The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)(69)

“Who is it?” Eliza asked.

Lydia. Lydia had come. Minnie would be able to explain everything, make everything right—

But the maid ducked her head, suddenly self-conscious, and Minnie knew with a sense of great foreboding who it was.

“His Grace,” she said, “the Duke of Clermont.”

Her stomach turned to ice, but her hands seemed too warm. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, whether to run into his arms or to clamber out the window to escape. She simply stared ahead of her, the draught for five thousand pounds folded in her pocket in silent accusation.

“Oh,” Eliza said.

“I had heard rumors.” Caro rubbed her head. “But it sounded so improbable. You would have told us if there was anything to it. Wouldn’t you have?”

Minnie couldn’t make herself meet their eyes.

“I—maybe we should discuss this later. Later.”

Caro nodded. Eliza came to her feet, leaning heavily on the cane she used indoors. “Minnie,” she said softly. “If you don’t want to marry him, you don’t have to. We’ll never force you to do it. No matter what has happened—what you’ve said, what you’ve done. No matter what you choose. We love you.”

When he was shown in a few moments later, Minnie was fighting tears. She couldn’t even turn to look at him. She could only mark the sound of his boots against the floor, coming close, stopping a few feet behind her.

He stood, perhaps waiting for her to acknowledge him. But she couldn’t. If she turned around now…

“I thought of climbing up to your window,” he said, his voice grave, “but I’d have to take off my boots to attempt brick, and besides, the window I thought was yours looked suspiciously narrow. Now I know why Juliet had a balcony. So I decided on the remarkably unromantic route—I knocked on the front door.”

She let out a shuddering laugh. “Romeo was also sixteen.” She took another deep breath, schooled her face to calmness, and then turned around. “I thought you’d said your farewells already. What are you doing here?”

In answer, he reached for her hand. While her back had been turned, he’d removed his gloves and laid them on the table. She should have pulled away, but she was still too raw to resist. His fingers entwined with hers. His hands were soft and strong against hers.

“All right,” he said. “I’m just going to come out with this. I ruined everything.”

“You ruined everything,” Minnie repeated. “You ruined everything.” She stared at him, wondering if he’d somehow lost his mind overnight. He nodded in response to that, though, and she gestured to a seat. Her head was spinning.

“You told me,” he said, sitting down, “that you couldn’t be a duchess. I waved off your concerns.”

She blinked and then sat in a chair opposite him.

“It didn’t start coming together until my mother told me that she’d paid you to refuse me, not to expose me. And that didn’t make sense either, once I thought about it. My income is a minimum of ten thousand pounds a year—something everyone knows. Given a choice between five thousand pounds and marriage to me, any rational person would choose me. If you were as coldly calculating as I thought, we’d be married, not glaring at each other across two feet of space.”

She shook her head.

“Besides, if my mother had paid you to stop me, you would have used my letter right away. You wouldn’t have waited. And how would she have even known what I was doing? That you were the one person who might find out about it? The story doesn’t hold together, Minnie.” He glanced over at her. “I have never been so thankful to realize that I have been lied to.”

Her throat hurt. All that effort to try to push him away—and still he wouldn’t go.

“I didn’t listen to what you were telling me.” He looked at her. “I didn’t listen to what you weren’t telling me. Everything I heard was all about me. I heard that you didn’t want me. That you couldn’t care for me. I heard that you were anxious about attention, but I didn’t listen.” He steepled his fingers. “So let me tell you what I should have heard. Your father was one of the world’s foremost chess—”

Minnie jumped out of her seat. “You know.” Her heart was pounding in great, unforgiving thumps. Her breath came in ever-smaller gasps of air. The air around her seemed to shimmer. But of course he knew. She’d told him her name. Everything beyond that was a matter of research. She took one wild step backward and tripped on her chair.

But before she could fall in a bruising heap against the bookcase, Robert stepped forward and caught her. His arms were solid and warm about her. “Shh,” he breathed. “It’s just me. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m never going to hurt you, Minnie.”

She looked up into his eyes. Her pulse was racing, but there was no crowd nearby, no shouting.

It was just him.

This time, when he sat, he pulled her on top of him. They fit against one another like two pieces of a puzzle, her head falling automatically to his shoulder, his hand going to her hair. She shouldn’t be leaning against him. This shouldn’t be happening. It had broken her heart to push him away once; how could she do it again?

“Let’s try this again,” he said softly, clasping his hands around her. “I’ve found out only the bare details. Your father was one of the world’s foremost chess players. What happened then?”