Page 26 of A Wicked Duke's Arranged Marriage
How could he allow himself to fantasize about that oceanic pair that had so disrupted him?
He loved Martha. He had always loved Martha.
But hell take him if Josephine wasn’t making him think about and remember things he had thought long dead inside himself.
Chapter 8
The announcement didn’t go over like a whisper but like a shout heard throughout the countryside – and, Josephine imagined, even further beyond.
She hadn’t been to town like her parents had, but she heard well enough all the congratulations that poured through, thanks to the announcement in the local paper. Her mother had been tickled by the number of invitations and mail she had received since just the other morning, and her father had remained grinning from ear to ear.
Josephine, however, tried to ignore it.
At least until Caroline arrived in a swirl of skirts and excitement so palpable that Josephine could almost feel it emanating off her friend in visceral waves.
“No ‘I’ve set my cap for him, Caroline’! No ‘Mayhaps I ought to tell my very closest confidant in this world that I’ve off and found myself engaged’! Not a single word from you, Josephine St Vincent, but I have to hear, from Eileen Dewsbury no less, of not only your being engaged! But your being engaged to the duke!”
“I hardly set my cap on him,” Josephine sniffed. Half-amused at the terminology used and half-irritated that Caroline might actually think she was capable of having hidden such a thing.
Caroline’s eyes shone, her lips twitching as she slid into the chair across from Josephine, her hands smoothing down her skirts as she grinned widely at her friend. “Oh, you know what I meant,” she huffed. “How could you keep such a thing a secret?”
“By not having known it was going to happen,” Josephine answered honestly with a shrug. She understood how difficult to believe that might be. Caroline had only just told her of the duke’s plan to marry the very day that her father had mentioned the letter. And everything after that had moved so very quickly.
Caroline narrowed her eyes as she looked Josephine up and down as if trying to decide whether her words could be trusted. Whatever expression Josephine wore was apparently believable enough, though, as Caroline quickly leaned back with a heavy sigh. “Still,” she fussed through her laughter. “You did get engaged. And had it announced! And still didn’t tell me!”
Those were all very well and true, Josephine didn’t have any argument for those particular points. She found herself smiling back at Caroline, the excitement that bled from her friend almost contagious.
“Why worry about seeking you out when I knew you’d come and find me the moment that the news broke?” Josephine’s lips twitched with her teasing despite her own muddled emotions about her predicament.
“You’re rotten,” Caroline accused fondly. “Oh! To be engaged to a duke. To the duke, at that. Lord, Josephine, but he’s so terribly handsome! I don’t think I’d manage to string two sentences together if I had to look at him while doing so!”
Lovely. That was how Josephine remembered finding him at first glance. Heaven help her, but she felt flushed all over again recalling it … and the charged moments that had passed between them after.
Josephine shifted, her dress suddenly uncomfortably tight, the fabric prickling against her flushed skin as she tried to disguise the blush that seized her.
Caroline’s giggles grew all the more prominent. “Is he even more handsome up close?” she whispered, her eyes widening as she pointedly stared at Josephine’s all-too-visceral reaction.
“He’s fine,” Josephine said primly, fighting the urge to wave herself and make matters worse. “He’s very cordial.” And her attraction to him needn’t figure into it in the least. Plenty a physique had suffered the fading of time that it hardly needed to be her first concern.
“Josephine!” Caroline chided, leaning forward with a pleading look.
Clearly, she wanted all the bawdy details as if Josephine’s arrangement were some terrible romantic, lurid affair.
“Well, he is,” Josephine defended. “He was exceptionally polite, and yes, he was very handsome. I’m hardly concerned with how easy on the eyes he will be, Caroline. As you well know, I have a great many other pressing matters to consider first.”
“Matters that his dukedom all but solve for you,” Caroline breathed. “Don’t you see? You get to marry him and solve all your family’s financial troubles in one fell swoop. How are you not positively radiating with joy right now?”
Josephine’s exhale was small and quick, her stomach fluttering with nerves she’d been fighting to suppress ever since leaving ‘his dukedom’.
“I am happy,” she said after a moment of consideration. “Of course, I’m happy. I won’t have to worry about my family’s estate falling into poverty or how I’ll provide for my mother and father as they age. And after meeting the duke, I’m certain he won’t mind or begrudge me any of that either.”
Josephine just needed to be practical. Those butterflies in her stomach were silly, fanciful things she needed to learn toignore. And the heat that suffused her entire body at the mere thought of the duke and the way his eyes had penetrated her own? It needed to be forgotten.
Caroline eyed her sceptically but, for once, didn’t call Josephine on her elusiveness concerning the entire matter. Instead, she pinched her lips, her eyes only slightly narrowed before she sighed, switching subjects with an ease that Josephine envied.
“I doubt he’ll begrudge you anything, Josephine, pretty as you are. I really oughtn’t have been in the least surprised when I saw the announcement. If you’d ever gone to London to be introduced into society, you’d’ve surely been married long before now.”
It was a kind sentiment, one that Josephine dismissed as soon as she heard it, but she offered Caroline a heartfelt look of thanks all the same. Her prospects in marriage imagined or not, weren’t her most pressing concern.
