Page 134 of The Ladies Least Likely
She had placed him so his bad leg faced her, but with his weight on his good leg, so he could prop one boot carelessly against the other like any gentleman at his ease, leaning on an available marble pilaster.
He could stand like this for some time without hurting, and he didn’t doubt that she had arranged it on purpose.
I desire you . But not enough to join with him.
“What changed?” he asked roughly.
She concentrated on her paper. “Mrs. Darly of the Macaroni Shop bought three sketches of you. She made two dozen prints of the first engraving and put them on sale yesterday. By today she had sold them all. She is making more prints of that one as well as the others, and she wants more poses.” She glanced at his head, back to her paper.
“More suggestive ones, this time. Clients have asked.”
Ren groaned. “But that is what you wanted, isn’t it? To draw attention to me.”
“It will work in your favor, Ren. I promise.” She didn’t sound full of conviction. “Ladies will adore and obsess over you. Men will envy and want to emulate you.”
“And they could be me, if they wished for a clubfoot that would bring them years of painful surgery and therapy and corrective shoes, and a stammer that damns them in any company.”
“You’ll be desirable to everyone. You’ll have your pick of a bride, despite being associated with me.”
He heard the faint recrimination in her tone. She’d never admit it had hurt her that his mother all but booted her from her drawing room, calling the butler to brush her out the door like so much trash. Ren set his teeth.
“And that is your goal. To foist me on some poor, unsuspecting woman.” You and my mother . “I’m sorry my mother treated you as she did, Rhette.”
“Oh, she has good reason to do so. What young lady will entertain your addresses with me on your arm?”
“Stop it,” he said roughly. “I am proud to have you on my arm.”
“But I won’t scare off just your suitors. Your association with me may reflect poorly on your sister as well.”
His heart contracted. This was his Harriette to the core, worried about the welfare of others, whatever the cost to herself. She had never met his sister, but because Ren cared about her, Harriette extended her loyalty to Amalie as well. He couldn’t wait to introduce them.
“I doubt Amalie wants to be foisted on anybody, either. You still haven’t given me a good reason.” For denying him. For repulsing him. For breaking his heart.
She paused and looked into his eyes. “Everyone will assume I’ve opened my legs to you. There’s no way I could be a decent woman and draw such things.”
A wave of shame went through him along with a wave of hot lust at her words, the image of Harriette opening her legs for him. He’d been burning for her without any thought of what giving in to him would do to her reputation.
“I’ve already said I’d marry you, damn it.
” His mother was right in that he’d put a considerable dent in the esteem and position of the Renwick name by marrying so far beneath him, but he was an earl.
His estates were solvent, or mostly solvent.
He could marry as he pleased, and if his mother flew up in the boughs about it, he would pack her off to a remote estate and leave her there.
He didn’t care if all of society shunned him if he could have Harriette at his side.
The hand moving over her paper grew unsteady. “But I’ve already told you I am unsuited for marriage. By temperament and inclination, if not otherwise.”
Did she mean to be celibate? She had given herself to other men but had told him she meant to reform.
Ren’s throat hurt. He wasn’t enough to make her choose him, despite everything.
Those kisses, that flaming passion that torched his world down to nothing but her, that bond that drew him to her like a magnet—it was another foolish mistake , in her book.
“What do you intend, then?” he asked quietly. “For your future.” He wanted to know. He wanted to find a way to include himself in it.
“My plan had been to paint, and gain commissions, and eventually set up a shop of my own.” Her hand trembled and she stopped, laying her crayon across the paper. She raised troubled eyes to him, her lips turned down. “But I’ve lately discovered my future is not mine to plan.”
“What do you mean?” Panic curled around his middle. He’d only been gone two days. What had happened?
She spread her hands over her face. “I am betrothed,” she said.
His heart slammed against his ribs. “ What ?”
“I received a missive by way of the Graf von Hardenburg, who, when he returned to Prussia, apparently located my mother’s family.
They live in the part of Silesia that has lately been drawn into the Prussian empire, and they were quite eager to know where I was.
They have been trying to find me for some time, it seems.”
She drew a long, shaky breath. Ren sagged against the false marble pillar, hoping it would hold his weight as he tried to follow her explanation.
“Among other things, I have learned that I have been betrothed since birth. My grandfather was the Duke of Lowenburg, my mother is the current Duchess of Lowenburg, and I am to marry my cousin so we may keep the duchy within the family and placate some great-uncle who was furious that my grandfather gave the estate and the title to my mother instead of to him.”
She dropped her head, shaking it from side to side while Ren stared, struck speechless, his tongue too large to fit in his mouth.
“My mother left Silesia so I wouldn’t be a pawn,” she said.
“It seems my father was killed in the Silesian wars, when the Hapsburgs tried to take the territory back from Prussia. And my mother feared that as the heir, someone might kill me and force her to marry, thus claiming the duchy. She left my grandfather in control of his lands, but now my grandfather is dead and my cousin wants to wed me so he may take possession of Lowenburg, and I have no say in the matter because the contract was signed when I was born.”
“Oh, Rhette.”
Though cold shock coursed through his veins, he forced himself to move, dragging his foot behind him and not caring if he scuffed the floor.
The grace he’d studied and practiced deserted him in the face of this numbing realization.
He limped to her stool and put his arms around her, pulling her against his chest.
He couldn’t imagine touching anyone else of his acquaintance, nor showing such affection to anyone else in his life. But this was Harriette. He wrapped his arms about her shoulders and laid his head atop hers, and she leaned against his chest with a shuddering sigh.
“Many women would be thrilled to learn they are descended from dukes,” he said softly.
“And thrilled to be told they must move to a country they’ve never seen, marry and bear heirs to a man they’ve never met, and fit into a society they know nothing about, while knowing their decisions affect the welfare of thousands of people?”
He tightened his arms about her. “Such has always been the fate of high-born women, hasn’t it?” he murmured.
Women across time had been bound and traded as property, gaining a husband access to wealth and lands. Only look at King George, who refused to give away his princess daughters, some said because he did not want them setting up rival governments abroad and thwarting him as his sons had done.
But that it should happen to Harriette…Rhette, the imp with a slingshot who had pattered barefoot around Shepton Mallet with stains on her apron and her petticoat torn to shreds.
Rhette, who had scaled the Blinder Wall at the Manor House and shimmied up a tree to the balcony of his house and could have broken her neck a hundred times.
The neck of a duchess-to-be whose hand in marriage would grant a man the rule of a duchy. His mind reeled.
“But only think, Rhette, how my mother will fall all over herself when she learns of it. She’ll be the first to invite you to her house and serve tea to the next Duchess of Lowenburg.
” He pressed the words out, painful as they were, and spoke slowly so his stupid tongue didn’t betray him.
“Everyone will make a darling of you. No more being tossed out of grand houses on your ear. And your sketches—you will be eccentric and amusing, a duchess who draws. You will be forgiven anything when you are that high.”
He knew how it worked in those circles, that all manner of licentious behavior would be winked at as long as one were fashionable.
Affairs. Gambling debts. Suspicious politics.
As long as one had good blood, the most outrageous acts were amusing.
And Harriette, despite her background, despite her upbringing, despite her profession and her history, had a noble bloodline.
A duchess . Higher than he, certainly. Ren had nothing to offer her now. And nothing she could accept, in honesty, if she were to be married.
“You mean to go through with the marriage, then.” His voice sounded hoarse.
“I don’t see how I have a choice. I know I’ve never looked the dutiful daughter, but my grandfather and my mother entrusted to me the fate of these lands.
I stain their honor and break their word if I go against their wishes.
My mother sacrificed a life of comfort as a duke’s daughter so that I would be safe and live to fulfill this promise.