The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)

She stared into the brown liquid in her cup. “Easy for you to find this all so amusing. But my future is no game. I have worked hard to get where I am, and I will fight to keep what little comfort I’ve earned, small though it may be. I don’t wish to have my actions examined too closely. Neither, I suspect, do you. If you stop, we’ll both be safe.”


“Safe.” He drew out the syllable, as if savoring the word. “I don’t much care for safe, myself. And I’d be doing you a favor if I separated you from your suitor.”

She could hardly argue with that. But she shook her head. “It’s no favor if you make it impossible for me to find another. I live on fate, Your Grace. When my great-aunt passes away, the farm will go to her cousin. My Great-Aunt Elizabeth and I will have nowhere to go. I must marry.” She lifted her head now, and looked him full in the eyes. “I haven’t any choice.”

His gaze softened. “Your past… It’s so bad that you’re worrying that someone might poke into it because of a handbill?”

For one mad moment, she considered laying the whole story at his feet. He looked so open, with his head tilted in that welcome, beguiling manner. Surely, she could…

Even the thought of confession brought a chill to the air, a cramp to her lungs.

She looked back at her tea. “Do you know what it is like to be a woman in these modern times? Gentlemen marry less and less these days. I read that thirty-four percent of genteel young ladies reach the age of twenty-seven without marrying. I don’t need anything shameful in my past. Anything outside the ordinary, no matter how harmless it might seem, is a catastrophe.”

He sat back in his chair and considered this. “Then I see an alternate solution to our mutual problem. I, apparently, need a more believable reason to stay in town. If you didn’t believe what I said, others won’t either. You need to be in the top sixty-six percent of marriageable women, such as it is.” He shrugged. “So I’ll set up a flirtation with you while I’m here. You can reject me; I’ll moon about morosely. The whole thing will do wonders for your reputation. I keep writing; you get your husband.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, but the image that brought up—of him dancing attendance on her, of his hand resting over hers in a waltz—made her stomach flutter uncertainly. She gave her head a fierce shake. “That’s a terrible idea. Nobody would ever believe that you had any interest in me.”

“I could make them believe. Not one in ten thousand would have figured out what you just did. Not one. I could make everyone believe in the woman who saw that—quiet, yes, and perhaps a little shy in company—”

Minnie made a rude noise, but he waved her quiet.

“You have steel for your backbone and a rare talent for seeing what is plainly in front of your face. I could make everyone see that.” His eyes were intense, boring into her. There was no escaping him, it seemed. He dropped his voice. “I could make everyone see you.”

Was it just her stomach fluttering? No. Her whole body seemed on the verge of trembling. It had been years since anyone pretended to have an interest in her. To have his attention fall upon her in such concentrated fashion… It was too much.

But he wasn’t finished. “Then there’s your hair. Hair shouldn’t change color, just by curling, but the edges seem to catch the light, and I can’t be sure if it’s brown or blond or even red when it does. I could watch that for hours, to try and figure it out.”

Her heart was thudding in her chest. It wasn’t beating any faster; just more heavily, as if her blood required more work to move.

But this was an exercise in hypotheticals, and Minnie was too desperate to be anything other than practical.

“Go on with you.” She’d intended the words to be dismissive, but her voice trembled. “What would you say when it was just men about? When they were asking you what the devil you saw in that mousy Miss Pursling? I daresay you’d never tell them that you were entranced by the curl of my hair. That’s the sort of thing a man says to convince a woman, but men don’t talk that way amongst themselves.”

He’d obviously expected her to swallow that codswallop about her hair, because he paused, slightly taken aback. And then, he gave her a shake of his head and a grin. “Come, Miss Pursling,” he said. “Men wouldn’t ask any such thing. They’d already know what caught my eye.” He leaned forward and whispered in conspiratorial fashion. “It’s your tits.”

Her mouth dropped open. She was suddenly very aware of said tits—warm and tingling in anticipation, even though he wasn’t anywhere near them.

He murmured, “They’re magnificent.”

He wasn’t even looking at them, but Minnie’s hands itched to cover herself—not to block out his sight, but to explore her own curves. To see if, perhaps, her bosom was magnificent—if it had been magnificent all these years, and she had simply never noticed.