Page 53 of The Duchess’ Second Chance

He began to walk away and was deeply thankful when she fell into step alongside him. Still anxious to get away from the ballroom—though now for completely different reasons—he led her out into the foyer, across, and down the hall that would take them to the library.

She didn’t speak until they’d stepped through the doors and he had pulled them closed. “What was that all about?” she asked.

Her voice was tight and tense. There was anger there. “It was nothing,” he said quickly.

“Sampson, don’t lie to me. Why don’t you ever just tell me the truth?”

“Excuse me? You’re suggesting that I never tell you the truth?” He turned around, frowning. “That’s a bit much, don’t you think?”

“I think it’s obvious that something was going on between you and my father, and I don’t understand why you won’t tell me what it was,” she said, frowning. “Do you think I don’t have a right to know these things? Do you think I wouldn’t be capable of understanding? Or is this just another secret you’re keeping from me, for some reason?”

“You act as if all I do is keep secrets,” he said, bristling.

“Well, you still won’t tell me the reason you wanted to marry me, and you walked away from me when I asked—just as I suspected you would,” she said. “I told you that I had waited to ask you about it at a time I didn’t feel you’d be able to walk away from me, but you found a time. And now you won’t tell me what you were discussing with my father either.”

“I’m telling you there was nothing to it.”

“Really?” Amanda put her hands on her hips. “I heard you, you know. I heard what you said to him about letting him keep my dowry. Why did you do that?”

He hadn’t expected that to be her question. “I…does that matter?”

“If it doesn’t matter, then tell me,” she said. “If you aren’t hiding anything then just be honest. Why wouldn’t you take the dowry? It doesn’t make any sense.”

He wasn’t sure what to say. Did she want him to have taken it? What difference could that possibly make?

She narrowed her eyes. “I know the answer,” she said. “You didn’t take it because you felt sorry for me. You pitied me. That’s why you married me in the first place. You checked in on your friend’s wife when you got home from the war, and when you discovered my circumstances, you thought I was helpless and in need of saving. You married me because you thought me weak.”

“That isn’t true,” Sampson protested hotly. He had never thought that about her.

She shook her head. “You can say that all you want, but it’s clear enough to me that you’re hiding something,” she said. “And until you tell me what it is, I have no choice but to make my own guesses. It seems to me that you made up that story about George wanting you to look out for me because you thought I wouldn’t have married you if I knew the truth—you just couldn’t bear the idea that your friend’s wife was alone in the world. Well, you’re right. I wouldn’t have married you if I’d known you were asking out of pity. I don’t need your pity. And I don’t need your help, either.”

So saying, she turned and stormed out of the library, slamming the door as hard as she could behind her.

It was particularly unladylike behavior. Her father would have been aghast.

But Sampson had to admit that he was slightly impressed.

How could I ever pity a lady who has that kind of fire in her?

CHAPTER 26

“Are you going to be cold to me the whole way home?” Sampson asked.

Amanda gritted her teeth. “That’s unfair,” she bit out. “I’ve said what I wanted to say, and you’re the one who has yet to give any kind of real response. If you want conversation, I’m willing to have it, but if what you want is for me to sit here and chatter about how pretty the gowns were tonight, then…yes, I suppose cold is a fair way to characterize what I’m feeling.”

Sampson sighed and leaned back in his seat. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“It’s a very simple question and one you’ve as yet been unwilling or unable to answer,” she told him. “I just want to know the truth about why you wanted to marry me. That is, I want you to admit it, because I think I do know.”

“You think I pitied you.”

“It’s clear that you did. Why else would you propose marriage to a lady you didn’t know and had never spoken to before? You must have thought my prospects were so bleak that duty required you to step in just because you knew my husband once. That explains why you never appeared before, too. Until I was walking down the aisle, you couldn’t be sure that my situation was what you thought it to be. But as soon as you saw me on my wedding day, you made up your mind. You decided that I couldn’t manage my own affairs well enough to be left to them, and you stepped in and made up that story about George asking you to care for me. You gambled that I’d be a fool and believe you, and I suppose I am a fool, because I did believe it. I wanted it to be true. It was a better reason to marry than the one my father was giving me, and it got me out of his house. And the most important thing was, and will always be, providing a home for Rose. You might think I’m a fool, but I don’t care how foolish I look to you as long as she is taken care of!”

She said all this very quickly, and by the time she had finished, she was breathing rather hard. She whipped her head away to stare out the window. Looking at Sampson was difficult right now.

“Are you finished?” he asked her quietly.

“Yes.”