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“ O h,” Arabella said, coming to a stop as she entered the dining room the next morning. “I didn’t expect to see you here so early, William.”

William looked up at her. “I thought I would join you for breakfast. Do you mind?”

“No, of course, I don’t.” In fact, she was grateful for the opportunity to spend some time with him after the events of the night before.

She was grateful to him for the way he had extricated her family from that unpleasant dinner party—she knew perfectly well that he hadn’t needed to do that.

And then, to bring everyone back here to his own estate, to arrange a meal and drinks for them so that it didn’t feel as if the fancy occasion had been sacrificed—it was more than she’d had any right to expect, and she knew it.

She took her seat at the table. “I have to thank you again for last night,” she told him, reaching for a piece of bread. “It meant the world to me. And I think it made a very good impression on my family. They always thought highly of you of course.”

“Even more than you did, I think,” he said, giving her a smile and a wink.

“That’s true.” She saw no point in denying it.

“Your family has been much easier for me to win over than you have, Arabella, I must say.”

“That’s because what matters most to my family is that you are a duke and that you have money,” Arabella said evenly. “And those things don’t matter to me in the least.”

William smirked. “I see. You don’t care for your new role as duchess, then?”

“Not very much,” Arabella confirmed. “I never dreamed of becoming a duchess.”

“What did you dream of?”

Arabella hesitated.

The truth was that she hadn’t focused on her own dreams in a very long time.

It had felt senseless to do so. There was too much to worry about in her family.

She had been preoccupied by her father’s struggles, by the need to see her sisters marry well, by the constant arguments and unpleasantness.

When was she supposed to sit around asking herself what she dreamed of?

She didn’t dream of anything at all. She focused on one day at a time, and that was enough.

But William was waiting for an answer. “I suppose I dreamed of a time when all my problems would have easy solutions,” she said. It was as good an answer as anything else she could have come up with.

“Being a duchess may help with that, you know,” William told her.

She raised an eyebrow. “Has it made your life easier, then? Being a duke?”

“In some ways,” William said mildly. “In some ways it’s been easier.”

She wanted to ask him to elaborate, but he had turned his attention to his eggs. Arabella turned to her own breakfast, and for several moments, they sat in silence.

After some time had passed, though, he looked up at her. “I thought we might go for a ride today,” he suggested. “How would you feel about that?”

“I—that would be nice,” she agreed, surprised by his willingness to spend any time at all in her company.

She had expected that the days would fall into a pattern with each one much like the one that had preceded it.

She’d thought he would leave the house today and go off to tend to his business as he had for the past several days and that she wouldn’t see him until the time came for them to eat their evening meal together.

But apparently, he had other ideas.

“We can go as soon as you’ve finished eating,” William suggested.

“I’m finished.” She set down her fork.

He raised his eyebrows. “You are? You’ve barely touched your food.”

“I know, but I’ve had enough.”

“Well, if you say so,” he said. “Once we’re away from the house, you know, it will be difficult to get back if you get hungry. You may end up waiting for lunch before you can eat again.”

“I used to go all day between meals,” Arabella explained. “There was never enough to eat at my father’s house, and I always wanted to be sure my sisters were fed before I was. I suppose it’s taught me to have a small appetite.”

“Well, here, you can have all you want.” William’s jaw worked, and she suspected he was irritated at the thought of her going hungry.

“I really am fine,” she assured him. “I’ll be perfectly comfortable with a late lunch.”

“I want to make sure you know we can linger a bit if you want some more.”

“I understand,” Arabella said. “I’m ready to go just the same.

” The truth was that she was looking forward to the opportunity to get out of the house with William, something she hadn’t expected to be able to do.

She couldn’t help feeling that if she didn’t take advantage of his offer quickly, it might disappear on her—that she wouldn’t be able to spend this time with him after all.

“I’m not going to get hungry,” she assured him, but she tucked a piece of bread into the pocket of her gown just to be on the safe side.

William must have made this plan in advance because the horses were ready and waiting for them when they reached the stable. He helped Arabella to mount hers. “I hope this is comfortable for you,” he said.

“This is bigger than any horse I’ve ever ridden,” she said. The horse beneath her was probably stronger and faster than either of her father’s old horses as well—they were both growing very old. But she was determined to make the most of the day, so she offered no complaint.

William mounted his own horse. “There’s a trail down behind the house,” he said. “They know it well, so you won’t need to worry about directing the horse for yourself. You can sit back and enjoy the ride.”

Arabella nodded. Perhaps she should have felt that he had no confidence in her, but the truth was that she was relieved. It was good to know that she wasn’t going to have to think too hard today, that she could just relax and enjoy the ride—and the company.

Her horse fell into step alongside William’s, and she relaxed with the gentle rocking of its motion. “I never thanked you,” she told him.

“Thanked me? For what?”

“For the way you helped my family at the dinner party. I know you didn’t have to do that. You took their side over your cousins’, and I just don’t want you to think I didn’t notice that because I did.”

“Well, it was nothing,” William said.

Arabella shook her head. “It wasn’t nothing at all,” she said. “It was a monumental thing to do. You did not have to do it. Please know it meant something to me.”

“I’m glad. But I hope you know that I would never allow that kind of disrespect. For my cousins to attempt to speak to my wife and her family like that—that’s intolerable to me. It shows me that not only do they believe they’re better than you, they also believe they’re better than me.”

“They don’t think that,” Arabella protested. “They couldn’t possibly think that. You’ve got it wrong. They think they’re better than my family, that’s all. They’ve always believed that. You know, that young lady who was there as a guest—Miss Alexandra?—”

“Yes, she was a bit of a headache, wasn’t she?” William laughed, and the sound of his laughter put Arabella so much more at ease that she could hardly believe it. “I’m not surprised to see someone like that becoming friendly with my odious cousins.”

Arabella laughed too. “Yes, well, she’s always hated us,” she said. “I don’t know why exactly. She considers us so far beneath her, you would think she wouldn’t waste her time in worrying about it.”

“She’s threatened by you,” William observed.

Arabella’s laugh was unconfined now. “Of course, she isn’t threatened by us! What on earth would make you say something like that? She has nothing to be threatened by. Our family is poor, and we have never had anything. There’s nothing to threaten someone like Miss Alexandra.”

“Well, you were poor,” William countered.

“And while you were, she could tell herself that you were nothing to worry about—that she had no reason to fear any of you interfering in her attempts to find herself a marriage. But just look at what’s happened.

You’ve found yourself married to the Duke of Redmayne and without any money to assist you—without even the finances to afford a decent gown.

You were the joke of the ton, and you know it as well as I do—I don’t say this to be cruel but simply to make a point. ”

“It’s all right,” Arabella assured him. “You can say it. It doesn’t trouble me to hear something I know is the truth.”

“Well, and you made such a good match for yourself,” he said.

“Do you think she wanted to marry you? Did she have her sights set on you?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. If she did, she never did anything to give me any indication of it. But she would know, of course, that I was one of the most eligible gentlemen on the market, if not the most. There were plenty of young ladies who had their eyes on me. And I chose you.”

The horses had come to a stop. The two of them were very close together, so close that Arabella could feel the warmth coming from his body. It was as if the horses had conspired, somehow, to give them this moment of nearness to one another.

Arabella took a breath. “I still don’t understand why you did that,” she confessed. “Why you would choose someone like me.”

“You said yes to me,” he said, meeting her gaze. His eyes were so warm that for a moment she forgot what she had been questioning him about.

“I said yes to you because it was the best thing for my family,” she murmured.

“You worry so much about them.”

“Somebody had to. My father—he wasn’t cruel, but he was never involved.

Always more worried about his own affairs.

It used to be his business, but after he came into his title, things changed.

He wasn’t loyal to my mother. He drank too much.

He certainly didn’t care for the family. You’ve seen the way he is.”

William nodded. “I’ve seen it,” he agreed, a tension in his voice that Arabella hadn’t expected to hear there. Could it be that William had decided he didn’t care for Arabella’s father?

Would he stop giving money to Arabella’s family if that was the way he felt?

She swallowed hard. “Everything I do has been for my sisters,” she told him, needing him to understand.

“Even if my father has been… a problem, my sisters are worthy of my care. I would do whatever it took to keep them safe and well. To make sure that they were provided for and that their futures are secure.”

“And that’s why you married me?”

“It’s why I do everything I do,” she told him. “Yes, it’s why I married you. It’s why I get out of bed in the morning.”

He regarded her for a moment. “You have a strong sense of responsibility,” he observed.

“It isn’t just a sense that I have,” she told him. “It’s the way things are. If I don’t take responsibility for my family, nobody else will.”

He held out a hand to her.

It was the last thing she could have anticipated, and for a moment, she didn’t know what to do with it. Why was he sticking his hand out? It took a very long time for her to understand that he meant for her to take it.

“I will,” he told her quietly as she slid her hand into his. “I’ll take responsibility for them. I’m on your side now, Arabella. That’s what a marriage means. I’ll help you.”

And to Arabella’s very great surprise, she believed him.