Page 25 of The Duke Decides

“What do you mean?”

Gabe slid his hand along her forearm, then placed her palm on the crook of his arm. It felt right to have Louisa walking at his side, like his lady.

“The blackmailer believes he knows something that you would sacrifice all this—” He waved a hand to indicate the bounty surrounding them, the tidy beds of growing things, the rooms filled with busy industry, the clean windows that sparkled with effort and care— “to keep secret.”

She looked about them, seeing what he did, but also, he guessed more: the years of her history here, the refuge she had spoken of finding. The pride she took in her place here was evident.

He could imagine her in an expensive drawing room, sweeping along in a fashionable gown as if she glided over water, holding her own in conversation with ladies like the Marchioness of Westmeath, accepting the admiring homage of their lords. But she was so completely at home here, sharing smiles and caresses with the small girls who clustered around her skirts, showing the older ones how to go on in the world. She had built this place, the quiet efficiency if not the actual stones, and she was its beating heart.

She stepped away, letting go of his arm, and Gabe felt the loss of her warmth. She plucked a small white flower growing at the border of one of the garden beds, held the bloom to her nose, then tore off a petal and put it in her mouth.

“Ladies smock. It’s peppery. We can add it to our greens for dinner.” She held the flower out to him as if he too foraged every day and dined off plants in his garden.

He had never in his life seen a lady, not even his mother, pick a plant straight from the ground and eat it. Gabe pinched off one of the small white petals, veined with violet, and laid it on his tongue.

“It is peppery.”

She tasted another petal and surveyed the gardens about her in a small arc. “He’s wrong about something,” she said.

“Who is?”

“Lord Vérité. Lord Sneak.” She pursed her lips together. “I won’t sacrifice all this.”

“Won’t give it up, you mean.”

“I will, if I must.” The bleak expression in her eyes was like a blade descending into his chest. He wanted to howl along with her. She let the stripped plant fall to the ground by her feet.

“If it’s a matter of protecting them… If I must remove myself so the Benevolent Hospital can go on, I must. I won’t stay here and bring it all to ruin.”

“The blackmailer is counting on your need to stay here.”

That expression of hers ripped another hole in his chest. She looked like a woman standing on shore watching the wreck of a ship that held everything she loved.

“Because I don’t have anywhere else to go,” she said.

He took her arm again, drawing her to his side, and steered them down the path. The beat of his heart sharpened when she was near, a painful rap within his chest. “Tell me.”

“If I do, then you know my secret as well as Lord Vérité, and I have no notion how he would have learned anything about me in the first place. When I came here—” She stopped herself from saying more.

He walked them back through the dining hall, where a set of small girls, under the supervision of slightly larger girls, were scrubbing tables and benches. Several of them paused to watch and giggle as a child in infant’s dress—a boy, Gabe thought—took toddling steps near the hearth, staggering toward one of the rocking elders and catching himself on her knee. He beamed at the crone, pleased with his accomplishment, and she beamed back, her lips soft around the spaces of missing teeth.

Anywhere else, these souls would be living in abject misery. Behind him, at one of the tables, a young voice started a chorus of “Home, Sweet Home.” Gabe had seen the opera, Clari, the Maid of Milan, when it was produced in London. The plot had something to do with a lecherous duke pursuing an innocent country girl, trying to turn her into his mistress.

That was not to the point. The point was, the girls were singing as they worked, making a round of the tune. Everyone had a place here, and everyone a portion. There was dignity accorded to all.

One of the women who sat in a wheeled chair near the hearth worked on a bit of mending. An elder with hands bent into arthritic claws churned butter as she rocked. A young woman walked through the hall, a basket of folded linens tucked against a belly swelling with child, and added her voice to the chorus.

Louisa made all this possible. This happiness, their safety, was the result of her toil and oversight and care.

Gabe turned a corner and delivered them back to her parlor. Louisa looked surprised that he could navigate the place, but he had grown up in a warren of alleyways and narrow streets; a building like this, laid out in tidy symmetrical blocks, was a stroll through the park.

“So leaving is not your first choice,” he began.

He got no farther, because a new image assailed him. Louisa, in a velvet riding habit and jaunty hat, parading with him through Rotten Row among his fashionable cohort and the exercises of the Household Calvary.

Louisa, putting a gloved hand in his as she descended from the ducal carriage before the opera or a town home where they had been invited to dinner.

Louisa, presiding in the lady’s seat at his own table, where he could watch her smile and converse with their guests, her face incandescent with the glow of candelabra and the gleam of china and silver.