The Duke of Rayford refused her in 20 words. Verity Brandreth paid one shilling and a penny to read them:His Grace declines to be bound by the follies of dead men or by the plain daughter they left behind.She read it standing in her aunt's morning room with the postman still waiting on the step. Then she went back out and counted the coins into his palm. One shilling and a penny. It was every loose coin in the house.The morning room smelled of beeswax, cold ash, and money that had stopped arriving. Verity was five and twenty. She was long-boned and freckled the color of weak tea. Her hair was the shade of a rusted gate, her eyes of no particular green. There was ink on one finger that no pumice had shifted. Her father had left her £900 of debt and a library.Everyone agreed she was plain. She agreed with them, which was the only thing about her that had ever annoyed them. She had expected a refusal. She had expected a cold one. She had not expected to be priced in writing on paper she had paid to receive.Aunt Octavia stood at the window with her back to the room. Across the street, a housemaid lingered by the area steps of Lady Danforth's house. The girl had been there when the postman came. By luncheon, all of Mayfair would know the figure. By dinner, they would be wondering aloud whether Miss Brandreth would break."Well," said Aunt Octavia. "It is done. You will not weep in my morning room.""I have not wept since 1816," said Verity. "It did nothing for the carriage."Aunt Octavia turned. Something moved at the corner of her mouth and was put away again.Verity folded the letter along its creases. She had never seen the Duke of Rayford. He had never seen her. He had priced her anyway, and he had priced her low.Why would a man trouble to send 20 words to a woman he had never met?Sir Roland Brandreth had promised her it would never come to this. He had promised it with his last breath in a cold study with a ledger open on his knees. Last October, her father had been dying in the study at Brandreth Lodge. He could no longer hold a book. So she held it for him and read aloud."Read me the accounts, Verity," he said. "All of them. The truth is in the sums."She read him every column in the house: seven pages of debt ending in red—£900.Tallow smoked in the candle. The study smelled of damp paper and the end of things."There is one asset not entered," said her father. "Rayford gave me his word. The old Duke wrote it down. His son will take you, and your name will be mended.""Papa, you cannot sell me against a debt," said Verity."Not sell, my dear. Secure. Dukes pay."She looked at the old Duke's letter under the inkstand. She thought even then that no one prices a thing without looking at it. She said nothing.