The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister #1)

“No, no.” Caro smiled sadly at her. “All I’m saying is, you should want just enough to make you stretch your arms a little bit. More than that, and you’ll do yourself an injury.”


Minnie stood. “I didn’t refuse Gardley because I wanted too much. It wasn’t that I thought I could do better. It was simply that I couldn’t do worse.”

Caro tried to suppress a sigh, but she didn’t quite manage it.

“Think of this logically,” Minnie said. “Because I should have before. If I marry someone who wants a quiet, dutiful wife, he will put me away if he discovers my past.”

Eliza’s needles came to a standstill.

It was dangerous talk, that, and they all knew it.

Look up. But she wouldn’t. If she were looking up, she’d think of a man standing next to her, the sun glinting off his blond hair while he told her how clever she was.

“You are quiet, Minnie,” Eliza finally said. “I wouldn’t want you to go against your nature.”

Quiet, yes. Her voice wasn’t made to carry. She didn’t like to draw attention to herself. She could never be happy anywhere but at the edges of a gathering. Dutiful, however…

She could almost see Clermont from the corners of her vision, as if he were still standing next to her. He had brilliant blue eyes and a smile that curled up at the corners when he saw her. She thought of his hand, wrapping around her wrist before she could punch the davenport again. Of the rich timbre of his voice as he stood next to her and said…

I want you.

She shook her head. Reach that high, and she’d be burned for certain. All she wanted was a little security.

“Men look for many kinds of wives,” Eliza finally said. “Pretty, vivacious wives. Wealthy, indulgent ones. Highborn, prideful ladies.” She bit her lip. “I don’t want you hurt, Minnie. But it is my duty to make you face the truth. Nobody is looking for a shy, clever girl whose father died halfway through his sentence of hard labor.”

Minnie put her fingers against the bridge of her nose, pressing to try and drive the pain away. It didn’t help. The boundaries of her life pressed in on her like prison walls. Look up? With rough rocks under her feet, to look up was to stumble.

“List the things you are,” Eliza said, “and ask yourself what man would want them.”

I want you. But Clermont didn’t know her, either.

“Your choices are yours,” Eliza intoned. “We won’t steal them from you.”

No. They never stole her choices. They only pointed out—kindly, sweetly, implacably—that she had few to begin with. Minnie’s hands shook. The only thing they had done wrong was to allow her to believe that she had one choice, instead of zero.

Minnie didn’t see any way forward. She couldn’t see a future at all. She felt chokingly blind.

There was really only one thing she could do, and that was to keep on going in the direction she’d started. To avoid ruin for another week, to pray for shelter where there had been none thus far. And that meant she needed to find proof of what Clermont had done. She had to take care of the next step, and hope for the future.

And that meant… “I’m going to London tomorrow,” she announced.

Their eyes widened, blinking. Eliza sat up straight. “But—”

“Have you—”

“Is this about a position?” Her great-aunts spoke atop one another. Their hands had met on the sofa between them.

“Be careful,” Caro said. “I’ve read of those schemes in the newspaper—faithless madams who advertise good jobs at excellent wages, only to—”

“I am not taking a position,” Minnie said. “You’re right. I can’t look up. I can’t dream. I don’t dare to. All I can do is take the next step forward.”

Caro frowned. “And the next step forward is…London?”

“The next step forward,” she said, “is to win the game I’m playing. And that means I must talk to some paper sellers. I’ll be back in three days.”

Her great-aunts exchanged glances—wary glances, ones that tugged at her chest. But she couldn’t explain and she couldn’t back down. And while it was not quite the done thing for a young woman of her age to travel alone on the train, she wasn’t a debutante who would have to account for every waking hour of her day.

“Well,” Caro said finally. “If that’s what you believe you must do. You…you have the means?”

“I do.”

She had her egg money. Even that was a misnomer. When she’d reached her majority, her great-aunts had given her responsibility for the chickens—and allotted her all the income from them. A gift, that, since they could have kept it all. But it hadn’t just been a gift of money they’d given her, but a present of independence. It was one they could ill afford.