The Duke Jokingly Asked Her to Find Him a Wife — “You May Be Looking at Her, Your Grace!”
Chapter 11
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Cecily Bennett had long since ceased to pretend that she was surprised by his arrival. When the brass bell above the door chimed, her heart gave a small, traitorous leap before her common sense could discipline it. She learned the exact rhythm of his stride: firm, unhurried, and distinct from any clerk or farmer who came seeking copies of a lease.He brought her father obscure queries that Edmund answered with scholarly delight. But when Edmund was called away, or immersed in the dusty ledgers of the back room, Maximilian remained beside Cecily's desk.They spoke of small things: the weather that refused to settle, the books she had borrowed from the lending library, the village choir that sang persistently half a beat behind the organist. They spoke also of deeper things: the loneliness that often inhabited great estates, the burden of living up to names carved into ancestral marble, and the quiet courage it took to choose an honest, unassuming life over an ornamental one."You look tired today, Miss Bennett," Maximilian observed one overcast Tuesday, noticing the faint shadows beneath her hazel eyes."We have been indexing the county land transfers from the previous century," Cecily replied, laying her quill aside and rubbing her fingertips. "It appears our ancestors spent half their waking hours arguing over oak trees and stream beds.""A tedious inheritance.""Not entirely. Every transfer represents someone's home, someone's future. One grows quite attached to families one has never met." She tilted her head, studying his face. "And you, Your Grace? You look as though you have been arguing with a steward."Maximilian groaned softly, resting an arm on the edge of her desk. "Worse. I have spent the morning with my London solicitors. They are convinced that if I do not spend three months in town attending balls and enduring dreadful drawing-room recitals, the realm itself may collapse.""A heavy responsibility," Cecily said, her eyes dancing with suppressed laughter. "Can England truly survive without you at the quadrilles?""I suspect England would thrive," he said dryly. "My dignity, however, would not. I am persuaded that half the hostesses in Mayfair have made a wager upon who can trap me into matrimony before the season ends.""Then you had better beware. A duke is a formidable prize.""A prize is something won and put on a shelf, Miss Bennett," he said, his voice dropping into that quiet, resonant tone that always made her pulse flutter. "I have no desire to spend my life upon a shelf."Cecily looked down at the parchment before her, tracing the dry ink with her thumbnail. "No," she said softly. "No one should."The true trial of their unspoken understanding arrived three weeks later, in the elegant drawing room of Florence and Samuel Whitfield.Florence had invited Cecily and her father to a small dinner party to celebrate Samuel's birthday. To Cecily's astonishment—and the profound agitation of Samuel's mother—the Duke of Westhaven had accepted an invitation as well.Among the guests was Lady Catherine Danvers, an austere dowager with a sharp nose and an even sharper tongue, whose late husband had been a second cousin to Maximilian's grandfather. Lady Catherine made a specialty of reminding everyone of their precise place in the social hierarchy, and she viewed the presence of a records clerk and his daughter with thin-lipped displeasure.