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The pause dragged out for at least a moment. The ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner counted off the seconds.

“I beg your pardon?” she managed, at last. “Marry?Each other?”

The Duke swallowed his whiskey and headed back across the room to get himself another.

“I think you heard me,” he responded. “I am open to other suggestions, by the way.”

“Well, there must be other ideas,” she shot back. “Why don’t we just go about our lives and ignore all this nonsense?”

“Ignore gossip? Ha! As if we could,” he snarled. “You don’t seem to understand how ruined you are, Miss Belmont. Your reputation was already in tatters the instant you left that church.And now this? Oh, you’ll never recover. Let me be clear. If you return to London, every friend that you think you have will turn their backs on you. And this will extend to your unmarried sister and your mother. Your married sister might escape, but only if she cuts you off. Disgrace is like gangrene. It spreads quickly and infects everything it touches. Society will cut you out like a festering sore and never think twice about it. You won’t be given credit in shops. There’ll be no invitations, not from anybody becausetheywill be infected if they allow you in their homes. If you are rich already, you won’t starve. Not literally, at least. No one will speak to you. It’ll be as if you’re dead already, a ghost wandering through their old home. Disgrace can’t be shrugged off or ignored, Miss Belmont. I can tell you that now.”

He fell silent after his speech.

Daphne took a step back, shaken. “You sound as though you speak from experience,” she answered, her voice wobbling a little.

It seemed like the perfect time to sip her drink, so she did so.

Ugh.

“I do,” the Duke answered, rubbing a hand over his face. “The Beastly Duke. That is me. They say I’m cursed, you know. I only mention it because you must have read it in that wretched scandal sheet.”

“Why would they say that?”

He shook his head, turning away. “It doesn’t matter. My point is that I have already had my life ruined by gossip and malicious, anonymous writers. I won’t let them tear my son to pieces. I won’t.”

In one smooth motion, he drained his glass again, before setting it down with a clink.

Well, if he can, I can.

Taking a deep breath as though she were about to dive off a cliff, she swigged back the whiskey in one gulp, emptying her glass. Itwasawful, but the burning sensation was not entirely unpleasant. She already felt braver.

“I can’t marry a stranger because of some gossip,” she heard herself say. “No matter the consequences.”

He spun around, his eyes narrowing on her. “Aren’t you listening? Wewillmarry, Miss Belmont. And this time, you won’t run away.”

She folded her arms. “You are really impossible. Everybody knows that women’s reputations are more fragile than men’s. Here is what I propose—I shall take all the blame and go off and live as a spinster. My true friends will not abandon me, and my family won’t. I can answer for it. Don’t be a martyr, Your Grace.”

“Don’t be so flippant,” he ground out. “Your friends and family will tell you the same thing I have told you. I should never havelet you stay the night. It serves me right, I suppose. No good deed goes unpunished.”

“A good deed?” she echoed, disbelievingly. “You were going to send me off into the night! I practically had to beg you to let me stay! Don’t congratulate yourself yet,Your Grace.”

“Oh, do be quiet. You are insufferable.”

“Youare insufferable!”

He ignored her retort, taking a step closer.

Daphne felt the urge to step away, not because he was looming over her but because she felt that oddly familiar tug of something in her gut, and it was making her uncomfortable. The knotting in her stomach was disarranging her thoughts, distracting her with uncalled-for and entirely inappropriate thoughts.

Such as a brief vision of herself stepping forward and reaching up to brush an untidy lock of hair from the Duke’s forehead, and perhaps running the pad of her thumb over those ridiculous caterpillar eyebrows. Or perhaps dragging her palm down his chest, broad and powerful and straining against the beleaguered material of his shirt.

There seemed to be no softness to the man at all, and that thrilled her for reasons she could not quite fathom. He had thinnish lips, but they suited his face and were moistened bythe whiskey. Daphne wondered, with a pleasurable shudder that terrified and thrilled her at the same time, whether his lips would taste of whiskey if she kissed them.

Stop it! Stop it at once!

She realized belatedly that the man was talking again. Ruining everything.

“You can live as a spinster if you become my wife,” he was saying, his thick arms folded across his chest.