Page 91 of A Deal with the Broken Duke
“You must hear what I have to say first. Just think about this. If you and I were to marry—”
How could she possibly be so bold?
“I’mnotgoing to marry,” he snapped. “I’m not going to marry anyone.”
“But just imagine this. If you and Ididmarry, no one would ever bother you about it again,” she persisted. “No one would ever seek your hand again. No one would ever question you about when you were going to marry, or about why you had decided not to. Everyone would leave you alone. EvenIwould leave you alone. I wouldn’t plague you. It would be almost as good as not being married at all, except that you would be able to say you had a wife.”
“And why would you want such a thing?” he asked. “Why would anybody want that?”
“Because I want to be married to a duke,” she admitted. “I want to be a duchess.”
“Well, you are direct.”
“There’s no point in not being direct. It’s the only way we ever get what we want in this life.”
“This is one thing you aren’t going to get. I’m not interested in marrying. Not under any conditions.”
Lady Annie sighed. “I suppose you know I was envious of your engagement to my cousin.”
Sometimes it was easy to forget that Lady Annie and Susan had been cousins. They had been so very different. It was impossible to imagine Susan behaving as aggressively as Lady Annie was now.
“I would have thought you’d have found it in your heart to be happy for her,” Harry said. “And I wouldn’t have imagined that you would try to take her place after her death.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” Lady Annie argued.
“Isn’t it? You’ve just told me yourself that you were jealous of her. Now you’re telling me that you want to live the life that was intended for her. You want to be Duchess of Burghley.”
“Any lady would want to be Duchess of Burghley,” Lady Annie said coolly. “And I know my cousin, Your Grace. She would not resent me stepping forward. She would want this for me.”
“I never had the impression that the two of you were particularly close.”
“You can’t possibly imagine that you knew her better than I did,” Lady Annie said. “Susan and I knew one another all our lives, Your Grace. We were children together. When we were young, we used to talk about what it would be like to meet gentlemen one day. To be courted, and to be married. She knew my desires every bit as well as I knew hers. We may have grown more distant in adulthood, but what of that? It’s only natural. But I tell you now, Susan would have given us her blessing.”
“Perhaps she would,” Harry agreed. He had to admit there was every possibility that Lady Annie knew better than he did what Susan would have wanted. “But it matters not. It doesn’t change my answer.”
Lady Annie scowled. “All that time she was ill, I believed you cared for her.”
Harry’s ire was piqued. “I did care for her,” he hissed. “I still do.”
“And yet, in her absence, you refuse to do what she would have wanted? You got engaged for your father’s sake after his death. But you won’t do the same for Susan. How much could you really have cared?”
“I won’t listen to this.” Harry shook his head. “I won’t allow you to tarnish what I felt for Susan, Lady Annie. She never said anything to me about a desire for the two of us to marry.”
“And if she had said it, you would have done it?”
“Well, no, I probably wouldn’t. No one wishes more than I that I had never tried to fulfill my father’s wishes when it came to my engagement. That’s a terrible way to convince me to try to do anything. Your cousin died because of me.”
It was a rare person who knew about his curse, but he knew he had mentioned it in front of her once or twice, back when the wound was fresh. She knew.
‘You remember how she was at the end,” Lady Annie said. “She couldn’t have made her wishes known about anything. She couldn’t even speak. There you were, hovering over her, putting that willow bark in her tea and holding her hand, waiting for her to say something to you. How can you claim to know what she would have wanted?”
“I don’t know how you can speak about her with such disdain,” Harry growled.
And then he paused.
“What did you say?”
Lady Annie frowned. “You heard what I said. Susan would have approved of what I’m suggesting, and if you are unwilling to take my word for it—”
