Page 105 of A Scandalous Kind of Duke

“It will never be over. Even if I never see her again, it will never be over. I tried to sever my connection with her, but—” He raised his hands, let them fall. “It quite simply cannot be done.”

“But…” She looked baffled. “Your former wife’s letter. She said you cannot love anyone. And surely not this artist.”

“It’s not that I cannot love anyone. It’s that I cannot love anyone but her.”

“But you cannot marry her.”

Leo scowled. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

She paced the length of his study. At his desk, she paused, drumming her fingers on the wood. It made a soft sound like distant horses. “She cannot be a duchess. Do as your father did and keep this artist as your mistress.” She turned back around with a swish of her skirts. “After this conversation, I shall go back to pretending she doesn’t exist. If you refrain from making further public displays over her, everyone will look away, I’ll be spared further humiliations, and your honor will be spared further pain. It worked well enough for your father and mother.”

“It caused rifts between my father and his children, and led my mother to withdraw from society.”

She snorted. “Your mother had an excellent arrangement: all the privileges of being a duchess, but without having to pander to a husband.”

“I see you did not exaggerate your aversion to sentimentality,” he observed dryly.

The silence shuffled between them. How fascinating to see her true character at last. How sobering to see how ill-suited they were.

It was Susannah who broke the impasse. “So, you truly mean to marry her. This … artist.”

“I mean to ask. She has already stated quite clearly she does not wish to marry me.”

“She does not love you?”

“She loves me. The question is whether she loves me enough.” He rubbed the newspaper ink still smearing his fingers. “She leaves England in the early hours of the morning.”

“Then she is lost to you anyway.”

“She is only mostly lost to me. If I marry another woman, she will be lost to me forever.”

“And if she refuses you, you will be forever alone.”

“Yes,” Leo agreed softly. “I suppose I will.”

Susannah resumed her pacing, her gaze darting over the various decorative objects as she circumnavigated the room. “And the title? You have a duty, Dammerton.”

“I also have younger brothers. In the end, I am irrelevant as an individual to the title. I suspect I am also irrelevant as an individual to you. You have surely received plenty of other offers. The Earl of Normanby, for example.”

She made an exasperated sound. “Lord Normanby insisted on showering me with nonsense compliments and protestations of love.”

“My sole attraction cannot be that I do not love you. Is it so important to be a duchess?”

“Your Foundation, Dammerton,” she said impatiently. “That is what I want. To be involved with that. It’s something I can actually do.”

His Foundation! Sainted stitches, Leo had completely forgotten the Dammerton Foundation. His greatest obsession for years and it had entirely slipped his mind.

Susannah was still explaining. “When you showed me your offices and the manager showed me the books and the box room…” With a sharp shake of her head, she added, “There are so many ways it could be organized better. There truly are.”

“Did you make a list?”

“Oh, I made several lists.” She held up a porcelain figurine of a minstrel playing a harp. “Do you see this? This is me. A pretty little ornament. I won’t do it,” she said, suddenly forceful, as if mid-argument. “I try to do the pretty things, I really do try, but it all comes out a mess. I am better at useful things, lists and plans, but they want me to be an ornament. I’ll not do it. I won’t.”

The figurine slipped out of her hand. It landed on the carpet and broke neatly in two. Her hand flew up over her mouth. “Oh, forgive me. I did not mean to do that. My family is always scolding me for being so clumsy.”

She clasped her hands. Her confident impatience had vanished, and she looked distressed and very young. Her thumbs were attacking each other again.

He was leaving England with Juno, though Juno didn’t know it yet. He was abandoning his beloved Foundation without a second thought, with no one to oversee it. He had already struck several blows against the social order today. Perhaps he could encourage a touch more disorder here too.

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