Page 17 of If the Duke Dares
“I do believe your father thought I would decide to wed you on the spot.”
“Did he say that?” she asked, appearing horrified.
“No, but he seemed most eager for that outcome. They told me you were ill and had stayed home. Do they even know where you are?” he asked, wondering what sort of scheme this family had concocted to entrap him.
She pressed her lips together. “None of this is your business.”
“It is when our parents are trying to bind us in matrimony. As your potential betrothed, I am meddling. It seems someone must. You should not be gallivanting about by yourself. There are many bad things that could?—”
Miss Barclay sliced her hand through the air in front of him. “Stop. Please. I don’t need to be lectured byyou, a peddler of bad things.”
Acton gaped at her. “A what? I don’t sell bad things.”
“You offer them willingly enough. I amquiteaware of your reputation,Duke.”
“I’m not a bad person,” he said defensively.
A couple that looked to be in their sixties stopped near them. They were both smiling broadly. “You sound like us,” the man said with a laugh.
“But the best arguments always lead to the best reconciliations,” the woman added. She gave them a suggestive look. “Especially in the bedchamber.”
The man giggled along with her as he patted her arm, which was linked through his. “Saucy minx.” He looked to Acton and Miss Barclay. “May your marriage be as long and happy as ours has been.” Touching his hat, the man led his wife away.
Miss Barclay turned her head to stare after them. “They thought we weremarried?”
Acton tried not to laugh. “The look on your face when she mentioned the bedchamber was the best thing I’ve seen in ages.”
She returned her attention to him. “You cannot say such things and claim you are not a beast. Nice gentlemen don’t laugh at young ladies who are in distress.”
“Are you in distress?” he asked, sobering.
Her color was high, and her lips were parted. Indeed, he could imagine her looking like that in his bedchamber, but for wholly different reasons, of course. “Because of me or what that woman said?” he clarified.
“All of it! I am trying to mind my own business and avoid the parson’s trap.” She definitely did not want the marriage, then. If there was a scheme to unite them, she was not a willing participant.
He exhaled with exasperation. “There is no trap.”
“I’m confident my parents would disagree.”
That made sense to Acton. Her father had been eager to conduct the business of marriage, even without Acton having met the bride. “Why are they so insistent you marry me?”
Her eyes rounded, and she looked at him as if he were incapable of logical thought. “Why wouldn’t they be? You’re a duke.” She said the last word as if it were an epithet. “For most people, that is more than enough. Your personality, sentiment, or reputation matter not.”
“But those things matter to you,” he said softly.
“I’ve no wish to marry a rake.” She turned from him and started down the side street from whence she’d come.
He hastened to walk alongside her. “I met your parents, and while our acquaintance was short—I left as soon as I realized who you were and that you are not, in fact, at home, sick in bed—I sense they may be…difficult.”
She sent him a skeptical look. “You deduced that from a brief interview?”
“Your father was keen to discuss the marriage settlement. I found that distasteful since you and I hadn’t even met. Well, we had, but they don’t know that.”
Pausing, she turned toward him. “Please tell me they still don’t know that.”
“They do not.”
Her eyes narrowed. They were such a spectacular blue and so full of life. He doubted he could ever be bored by her, even if he just sat and watched her. “Why didn’t you tell them we’d met and where?”
