For a Year She Read Aloud to a Blind Stranger in the Park — He Was the Duke Who'd Refused Her
Chapter 10
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Lady Danforth set down the teapot very carefully, like a woman who has remembered it was loaded. Not one person in that room made a sound.Verity did not cry. She stood very straight and counted the gilt chairs instead. There were 31.Mr. Gaunt took the Tuesday mail to Bristol with the clothes he stood in. The rest took Lord Loxbourne 11 months and an accountant, and was never discussed at dinner.The room emptied, as rooms do when the interesting part has been said. Lady Danforth gave Verity the look of a woman reading a bill she has no means to dispute. Aunt Octavia discovered an urgent interest in the far window. So did Hobday."I owe you £300 a year for 11 months," said the Duke."The annuity was never yours to pay," said Verity."It is mine now. I have a question. You may refuse it. That has been said, and it stands. Ask.""Will you marry me, Verity Brandreth?"She looked at him for a long moment. He stood with his hand on the dog, and his face turned a little too far to the left, patient as a man waiting on a verdict. She had priced him twice now. The first figure had been wrong. The second was not a figure at all."I have terms," said Verity."I expected terms.""I keep the household books. I read you everything: letters, accounts, newspapers, unedited. You tell me when I am wrong.""I am never wrong.""Then you will have nothing to say."He laughed in a room of empty gilt chairs loud enough to startle the dog."And you will not pity me," he said."I have not the least intention.""Then yes," said Verity. "Yes, Aldous."Hobday, still facing the far window, cleared his throat. "I shall inform the second blanket," he said.Bishop sighed and leaned, as if the argument had been settled.Six years later, on the first Monday of March, the park smelled of rain on gravel and wet wool. Bishop was 14 and slept through the sermons. Hobday had retired to a cottage from which he complained by post.The Duchess of Rayford sat on the bench with a book on her knee. She had held the title five years and still signed the household accounts in her maiden hand out of habit."Do not stop there," said the Duke."It is a full stop.""Then begin the next sentence."She did.A refusal is not a verdict on the one refused. It is a price set by a man who never once looked at the thing he priced. That had been true of Aldous Selwyn once, and he had paid for it in full. But he had priced her again by ear in the dark over 2,000 mornings. The figure had come out higher than any pair of eyes could have set it. Her father had been right in the end. Dukes paid.His hand found the edge of her page and turned it before she reached it."I have carried this since September of that year," he said.He put one shilling and a penny into her palm."Postage is not refundable," said Verity."Then it is a deposit," said the Duke.She closed her fingers over the coins and turned the page.