Page 76 of A Scandalous Kind of Duke

How easily matters unfolded, when one did as one was supposed to do. Weddings were easy too, as he recalled. Say what they wanted you to say, and the rest followed nicely.

Silence slid into the space between them. It was not an awkward silence. It was merely … there. A beige sort of silence. The sort of silence they could expect to join them at meals for the next forty years.

Everything was fine.

Leo rested his hands on the crest of a chair, his thumb finding the rosette carved in the smooth, cool wood.

“I should like us to be in accord on certain matters,” he said. “I do not wish to mislead you as to my character or my feelings. I like you and esteem you, and I am honored to marry you, but from my side, this is not a love match.”

Her thumbs stopped fidgeting. “Nor from mine either. What a relief that is clear!” She smiled for the first time. “It’s so silly, isn’t it, this chatter about love? I am never so astonished as when I witness a capable friend reduced to stammering over some man’s eyes. Love seems sweet enough in books and on the stage, as in, oh, I don’t know,Othello, or one of those plays. But love is not like that in real life.”

Ah, yes.Othello.That famously sweet play about a man who is driven by jealousy to murder his beloved wife. Either Susannah Macey did not pay attention at the theater, or she held peculiar notions about love.

But all he said was, “I agree. Books and plays rarely reflect love as I have known it.”

“But you don’t know love, really, do you?”

Her comment startled him. Visibly, he surmised, for she tilted her head, looking puzzled.

“Forgive me for speaking of an indelicate matter, but I recall the letters of your—your former wife, which were published during the—” She rippled her fingers through the air, thus dispensing with the months of trial and divorce. “In one letter, she wrote of you that ‘He cannot love anyone.’ When I read that, I thought: There is a man of excellent good sense.”

He frowned. “You could have been no more than sixteen at the time.”

“And I was a sixteen-year-old of excellent good sense.”

“Clearly.”

She was nineteen now, ten years younger than him. Suddenly, that decade felt like a century. When Leo was nineteen, he had experienced his first kiss and the blissful agony of love. When Juno was nineteen, she was studying in Vienna and taking a lover.

The light glinted on the pins holding up Susannah’s dark hair. She was pretty, he thought. He felt no desire for her, not yet, not today, but today was not their wedding, so that was all right.

She was fidgeting with her thumbs again.

“While we are clarifying matters, I would like to express my interest in the work of the Dammerton Foundation.” She smiled shyly. “It is wonderful that you will be able to expand its operations after our marriage. I should very much like to be involved.”

Well played, Susannah,Leo thought. A neat and subtle reminder that his plans depended upon her money. She was much sharper and smarter than her pretty, genteel demeanor let show. She would mature into an excellent duchess.

“What sparked your interest?” he asked.

She considered her words, as if shuffling through a pack of cards to choose which ones to play. “Some years ago, we visited the house of the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, and I was shown the first duchess’s collection of decorative objects. Have you seen it?”

“It is quite marvelous.”

“When I learned how she had been a renowned patroness, I thought: That is something I can do.” She bit her lip. “I adore art, but I confess my skill with watercolors leaves much to be desired, and my embroidery…” The word slipped out on a defeated sigh. “The threads get so tangled up, and I don’t understand why. I always seem to pull the thread too tight or not tight enough. I cope with simple designs, but anything complex turns into a horrid mess.”

A charming confession, he found. “And you do like to impose order on the world.”

“I do, yes.” She smiled. It was a pretty smile. “Thank heaven for lists: They never get tangled up. My household accounts are a thing of beauty, and I can prepare social events down to the last detail. I promise our household will be very orderly.”

Leo managed a reassuring smile. “And what more could any man ask?”

CHAPTER20

When Juno stumbled out of the carriage and into her house the day after her tryst with Leo, she felt more tired than she could ever remember feeling before.

Mrs. Kegworth greeted her with surprise. “We’d not expected you back from the country so soon. Oh, my dear, is aught amiss? You look distressed.”

Who knew what stories her face was telling? Juno schooled it to pleasant neutrality.

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