How to Dazzle a Duke
Page 30
“Of course. Anything at all, Edenham,” she answered promptly.
“I want to marry again.”
“But how lovely! And of course you should. Do you know whom yet?”
Edenham blinked. He could actually feel himself blink. He hesitated only a moment and then he said, “Miss Jane Elliot. I will marry Miss Elliot.”
Sophia held herself very still, and then she nodded once, slightly, and said, “But darling, haven’t you only just met her?”
Of course, it sounded ridiculous when said outright that way. But it happened every day, didn’t it? A man saw a woman he admired or even merely desired, and he took her. There was nothing especially complicated about it, was there?
Naturally not.
“I have. And I have decided. She would make me an ideal wife, I believe. I am, you will be forced to admit, a good judge of women. Haven’t my three previous wives been exemplary?”
“They have,” Sophia said solemnly, but her eyes were shining mysteriously. He was entirely suspicious of anything mysterious. “Yet I must point out that you were not married for any great length of time to any of them. Through no fault of your own, naturally.”
“Thank you,” he said, gazing across the room at Miss Elliot. She radiated beauty and sound breeding, her skin and hair and eyes … well, he could go on and on, but what was the point? He would marry her, that was all. “Since you agree with me, and since it is clear to me that you have some warmth of acquaintance with the Elliot family, I would ask you to help me present my suit to her.”
Sophia nodded, looking at some middle distance between himself and Miss Elliot, plotting, no doubt. He was entirely approving of plotting, as long as it got him Jane Elliot.
“That may prove difficult,” Sophia said, looking up at him.
“Why, if I may ask? I am in the pink of health and possessed of every attribute a woman seeks in a husband. I am a duke, after all.”
Sophia nodded again, this time her smile escaping her compressed lips. “Yes, darling, and that is precisely the problem. What does an American girl want with a duke? They have no use for them, you see, not you personally, you understand, but as a concept, as an ideal. To her, you are simply a man far older than she, living in a country that is foreign to her, with three dead wives and two small children to his credit. Why, my darling Edenham, would Miss Elliot want to marry you?”
To his absolute horror, he could not think of any reason that did not involve his being a duke of England.
How to Dazzle a Duke
© 2009 Claudia Welch.
ISBN: 9780425229682
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