Page 21 of A Virgin to Tempt the Duke

“Good.” He made a note on something. “There’s also the question of witnesses beyond my own testimony. Someone who can confirm you had no knowledge of the wedding beforehand. Your lady’s maid at Edgeware House, does she know what happened that morning?”

“Maura.” Anna frowned. “Yes. She was the one who woke me. She was given the dress to lay out the night before. She was…” She paused, remembering Maura’s face. The guilty apology in it. “She knew it was wrong. She was frightened.”

“Of your cousin?”

“He would have dismissed her without reference; I do not put it above him. He may have threatened worse.” She pressed her lips together. “I can’t ask her to testify. If he finds out…”

“I won’t contact her directly.” His pen had stilled on the page. “I’ll have someone approach her discreetly. Someone your cousin won’t connect to me or to you. We’ll establish whether she’s willing before we ask anything of her.”

“And if she isn’t?”

“Then we don’t use her. We find another way.” He looked up. “We have options, Miss Cartwell. We are not down to the last one yet.”

She nodded. And then, because it had been sitting with her since the previous day, she said, “And… Your Grace? I think… I think you should speak to Rachel.”

The quality of the room shifted slightly.

“Should I?” he asked.

“She is still upset. About yesterday.” Anna watched him. “She understood why you were angry, but she is not unreasonable. The way you spoke to her?—”

“I said what was accurate.”

“You said what was accurate in a way that made her feel like a problem.” She kept her voice measured. “The same way you sometimes…” She stopped.

“The same way I sometimes what?”

She met his gaze, which only emboldened her, and brought heat to her belly she could not explain. “The same way you sometimes manage rather than speak,” she pressed.

He was quiet for a moment, and his eyes did not leave her. “I did not manage Rachel. I told her the truth.”

“You told her she was lucky rather than careful, and shewascareful. She thought it through. The plan was not reckless, it was reasonable, and it worked.” Anna leaned forward slightly. “The issue is that you didn’t know about it, and that is a different problem than the one you described to her.”

“The issue,” the Duke said, his voice controlled, “is that Birchall is looking for you. That is not some hypothetical?—”

“I know?—”

“Any slip, any identification, any whisper that reaches the wrong ears before my attorney has filed?—”

“Iknow?—”

“—could undo everything. That is not managing. That is consequence.” His deep voice had not risen, not once.

Anna suspected it never rose. The slow, deep tones made his voice commanding in its own right. But the weight of it had shifted, and they had both leaned forward across the desk without either of them noticing until they were already there. Anna felt they were closer than the desk should have allowed, the geography of argument having its own logic and bringing them together.

“You are right about the consequence,” Anna said. She was near enough now to see the faint line between his brows, the steadiness with which he held himself when he was working hardest at it. She could also smell his same intoxicating scent, green pine and good soap. “And you are wrong about your sister. Both things are true.”

The Duke said nothing.

“She loves you,” Anna said, more quietly. “And she doesn’t…she doesn’t always understand why you hold everything so tightly. She only knows that you do, and that sometimes it…” She searched for the word. “That it comes out sideways.”

He was very still. They were very close. Her heartbeat grew so strong she felt it pounding in her ears, a timpanist’s beat that punctuated a feeling she couldn’t name.

His gaze moved to her mouth, and she drew in a sharp breath.

Is he…?

It was brief, a fraction of a second, and then it moved back to her eyes immediately. It was with the speed of a man catching himself, but she had seen it. He gulped, and Anna could sense that he knew she had seen it.