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“At this moment, I am reading. You ought to try it. It is good for your nerves.”

“I am not nervous,” she lied.

“Then why are you trembling? It is not cold in here.”

She expected the candlelight to illuminate some sort of smirk or at least some form of unkindness, but there was nothing. His face was empty; if anything, it was one of concentration as he read.

“Why did you do it?” she asked, sitting on the edge of his bed. “I did not come here to play games. I came here to know why you thought that was a good idea when I specifically asked you not to propose.”

“If I didn’t, who would have?”

“I am perfectly fine with nobody else proposing!”

“Even if it is some callous man in London?” he asked, at last putting the book down and facing her. “Is that what you would have wanted? Would that have brought you joy?”

“Nothing of that nature could bring me joy, but I was resigned to that. What I did not expect was a man that hated me so much to be forcing my hand. I already have my father to do that, you know.”

“Of course, I do, which is why I tried to save you from him.”

“That is not why you did that, and you know it. You could not care less about me if you tried.”

“I do not know you, Lady Samantha.”

“Then why would you ask me to marry you?”

“Because I can halfway tolerate you; is that what you want me to say?”

“What I want,” she said with a sigh, “is the truth. I do not care why you did it, in truth, because it is not as though I can do a thing about it now, but I still wish to know. If I am to be your wife now, you must at least be honest with me.”

The Duke sighed, leaving his desk and sitting beside her. She felt his arm brush hers, and her heart raced for a moment, but she simply put it down to the way she had spoken to him.

“I told you that you do not know my family,” he began, “but I thought you might have at least noticed how awful my brother is.”

“I certainly did. Did you not hear how I spoke to him in return this evening?”

“Not as yet, but if it was anything of note, I am sure Penelope will have informed me by tomorrow. She is quite taken by you.”

“Do not change the subject.”

“Yes, of course,” he agreed, “But if you are to enter into my family, you must know that that behavior will not change. He will always be hateful and spiteful. It is simply how he is.”

“That is fine by me. I know plenty of people like that.”

“Not like him. Not like two of my three brothers. They will do anything to ruin me, and they will stop at nothing to make even the slightest dent in my reputation. I do not mean to frighten you, and so I was going to keep this from you entirely, but if you want complete honesty, then that is what I shall give you. They would have destroyed you completely if it meant that even the faintest doubt could be cast over people’s view of me.”

“Are you quite certain that you are not paranoid?”

“Believe me, I wish that was all it was. I have spent my life trying to make them see sense, but it only ever made them worse, and so I gave into it. There is nothing that you or I can do about him beyond play things safely, and the best thing for me to do in that moment was to stop him from revealing your secret by proposing to you.”

“Even if you knew it was not what I wanted?”

“It was what you needed. It was what I wanted which was to protect you.”

“And why did you want to do that?”

“Because you are not a bad person. I know what bad people look like, and you are simply not one of them, and I was not going to allow him to make you suffer simply because he thinks he can.”

“That is very kind of you, but you have simply moved me from one bad thing to the next.”