Page 4 of A Duke in Her Fate
“Your Grace?”
“Where is the boy?”
“He’s abed already,” Hobbes reassured him with a glance toward the clock in the corner. “The hour is late. A dinner tray should be ready in your bed chamber by the time you make your way there. I don’t know if he’s asleep yet to welcome a secret visit.”
Ronan frowned. “I wasn’t going to visit him.”
“Not even a peak?”
“No,” he said defensively.
“You’re pacing again,” Hobbes noted.
Shaking his head, Ronan downed the rest of the tea before resuming his walk. “I know.”
“What is it now? The boy?” There was a slightly mocking, scolding tone there that Ronan decided to ignore. The two of them had talked enough this week alone about the entire situation and there was, as he continued to reassure his servant, nothing to be done.
“No. Something new,” he said with a note of irony in his voice. “It appears I cannot escape the rumors in London.”
Hobbes frowned, concern threading his brow. “What do they know?”
“Certainly not the truth.” Finally, Ronan shoved himself into a chair because he couldn’t take the pacing any longer. Except he couldn’t be still. Whatever calm he thought he could manage simply wasn’t there. He glared at his fingers as they tapped across the desk, wishing them to be still. Wishing he could be still. Wishing his heart could be still.
“Oh?” Hobbes widened his eyes with curiosity as he leaned forward. “What is it now?
Ronan felt acid on his tongue. “They think I’m to marry.”
His servant stared, still, and blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t. It’s not worth it.”
“You? Married?”
“To marry,” Ronan corrected him before he could help it.
It’s not like that matters. Nothing like that matters. There are other things that matter. Things I need to… Things I have to stop ignoring.
“How strange,” Hobbes said at last. “Well, perhaps that could be a good thing.”
It was Ronan’s turn to then ask, “I beg your finest pardon?”
“Thank you kindly, but do consider that it would solve a problem of yours,” Hobbes pointed out. He rolled his eyes pointedly toward the ceiling, keeping there a moment, before staring back at Ronan. “What a perfect opportunity it is to fall right into your lap.”
“A perfect opportunity?”
“A godsend, even.”
Ronan glowered at him even as the man hovered. “I don’t even know who she is. I hardly have a name.”
“Who needs a name when you can have yourself a wife?”
That was an awful question of Hobbes, and yet there was no denying it was a partial answer as well.
Even as the butler made way to prepare Ronan another cup of masala chai, something he’d taken to purchasing frequently after his short stay abroad in India, the words lingered in the space of the small study.
It was undeniably a strange situation, Ronan could accept. He’d never heard of a young lady announcing a betrothal to a stranger without his knowledge. Was this some sort of trap? A jest? A lie?
Perhaps a gamble. On whose part it will be, I can hardly say. But…
