Page 16 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
“Saving you.”
“I don’t need saving! The manor is that way.” She pointed behind them.
“The path is a swamp. I am not risking my bride’s neck in the mud before we are even married.”
“Put me down!”
She shoved at his chest, but it did not budge. Her face was hot, which was absurd given how cold and wet the rest of her was. She was pressed against his chest, and she could feel hisheartbeat, slow and steady, and the warmth of him through his wet shirt.
“That was a pretty stupid game, if I may say so,” he said, walking through the rain as though it were not there.
“You already said that.”
“It deserves repeating. Watching how we speak with the people who work for you might have told you more about our characters than sending us into a hedge maze.”
She opened her mouth to argue and then closed it. He was not wrong. She hated that he was not wrong.
“If I must be honest with you,” she muttered, “I hoped some of the men I do not trust would have left by now. It would have saved me the trouble of apologizing when I dismiss them.”
“How many do you not trust?”
“Most of them.”
“Wise woman.” He adjusted his grip. The rain was easing slightly. “You don’t need to worry about the others. I can protect you from all of them.”
“I do not need a protector.”
“Everyone needs a protector, Duchess. The trick is finding one who doesn’t want something in return.”
“And you don’t want anything?”
“I want to re-enter Society; that’s the truth of it. Nathaniel says that a wife and a title and a respectable household will open doors that twelve years of service to the Crown cannot.” He paused. “And there are people I want to help. Orphans. The poor. The ones that nobody lifts a finger for. A duchess at my side opens doors that a spy never could.”
She had not expected that. She had expected him to talk about heirs, about lineage, about the things men always talked about.
“But you want heirs?” she asked.
“Not particularly,” he answered, and did not explain further.
She stared at him. She had never heard a man say that before.
She waited for the caveat, the condition, the part where he told her what he really wanted. It did not come. He just kept walking steadily, unhurried.
“How would you treat your wife?” she prodded. “And the people who work for you?”
“With the respect they deserve for trusting me to protect them.”
She looked at his face. He was not performing. He was not trying to impress her. He was answering her questions the way a man answered when he had nothing to hide and no energy left for pretending.
She stopped fighting. Not because he told her to, but because something had shifted in her chest and she needed a moment to figure out what it was.
He carried her to a gazebo at the edge of the gardens and set her down on the bench. His arms did not shake when he let go. She noticed that.
“Stay here,” he said, then went back into the rain.
She watched him disappear around the hedge. For a terrible second, she thought he was leaving. Then he was back, coat streaming, with a lit lantern in his hand. She had no idea where he found it.
“How did you do that?”
