Awakening Love: Reborn to Be His Duchess novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Terms

The duke lays out his terms in his study and Linnet asks one question about her father; a note under her door says her father will hang sooner.

I did not sleep after the ball.

Edmund remembered the east wing, and he had said so with a smile, so that I would know he was patient.

If he remembered, he would move before I did, and I lay awake working out how.

The duke asked for me in my father's study at nine the next morning, before the guests had finished their breakfast.

I went alone, with my back straight and my hands folded.

He stood at the window with his coat off, reading nothing.

The folded letter with the red seal lay on the desk beside his glove.

"Sit, Lady Linnet."

"I would rather stand, Your Grace."

"Then I will, too."

He did, and I hated that it was courteous.

"You have not told your father why you said yes," he said.

"He believes I admire you."

"Do you?"

"I admire your purse."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth and was gone.

He took a sheet from his coat and laid it flat on the desk.

"Three terms. You may strike any of them."

I read it standing.

The first was separate rooms at Wexmoor for one year.

The second was that after the year, if I wished to leave, I could go, with my father's debts cleared and my own allowance for life.

The third was that he would not touch me unless I asked.

I read the third twice.

"Why that?" I said.

"Because you flinched when I took your hand last night, and then you held it for four minutes anyway." His voice was even. "I would rather you were never made to do either again."

I had not known he counted.

I had held it that long because I was memorizing the scar across his palm.

"I accept," I said. "I have one condition of my own."

"Say it."

I stepped to the desk, close enough to see the signet ring on his right hand.

A wolf's head in a circle, cut deep in red wax on a thousand papers across Aldermere.

I had seen it once on a paper dated two years from now.

"Have you ever put that seal to anything that would harm my father?" I asked.

It was the only chance I would give him to tell me the truth.

He did not answer at once.

"No," he said. "I would cut off the hand first."

He said it plainly, and he looked at me while he said it, and I did not believe him.

The warrant had been real.

A servant in Rook Hall had read it aloud to me through the keyhole, laughing.

"Then we understand each other," I said.

"I think," said the duke, "that we understand nothing yet. But I can wait."

He gathered his gloves and the sealed letter.

I asked, "Why do you carry that everywhere?"

"Because the person who wrote it asked me to keep it safe."

"And who was that?"

"Someone who is not here," he said, and left it at that.

The door closed behind him.

My knees were not as steady as my voice had been.

Wynne was waiting in the passage with a tray of tea going cold.

She was twenty, freckled and red-haired, and in the first life she had been dismissed from my service in my second month at Rook Hall and had died of the winter fever before I could find her again.

I wanted to hold her and I wanted to scold her for nothing at all.

"My lady, you've gone grey. Did he threaten you?"

"No," I said. "He offered me three terms, and I took them."

She laughed, because she thought I was joking.

I let her.

"Wynne, you are coming to Wexmoor with me. Pack everything, and don't let anyone from the Rook family near my trunks."

"Why would a Rook be near your trunks?"

"Because they will find a way."

She gave me a long look and nodded once.

That was why I had loved her.

She asked no questions she didn't need to.

We went up the back stairs together, and when I reached my room I found the door already open.

Someone had been inside.

My writing desk was untouched, the wardrobe was shut, the bed was made.

On the pillow lay a single sheet of cream paper with a Rook crest pressed into the corner.

I knew the hand.

It had signed my marriage lines and every letter that kept me inside Rook Hall.

"Come to the chapel garden at noon tomorrow," it said. "Alone. The Duke would not like to learn what Trevanion's daughter did on the night of the fifth, and neither would your father. E."

I read it three times.

I had done nothing on the night of the fifth.

But I knew Edmund, and Edmund could build a scandal out of nothing and make a whole county swear to it.

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