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“Now that they have taken their leave, I certainly am.” She laughed gently. “They were awful, were they not?”

“Positively dreadful, although it surprised me that you did not have anything to say to them about it.”

“What is there for me to say? They are entitled to think that way of me. I suppose if I were them, I would think much the same. I am a spinster, after all, and you are a duke, and a wealthy and handsome one at that, and?—”

“What did you just say?”

“That I am a spinster and you are a duke.”

Had her cheeks not been scarlet, he might have thought that he had misheard.

“Regardless,” she continued, flustered, “the point stands that I have my place and I need to remember it.”

“Your place is going to be a duchess, my wife, and I certainly agree that you are going to need to remember that. You are going to be among the most important members of Society.”

“But we are not going to be a part of Society. You do not wish to be.”

“If you wish to, we can, but that is not the point. The point is that you will be respected as my wife and their duchess. I do not care what is thought of me, but they are going to respect you. I will not give you a choice in the matter.”

“But it is alright. I promise that it is.”

“For you, yes. For me, no. From the moment that ring is on your finger, you will be my family, and nobody that walks this earth is going to treat my family in any way but perfectly.”

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and hopeful, and at that moment, he wanted to give her the world. He knew that he could give her it, too, but only if she allowed him to.

“Lady Diana?” he asked, as she was not saying anything to him.

“Why are you so kind to me?”

“Why would I not be?”

“I have been nothing but a burden to you.”

“You have been anything but that.”

“That is not true. You were happy to be a bachelor, and I ruined everything by being willful and spiteful and stubborn, and no matter what I do, I keep falling into trouble and you keep trying to pick up the pieces for me, but how long can we do that for? That cannot be our lives.”

“For a start, I would be happy to rescue you and keep you out of trouble, no matter how many times. For another, it is not your actions that led to this, it is mine. When we kissed that evening, I realized that I was the common thread. The only way that I would become anything more than a rakish duke with no real love in his life would be if I married.”

“And so you chose my sister, and I ruined that.”

“I never wanted your sister,” he said, exasperated. “Do you truly think I would wish to marry a girl barely out of leading strings? I had never seen your sister before, it just so happened that your father was at White’s and he said he had a daughter of marriageable age and I pitied the poor girl, regardless of who she turned out to be.”

“So you were marrying out of pity?”

“If I were to marry, I at least wished to improve my wife’s life from the one she had known. I still hope to do that, of course.”

“It is not as though my life could be much more difficult.” She laughed emptily. “Very well, but you must promise me one thing.”

“Yes. Anything.”

“We will see my sister as often as possible.”

“That is not in question. You may see her as often as you wish. She could stay with us if the two of you want.”

“If only that were possible. She wishes to care for our father, but I wish to offer her a sort of respite from it all, especially from him.”

“Has he not improved since we met?”