Page 20 of The Etiquette of Love (The Academy of Love #7)

I t was almost eight weeks exactly after her magical day at the lake with Plimpton that Freddie discovered she was pregnant.

As her luck would have it, she was not the only one who learned the truth that day.

She had just commenced a new needlework project when the urge to vomit struck her. She dropped her tambour and hastily scrambled for the small metal basin she kept beside the settee to catch all the threads she generated. There was a rap on the door, and it opened before she could yell wait ! Not that she could have yelled anything as she hunched over the bowl and voided the contents of her stomach. Fortunately, she had eaten a spartan breakfast as she had felt nauseated upon waking that morning.

Unfortunately, it was not only Mrs. Brinkley at the door, but Piers right on her heels. Both hurried into the room, the babble of voices rushing around her like an incoming tide.

Freddie closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind. But the trick, usually so useful, did not work today.

She retched once more but brought up nothing. Only then did she notice the room had gone deathly quiet. She opened her eyes to find both Piers and her housekeeper bent low, staring down with wide eyes.

Freddie couldn’t help a hoarse chuckle. She glanced at the bowl and then Mrs. Brinkley, hesitating. “I am so sorry to ask you—”

Mrs. Brinkley made a scoffing sound and took the bowl. “Don’t be silly, of course I will take it away. You just sit and I’ll return with something to settle your poor stomach, my lady.” She turned her gaze to Piers, her eyes narrowing. “Perhaps I should—”

“It is fine, Mrs. Brinkley. Mr. Gregg may stay.”

Still looking skeptical, the housekeeper left the room.

Piers, who was holding a glass of water in one hand and hovering over her, hastily shoved it at her. “Here. Drink this.”

Freddie sipped carefully at first, and then drank more when it was clear she wouldn’t immediately cast it up again.

“Thank you,” she said, setting down the half-full glass.

“You are ill.”

She forced a smile. “I will be fine.”

“I should summon a doctor. It is not normal for—”

“Please do not, Piers.”

“If you are concerned about the money, I insist upon paying for—”

“I am fine.”

He made a helpless gesture with his hands. “You look dreadful—and vomiting is not normal.” He strode toward the servant pull. “I’ll tell your housekeeper to summon your doctor immediately.”

“I do not want a doctor.”

He spun toward her. “Goddammit, Winifred! You are willful and independent beyond reason. I am not trying to control you; I am trying to—”

“Pray do not raise your voice and curse at me.”

His lips tightened. “I am sorry. I am just concerned for you. Why won’t you let me—”

“I am with child.”

Piers’s dark brown eyes, so different from Freddie’s and Wareham’s, widened in shock. “But— how. ”

Freddie laughed.

Piers’s face turned scarlet. “You know what I mean, damn it! I know you do not engage in light affairs.”

She frowned. “How do you know that? Have you been spying on me?”

“Not lately. I mean—Damnation! I don’t want to talk about that. I want the name of the fucking bastard who—"

“ Piers.”

“I don’t care about my language. Who is it, Winifred. Tell me or I will start spying. And then I will kill whoever it is.” His hands flexed into fists, as if anticipating the event.

“I fail to see how any of this is your concern.”

“I am your brother!”

She stood and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Until you can speak to me in a level, controlled fashion I have no intention of being subjected to your presence.”

“I apologize!” he shouted and then shoved his hands into his hair, behaving for all the world like a character in a stage play. “Sorry, I did not mean to yell that, too. Please stay.”

Freddie hesitated.

“Please.”

Freddie exhaled and sat.

“Thank you.” He cleared his throat and lowered himself into the chair across from her. “What are you going to do?”

“I do not know yet. I just found out myself.” Although she’d had her suspicions for weeks. It had been ages since she had missed her courses, not since her marriage when she’d been sick with worry and so malnourished that she had become gravely ill.

At first, she had thought perhaps her anxiety over Wareham’s illness—and the subsequent fracas with Plimpton—had thrown off her body’s rhythm. But she had felt increasingly nauseated these past two weeks. She had hoped that she’ d contracted an influenza, but there had been no fever or other symptoms. Although she had been more tired than usual.

But today…Well, today she just knew.

Piers opened his mouth.

“No more questions.”

“Please, just one.”

Freddie glared. “What?”

“Is it Plimpton?”

An unpleasant jolt shot through her at his question. How in the world had he guessed?

“I have told you everything,” he said when she did not answer. “Every embarrassing detail of my past.”

“Hardly every detail.”

“Well, maybe not all, but certainly the most relevant and the worst. By doing so, I have demonstrated that I—”

“Yes,” she said, too weary to argue. She also felt as if she might throw up again.

He frowned, visibly confused. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said yes, the child is Plimpton’s.”

Before he could speak the door opened and Mrs. Brinkley entered with the tea tray. As she fussed around, Freddie could not help being relieved by the interruption. Already she regretted telling her brother the truth. She should have never opened her mouth. Men—even brothers—could not be trusted.

***

The next eight days were some of the worst of her life. Thankfully, Piers had commenced his investigations into the men who had been at that fateful house party and was too busy to haunt her house and give her speaking looks every time she made a dash for the nearest basin or rubbish bin.

Mrs. Brinkley, on the other hand…

Freddie had not been so fortunate as to escape the sharp eyes of her housekeeper. Or her cook, Una. For the first time since Freddie had known the two feuding women, they were united in their efforts.

Those efforts included alternately coddling her to the point of madness to regarding her with disbelieving, disappointed looks when they thought she would not notice.

Their clucking and fussing were enough to fray every last nerve. She could only be thankful that none of her friends were in London to add to her persecution. Indeed, everyone who was anyone had fled town weeks before. Lori and her new husband had been among the last to leave, Lori begging and pleading Freddie to join her.

“I cannot believe you would rather be here in August— alone —than with me at Granton, Freddie. It will be cool and quiet and a relief after this sweltering, hellish nightmare.”

Indeed, it was exceptionally hot for early August—the hottest anyone could recall—but the last thing Freddie wanted was to spend more time beneath Lori’s hawklike gaze.

To be honest, she was enjoying her time alone.

She had no clients to demand her attention and no housemates to provide distractions. For the first time in years, Freddie had the entire house to herself. The only time she left her cozy nest was to see Miranda or visit her circulating library. Otherwise, she spent the best part of most days curled up in bed, alternately reading and dozing.

Freddie’s days and nights took on a sort of warm dream-like languor. She re-read books she had enjoyed in her youth, gentle, happy stories that took little conscious thought to ingest. Unsurprisingly, a big part of her thoughts was on the being growing inside her. A child. Her child. Someone to love of her very own.

She loved Miranda dearly, but she had never been allowed to raise her and care for her properly. What would it be like if she were free to publicly claim her daughter or son? She would be forever cast out of society, but if she accepted Wareham’s offer, then…

Plans and dreams swirled inside her during those sultry dreamy days, problems all pushed away until…later.

She did not care if the child was female or male. Having a little boy to cherish would, however, be a different experience. Would he look like his father?

Freddie shied away from thoughts of the duke, which increasingly brought shame in their wake. If she went to Wareham for help, she would need to lie about the child’s father. Because Freddie knew what would happen if Plimpton ever discovered she carried his child. Already he possessed a keen desire to make her his wife. Not only because of his connection with Wareham, but because he saw Freddie as epitomizing everything he expected from his duchess.

If he heard of her pregnancy, he would not step aside as he had done all those weeks ago at Torrance Park. If he knew about the baby, he would force her to marry him.

And then she would once again find herself the possession of a man who did not love her for her but wanted her for what she was. Freddie knew Plimpton would not be cruel or dangerous like Sedgewick. She would not need to hide in her room for weeks to conceal the bruises and black eyes and even broken bones on two occasions.

Plimpton would never harm her. At least not physically. But neither would he ever love her.

Sometimes Freddie had to laugh at herself. How could she continue to believe in love after what she knew of men?

Or at least how could she believe in love for her . Because she knew it existed for some people. After all, her friends from the Stefani Academy had found love, although only Serena and Lori had married for love while the others had been thrown together by circumstance and were fortunate to grow to love each other.

But Plimpton, as passionate as he had been in the bedchamber, was not the sort of man who fell in love—at least not for long. He wanted a wife and a duchess. With the dukedom secured by the birth of his brother’s child he had accepted that Freddie could not have children. But if he learned that she not only could get pregnant but was even now carrying his child? Then he would take her to the country and wrap her in cotton wool. Yes, if he knew she was capable of breeding, he would regard her far differently than he had before. She did not believe he had a mania for a son of his own body as Sedgewick had, but he would certainly want more children from her if he knew she were capable.

That thought in itself did not worry her—after all, Freddie would love a nursery full of children—but she did not want to share a family with a man who did not love her. The fact that he’d carried his daughter’s miniature in his pocket told her the duke was capable of deep affection for his child, but she suspected such love extended only to those of his own flesh and blood.

Freddie sighed uncomfortably at the jostling of the coach and forced her thoughts away from the duke, instead turning to stare out the stagecoach window. She felt awful and desperately wished that her regular, bi-monthly journey was shorter today.

The movement outside the window elicited a now-familiar nausea in her belly and Freddie immediately looked away, closing her eyes and willing her stomach to settle.

She should have stayed home. It would be mortifying to be sick in the confines of the coach, not to mention how appalling it would be for the other five people crowded in with her.

Freddie had considered canceling her visit to Melinda, but she had already missed a Wednesday when she had gone to Torrance Park so she could not miss another one so soon after.

She felt a light touch on her tightly laced fingers and opened her eyes to find the woman across from her, a kindly looking grandmotherly type, giving her a knowing smile. “Peppermint.”

Freddie blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

The woman lifted her hand and Freddie saw there was a white lozenge in her gloved palm.

“Take it,” the woman urged, and then leaned closer and said in a loud whisper that surely all the other occupants could hear. “It will settle your stomach.”

Face flaming, Freddie took the peppermint and forced a smile. “Thank you.”

She nodded to indicate Freddie should put it in her mouth. “Go on and chew it.”

Freddie did so, her tastebuds and nostrils immediately assaulted by the strong flavor of mint.

“Thank you,” she said again, her filling the close quarters of the carriage with peppermint.

“Buy yourself a packet and keep them on you for the first few months.” She gave Freddie a conspiratorial smile that made her eyes narrow to amused slits. “I ate them up by the handful for all seven of mine, sometimes for as long as three months.”

Freddie’s eyes slid to the prim-looking woman seated beside her benefactress, who had flushed to the roots of her hair to overhear such a conversation.

Only when Freddie swallowed the last of the pulverized lozenge did she notice her nausea had indeed abated a little.

A quick glance around the stagecoach at the other occupants told her that now Piers, Mrs. Brinkley, and Una were not the only ones who knew about Freddie’s interesting condition.

***

By the time Freddie’s visit was over three hours later she had needed to run to the necessary twice and vowed to purchase peppermints before she climbed into the coach for the ride home.

The day was exhausting not just for her, but also for Miranda, who had been more restless than usual, becoming sleepy-eyed and lethargic after opening her gift.

Miranda tolerated Freddie’s kiss, mumbled thank you for the new sketchbook and pastels at Mrs. Morrison’s urging, and tiredly trudged her way up the stairs.

Freddie watched her until she disappeared and then, blinking away the tears that built in her eyes every single time she had to say goodbye , turned to Mrs. Morrison. “Thank you for allowing me to visit. I know my appearance here upsets your schedule.”

“It is always a pleasure to see you, Mrs. Torrance And all three girls look forward to your visits,” Mrs. Morrison assured her with a genial smile.

Freddie handed the older woman a slender packet. “There is a little extra included for this quarter.”

Mrs. Morrison blushed as she took the money. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Torrance. I hope you know we’d take Miranda without pay if we—”

“ Shh, of course I know that.”

“Are you sure you won’t accept a ride today? This storm won’t hold off much longer,” Mrs. Morrison said, eyeing the darkening sky.

After politely declining a ride in the Morrison’s gig—three times—Freddie was allowed to set off on foot, her heart aching as it always did when she left Miranda behind. The money she had given Mrs. Morrison was scarcely more than a pittance, but it was still enough to make inroads into her careful budget. There would be no sugar for tea and the tea itself would need to be rationed more carefully.

Rain began to fall, interrupting her unpleasant thoughts, and a sudden gust of wind caught at her bonnet.

Freddie scowled, more at herself than the weather, and opened her ancient umbrella.

The raindrops grew fatter, and the breeze tugged at the fragile umbrella, almost tugging it from her grasp several times.

“Oh, bother!” she exclaimed as a gust pulled it hard enough to bend the delicate infrastructure.

Freddie was wrestling with the device when the rain suddenly stopped.

“Good afternoon, my lady.”

She gave a startled yelp, her head whipping around at the Duke of Plimpton’s voice.

He had somehow come up alongside her, without her even noticing, and was holding a large black umbrella over her head.

“Wha—what are you doing here?” she demanded, her eyes rapidly moving over his person—exquisitely garbed in riding gear—and then darting up to his face.

“Waiting for you. Come, your umbrella is not salvageable,” he took it from her unresisting fingers. “We cannot stand here without getting soaked and drawing unwanted notice.” He offered her his elbow and she linked her arm with his without thinking.

Angry at herself for obeying him without hesitation, Freddie tried to jerk away only to find that he held her lightly, but firmly.

“Do not be foolish, Winifred.” His voice was frosty and sharp.

Rather than make a scene, Freddie quit struggling and walked beside him, nodding a greeting as she walked past Mrs. Corbin, the owner of the town mercantile. The woman didn’t just run the store, she was also the town crier when it came to gossip. No doubt everyone within a fifty-mile radius would soon know that Mrs. Torrance had been walking arm and arm with a strange man.

“How did you find me?” she asked in a tight voice,

“I followed you.” Rather than sound remorseful, his tone was even haughtier than usual.

“Why would you do such a thing?”

“To see where you were going.”

She sucked in a breath at his audacity. “What gives you the right to invade my privacy in such a way?” she blustered, not stopping to wait for his response. “Following me is obnoxious and offensive enough. But your unapologetic—nay, proud—admission is—well…it is unspeakable!”

“Clearly it is not unspeakable, as you have just spoken at some length on the subject,” he coolly retorted. The muscles of his face subtly shifted beneath his skin, and the erstwhile warm, sultry summer rain seemed to carry a new chill.

As much as she longed to lash out at him, she gritted her teeth until they ached and forced her next words out through rigidly smiling lips. “How dare you spy on me?” she hissed, nodding politely to the left and right as more and more people suddenly decided to step out onto their front stoops to watch the rain.

“I am not sure I would speak of daring, if I were you, my lady.”

How could the words my and lady be made to sound so…accusing? Freddie decided that she would not have minded him using her Christian name at that point.

“I do not know what you mean by all this,” she lied—poorly, she suspected.

He regarded her with a cool, snubbing look that was the conversational equivalent of hurling lamp oil onto her banked temper. Freddie opened her mouth to say something lacerating, but he was not finished.

“My carriage had just pulled up in front of your house when I saw you climb into a hackney. I wished to speak to you, so I followed you. When your carriage dropped you off at the Green Man, I became curious.”

Freddie sorted through various responses, but possessed enough sense to hold back words she would doubtless later regret. What eventually came out was, “How would you like it if I followed you and spied on you ?”

“I am not hiding anything, so I would not mind.”

A rude, scoffing sound of a sort she’d never before made, tore out of her mouth. “Is that so? I can just imagine how delighted you would be if I followed you to one of your mistress’s houses.”

His eyebrows lifted fractionally, and he looked down at her with a lofty, vaguely amused expression that made Freddie want to hit him. “I would be stunned if you did so.”

“Why? Because ladies do not do such things?”

“No, because I do not have any mistresses to visit.”

Disappointment, sharp and searing, stabbed at her. She had believed the duke many things, but never a liar. “I am sure Mrs. Palfrey will be disappointed to hear that.”

What had come over her to say such a thing? Honestly, this impulse to blurt out every thought that came into her head was so unlike her that she no longer recognized herself!

But the duke did not even blink at her words. “I doubt that. She and I went our separate ways months ago.” He paused, and then added, “And I parted with my other lovers immediately upon returning to London from Torrance Park.”

Lovers ? Freddie knew her expression—that of a stunned carp—was not attractive, but she couldn’t help her open-mouthed outrage, or her disappointment. Just what was it about men that one woman was never enough for them? Why did so many of them require multiple lovers to satisfy their needs? It seemed that in this one regard, Plimpton was not so unlike Sedgewick, after all.

The duke put one leather-clad finger beneath her jaw and lightly pressed it closed. “I am not sure what that look was for, Winifred. How could I possibly want any other woman after having had you?”

Freddie swallowed the lump in her throat—this one the result of pleasure rather than ire—and said, “You ended those liaisons because of me ?”

“Only partly. I also ended them because they held no appeal for me.” He walked her around an especially mucky spot in the road, angling the umbrella so that it would shield her better. “You are the only woman I want, Winifred.”

A fog seemed to be building inside her head and Freddie hastily shook it away. Do not let him charm you, the voice of self-preservation advised.

And just where were you back in the boathouse at Torrance Park, Freddie demanded.

But the voice had already fled.

“It does not signify why you ended those, er, liaisons,” she said in a prim voice she despised. “I have no intention of resuming any—any—” she broke off and glared at him when he merely regarded her with mild interest rather than help her find an acceptable word. “You know what I mean.”

“I do know.”

Freddie narrowed her eyes at him. Had that been a smile tugging at his lips?

He returned her gaze, no sign of anything—humorous or otherwise—in his cold gray eyes.

“That episode at Torrance—er, in the boathouse—was the first and only time,” she said, wanting to kick herself: As if there could be any doubt as to what episode she referred to.

“So, you have said. Several times and at length.”

Yes, he was definitely smiling.

Looking at his severe pink lips reminded her of how much they could change. Of how they had become slick and red and swollen that afternoon.

Freddie swallowed, a sudden, vivid memory of what he had done with his stern mouth—

“Winifred.” The quiet word was edged with exasperated amusement.

Her eyes darted up to his. “What?” she demanded rudely.

“If you look at me like that, I cannot promise to control myself on the journey back to London.”

Her mind seemed to split into two pieces. One went romping after the tantalizing fantasy of the duke losing his control. The other part, far more tiresome, became snagged on the far less fun aspect of his threat. “You cannot go on the stage with me!”

“You are coming back with me in my carriage.”

“Your carriage? But you are dressed for riding.” As if that made any difference at all.

“I will explain why that is when we are on our way back to London.”

“What makes you think I will accompany you?”

“You can either ride with me, or I will purchase a seat on the stage, and we can have our discussion in front of a no-doubt fascinated audience.”

“You would not dare.”

His gaze was level and bland. “I always do what I say I will do, Winifred.”

Freddie’s breathing became labored as his pupils shrank to pinpricks, making his gray eyes appear lighter—and far steelier—than usual. “Wh-what discussion?”

“I think you know exactly what I want to discuss.”

***

Plimpton could see she was angry. That was fine; he was angry, too. Actually, he was furious . His temper had cooled slightly on the ride from his home on Grosvenor Square to Winifred’s house. But it had spiked again when he had followed her hackney cab to the bloody Green Man.

He had fumed all the way from the busy inn to the Spotted Sow in the little village of Spenham. He had become even more displeased upon discovering that Winifred was well-known—as was her errand—by everyone in the little village, while he had been utterly in the dark. Mrs. Torrance had been coming to visit her daughter at the Morrison’s house, on the first and third Wednesday of each month, for almost nine years.

For nine years she had somehow managed to keep her child a secret from Wareham as well as the rest of the world.

Plimpton could not decide what disappointed him more. The fact that she had a nine-year-old daughter she had tucked away for almost a decade, or that she had lied to him about her inability to bear children.

Those thoughts led directly to a third thought, one that did not just disappoint him, but enraged him: the Countess of Sedgewick was carrying his child. A child she had fully intended to conceal from him.

Plimpton had not been this angry in—hell, he could not recall ever being so furious. Or so bloody hurt.

Even his brother Simon, one of the most obstinate, argumentative men alive had not provoked him like this, although not for a lack of trying.

As if the secret she was keeping was not bad enough, the messenger had made it even worse. Plimpton was now indebted to Piers bloody Cantrell, a man for whom he held nothing but the deepest suspicion. So, yet another complaint he could lay at this woman’s door.

As furious, and—yes, pained—as he was, he refused to give in to his base emotions and rant at her. And so it was with his usual cool courtesy that he ignored her scowls and assisted her into his coach before handing both his umbrella and hers to one of his servants. The man, Albert, looked at the bedraggled umbrella. “Er, what should I—”

“Get rid of it,” Plimpton said, and then climbed in and took the back-facing seat.

Once Albert had closed the door he tapped on the roof and the carriage rolled smoothly forward.

Winifred glared, her arms crossed over her chest and her chin jutting combatively. “Perhaps now you can explain what was so important that you spied on me, followed me, and intruded on—”

“Were you ever going to tell me about our child?” Try as he might, Plimpton could not keep every trace of anger and pain from his voice.

As it had done earlier, her jaw dropped open like a trapdoor with a defective hinge. This time, her stunned expression did not amuse him in the least. Quite the contrary; it stirred the coals of his wrath.

Plimpton abruptly leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees as he closed the distance between them. “Has the cat got your tongue, Winifred?”

Her jaw shifted from side to side, a pugnacious expression settling onto her delicate features. “Who told you?”

He flung up his hands. “ That is what you have to say?”

“I want to know who betrayed my secret.”

“Just how many people know about this?”

Was it wrong that he took pleasure in the way she flinched at the naked menace in his tone?

“I—there are only three,” she admitted.

“And who are those three, pray?”

“My two servants are aware of my condition, but not who the—” she broke off and caught her lower lip with her teeth.

“Is father the word you are seeking? Come, I know you can say it if you try. Or perhaps I should define it for you?”

Her full lips thinned at his sarcasm. “I apologize for my stupid question. It was Piers, of course. He is the only one who knows the complete truth.” Disbelief, fury, and betrayal flitted across her face and Plimpton felt a sharp pang of guilt at being the one to cause her distress. He was seized by a powerful urge to take her in his arms and comfort her, to smooth away the furrows in her brow and kiss away the frown on her lips.

But then he recalled she had just come back from visiting her hidden daughter and was evidently preparing to do the same with his child.

“Tell me, my lady, were you planning to tuck my son or daughter away like you have with the girl? Was it your intent to visit him or her twice a month while going blithely about your life? Is your daughter the reason you refuse to accept Wareham’s help? Because you know what he would do if he found out?”

Plimpton had not known exactly what to expect from her at that accusation, but it certainly had not been mocking amusement. “Why are you bothering to ask me any questions when you think you already know the truth?”

Her careful wording penetrated the fog of anger around him. “What do I not know?”

She turned and looked out the window, her profile set in such obstinate lines that he marveled; who would have believed this elegant, sophisticated woman was even capable of such a sullen, childish expression?

“What do I not know, Winifred?” he repeated in a voice carefully stripped of all emotion.

She merely lifted one shoulder.

The infuriating woman.

“Were you ever going to tell me about the baby?”

“I do not know,” she admitted after a long pause, still refusing to make eye contact with him.

Plimpton was grateful for her honesty, even though her response almost gutted him. Did she really find the notion of a child with him—a future together—so repellent that she would keep his own flesh and blood from him?

The thought made any sadness or regret he was feeling evaporate. In its place was iron resolve. “We will be married within the week.”

She turned to him, her eyes like pools of molten silver. “Your arrogance—your belief that your word is to be obeyed without question—is precisely why I never told you about my baby!”

“If by arrogance you mean a father’s desire to make sure his child is born within wedlock, then I am happy to accept your accusation.”

“Oh, I understand perfectly your desire to assure your child’s legitimacy. But you do not stop at merely desiring . You demand , and I am allowed no say in any of it as you have already decided for both of us how the future will be.”

Plimpton sat back, astonished. “Please—enlighten me as to what other possible future you envision? Would you raise this one yourself and bring him or her up in genteel poverty? How would you earn your crust? Do you think the ton would tolerate your presence, not to mention give their daughters into your keeping, if you had an illegitimate child? How would you feed, clothe, and house our child if you were a pariah?” His eyes narrowed and he allowed a cruel, cutting edge to sharpen his next words. “Or I suppose you would act in keeping with your current behavior and hand our child off to an elderly couple residing in rural squalor to—”

“I would never do that with my baby!” Her eyes blazed in self-righteous fury.

Plimpton shook his head, confused. “Why would this child be any different to you than—”

“Miranda is not my daughter, Your Grace!”

“If she is not yours, then who—”

“I am not going to tell you whose child she is. Suffice it to say that I took her out of an asylum where she was starving and chained to a wall, made to sit in her own bodily waste while people paid a few pence to gawk at her. She has no mother and no father. I am what she has.” Her silvery eyes were lighter than ever as she fixed him with a fierce glare.

Plimpton was utterly baffled. What the devil did she mean? Had she just plucked a child at random out of some horrid institution? But what had made her—

He reined in his pointless musing. The identity of the child—as long as it was not hers—was of negligible interest to him. For now, all that mattered was that she had not planned to condemn her own flesh and blood to being raised by strangers. It was not much, but it was better than what he had believed half-an-hour ago.

He turned his attention to the more important matter. “You know we must marry.”

She closed her eyes, a shudder racking her body, an expression of profound misery taking possession of her delicate features.

So, I will marry yet another wife who hates me to the core of her being.

The chilling thought struck him like a kick to the chest.

Plimpton thrust the pain aside, something he was so skilled at doing that it had become as natural as breathing.

She opened her eyes and squarely met his gaze. “Yes, I know.”

***

Freddie was so tired. Not just from the day’s journey and the emotional strain of encountering the duke, but from years and years of hiding so much of her life from everyone.

She stared into the eyes of the man whom she had suspected for weeks—perhaps even longer; perhaps from the moment she had reluctantly, almost unwillingly, waltzed with him at Miles’s wedding ball more than a year ago—would become her husband.

The fury that had caused his pupils to shrink to punishing black dots had disappeared and he was once again the cool, untouchable aristocrat. “We still have a month or so before we need marry. If your current condition leaves you too tired, my secretary can draw up a guest list, send out invitation, and manage all the—”

“I want no grand ceremony.” She felt her face twist into a sneer and the words spilled from her mouth like venom, “ If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly. ”

A dull red stain spread across his austere features, as if she had struck him.

Remorse at her cruel words flooded her. “I—I apologize. That was—”

“Dramatic?” he suggested, his expression of frigid hauteur sitting oddly on his flushed face.

“I was going to say cruel and unnecessary.”

“But it was honest,” he replied in an inflectionless tone. “We should at least know what we have in one another, should we not?”

Her face heated in well-deserved shame, both at her viciousness as well as the painful acknowledgement that keeping his child from him had been monstrous in the extreme. Had it been possible for their positions to be reversed—and for him to do the same to her—Freddie was not sure she could find it in herself to ever forgive him.

“I can respect brutal honesty,” he said. “And I can give it in return.” His gray eyes were as flat and flinty as slate. “Although I fear my grasp of Shakespeare is not so impressive as yours, so I am relegated to using my own words.” An emotion she could not read flickered across his face, and he said, “If you have any intention of slipping away from me and running from this marriage, I want you to know that there is no place on earth you can hide where I will not find you.”

Chilled to her very marrow, Freddie nodded stiffly. “I give you my word I will not leave or try to keep your child from you.” Again.

His jaws flexed as he stared at her—as if seeking to confirm the truth of her words. Whatever he saw must have satisfied him because he abruptly turned away from her and stared out the window.

They did not exchange another word until they were standing in front of her door what felt like an eternity later.

He paused, his hand resting on the door handle. “I will call on you tomorrow so that we can discuss—”

“I do not need to discuss anything, Your Grace. I will leave the planning to you. I would prefer that the ceremony be as small as possible. And I would ask that you delay making any public announcement until I have had a chance to speak to Wareham and my friends.”

“I, too, would like to speak to my family before sending word of our marriage to the newspaper. However, know that I cannot keep the matter private for long.” He must have seen the skepticism in her eyes, because he said, “I will have to procure a special license, which means the archbishop will be aware of my plans and he will pass along that information to whomever he believes needs to hear it. One of those people will be the Regent.”

Freddie knew what he said was the truth. A duke marrying by special license was highly irregular. And the Regent was not known for keeping secrets. That meant she had a few days at the most to write her letters.

His lips turned down at the corners. “Normally, the prince would be in Brighton right now and I might have an excuse to not seek his blessing. But he has returned this past week given the unrest that is building in the North. He can be prickly if he believes the proper homage has not been given, so I will have to tell him.”

“I understand, Your Grace.”

His jaw flexed—a subtle action Freddie was beginning to realize was the equivalent to another, less reserved, man’s grimace—as he stared down at her. After an uncomfortable silence, he said, “I will return seven days hence if that will be enough time for you to prepare?”

Seven days? A hundred years would not be long enough to reconcile herself to marrying again. But she had already spewed enough bile at the man who would soon own her body and soul for as long as they both lived. And so she inclined her head and politely said, “Thank you. Seven days will be sufficient.”

He opened the door, waited until she had entered the foyer, and then shut it without another word.

Freddie collapsed against the cool wood of the door and closed her eyes. Seven days. She would be married again in seven days. She would be another man’s chattel— again —in seven days. A possession to be sent away at her husband’s whim. A pawn to be moved about in any manner her master saw fit, to be commanded and ordered. And if she disobeyed, to be beaten and locked away—

Plimpton is nothing like Sedgewick and you know it .

Freddie wanted to scream and rail against the cool voice of reason that usually guided her thoughts, no matter how right it might—

“Little Bird?”

Her eyes flew open at Piers’s tentative voice. He was standing on the stairs, looking down at her, an expression of concern creasing his deeply tanned face.

“You!” Freddie lifted her arm to hurl her satchel at him. Only at the last moment did she recall that Miranda’s framed painting was inside it and lowered the bag. “You—you—”

“Bastard?” he suggested with an unhappy smile.

“Why, Piers? Just… why ?”

“Why do you think, Winifred? Because I could not let you do this—not to yourself, and especially not to your child.”

“What gives you the right to make that decision for me?” she shouted, too furious to care that she was behaving like a fishwife. “You who have been gone for most of my life? How can you—”

“My lady? Is aught amiss?”

Freddie’s head whipped around, and she met the horrified gaze of her housekeeper. She forced a reassuring smile. “Nothing is wrong, Mrs. Brinkley. I will ring if I require your assistance.” It was the closest Freddie had ever come to throwing the woman out of a room.

“Of course, my lady.” The housekeeper said stiffly, and then fled.

Freddie regretted having to dismiss her in such a way and knew she would need to make amends to the kindly woman later.

For now, however…

She turned to Piers and her anger returned with a vengeance.

She yanked on the ribbons of her bonnet and flung it onto the nearby table with punishing force before marching up the stairs and poking her brother in the chest. “It was not your secret to share, Piers. Nor was it your problem to solve. How would you like it if I decided to make those sorts of decisions for your life? You asked me to keep my nose out of your business—not to meddle—and I adhered to your wishes.” She felt a twinge of guilt at the memory of her gentle prying into the matter with the duke that day in the boathouse, but brutally dismissed it. “Why do I not deserve the same treatment?”

“It is not the same thing, Lit—”

“Do not dare use my pet name to manipulate me right now! How is it not the same? Because I am a mere woman, and you are a man who naturally knows what is best for me? You took away my choices, Piers—all of them, not just about the child, but about who I would marry. About the very fact that I now have to marry. You took away my future. ”

His dark eyes suddenly flared to life, and he shoved his face close to hers, startling her so badly she took a step back and would have fallen if he hadn’t grabbed her upper arms.

“ Your choices?” His face contorted with anger. “What about your child’s choice, Winifred?”

“That is something I would have decided after I had given the matter—”

“You are a smart woman and yet you ask me why ? Why the hell do you think? What was there for you to consider? The time to consider was before you spread your—”

Freddie wrenched her arm away. “How dare you? Who are you to judge me? You who have probably wenched your way around the globe and back again!”

Dark amusement glittered in his black eyes. “You have a point there, sister. Please forgive me; my accusation was not only crude, but it was also hypocritical. And it was also beside the point—which is the future of your child. I am sure I do not need to explain to you the slim chance of an illegitimate daughter making a decent marriage. But perhaps you are enjoying scrimping and saving so much that you have no qualms about condemning a female child to a similar existence?” he asked sarcastically. “But have you given any thought as to what would happen if you refuse to marry and then give birth to a son? How will he feel when he is old enough to understand that some younger—but legitimate— son of Plimpton’s has inherited what should have been his ?”

Frightened by his anger, Freddie tried to retreat, but he held her immobile. “How will he feel being forced to fight for scraps of respect and love from everyone around him—all those who know him for a bastard—while some other younger son becomes a goddamned duke ? Tell me what you will think then, Winifred?” he shouted, shaking her until her teeth rattled.

“Piers!” she gasped as she stared into the face of a stranger.

He froze, his hands still clamped painfully tight, his nostrils flaring with the ferocity of his breathing. “You are right about one thing, Winifred. I did take away your choice. And I would do it again in a heartbeat. It might be unfair, but I have a damned sight more knowledge about what it is like to be a bastard than you ever will. I can live with what I did. You may never forgive my betrayal, but one day your son or daughter will thank me for my meddling.” He firmly set her aside before descending the stairs two at a time. He snatched his hat and gloves off the table, not bothering to put either on before flinging open the door and shutting it behind him with a sharp bang.

Leaving Freddie stunned and alone with her unwanted thoughts.