuck to Mary-Jane’s side in a similar way.
He truly loves her,he thought.Well, he must do, as she wouldn’t have received a penny of our money. Whatever they have, they’ve built on their own.
“You were here, then, when James died?” Lucien murmured.
A flash of pain crossed Mary-Jane’s face, and she nodded tightly. “Yes, I was. I shall tell you about it one day, but not today. It was a riding accident, and more sudden than we could have expected.”
Having stepped closer, he could see a small scar on the tip of Mary-Jane’s chin. It was a memento of that last terrible beating their father had given her, requiring stitches and careful dressing.
