Miss Debbins undoubtedly had a few ghosts to put to rest as far as London and the beau monde were concerned. Perhaps now was the time.
“May I suggest London for our wedding, then?” he said. “As soon as the banns have been read? Before the end of the Season? With almost all the ton in attendance? If we are going to marry, we may as well do it in style. Would you not agree?”
“Would I?” She looked unconvinced.
“And, on the more practical side,” he continued, “if we want friends and acquaintances around us, and I would suggest that we do, then London poses the least inconvenience to the largest number of people. I believe Ben and Samantha, Hugo and Gwen, Flavian and Agnes, and Ralph and Chloe are still there after Imogen’s wedding. Percy and Imogen should be back from Paris. Vincent and Sophia will be happy to travel back to town, I believe, if the alternative is to miss our wedding. Perhaps your father and your brother can be persuaded to make the journey. I would guess Agnes and Flavian would be delighted to house them.”
“London.” She was looking a bit dazed.
“At St. George’s on Hanover Square,” he said, “where most society weddings are solemnized during the Season.”
Her cheeks flushed as she gazed across at him, and her eyes were bright. It was only as she lowered her head that he realized the brightness was caused by tears.
“I am to be married after all, then?” Her voice was almost a whisper. He had the feeling she was not really talking to him.
“In London at St. George’s one month from now,” he told her, “with the very crème-de-la-crème of society filling the pews. And then a honeymoon if you wish in Paris or Rome or both. Or home to Cornwall and Penderris, if you would prefer. We may do whatever we wish—whatever you wish.”
“I am to have a wedding with all the world present.” She still sounded a bit dazed. “Oh, my. What will Agnes say?”
He hesitated. “Miss Debbins,” he asked softly, “would you like to invite your mother?”
Her head snapped back, her eyes widened, her mouth opened as though she was about to say something—and then it closed again as did her eyes.
“Oh.” It was a quiet rush of breath more than a word.
“Have I distressed you?” he asked her. “I do beg your pardon if I have.”
Her eyes opened, but there was a frown line between her brows as she looked at him. “I am feeling a bit . . . overwhelmed, Your Grace,” she said. “I must excuse myself. I need . . . I would like to be alone, if you please.”
“Of course.” He got immediately to his feet. Damn him for a gauche fool. Perhaps she did not even know that her mother was alive. Perhaps Agnes had not told her about last year. “May I do myself the honor of calling again tomorrow?”
She nodded and looked down at the backs of her hands, her fingers spread on her lap. She clearly was overwhelmed, a fact that was hardly surprising when she had been given no warning of his coming.
He hesitated a moment before leaving the room, then closed the sitting room door quietly behind him.
The village street was empty as he strode along it in the direction of the entry to Middlebury Park, but he was not fooled. He did not doubt that word had already spread of his presence here and the call he had made upon Miss Debbins. He could almost feel curious eyes watching him from behind window curtains all along the street. He wondered how soon it would be before everyone knew why he had come and what answer he had received to his marriage proposal.
He wondered if he would say something to Vince and Sophia, and decided that he would not. Not yet. He had not asked her permission, and it was important to him not to appear high-handed. He was sensitive to the fact that he had a ducal title while she, though the daughter of a baronet, was now living as a spinster in a country village, teaching music.
The announcement could wait.
He wondered how the news would be received at Penderris and the neighborhood surrounding it. He wondered if he would be opening some sort of Pandora’s box by taking a new bride home with him and setting about being a contented married man. He often found himself thinking of another saying, the one about leaving sleeping dogs lie, when he thought about his life at Penderris. There had been so much unpleasantness surrounding the death of Miriam even apart from the horror of the suicide itself. Although all the people whose opinion he valued had rallied around him and stayed staunchly with him ever since, there had been and still was an element of the population who had chosen to blame him.
Sleeping dogs had been allowed to lie until now. Apart from the weeks of each year the members of the Survivors’ Club spent with him, he lived a pretty solitary life when he was in the country. Perhaps it was perceived as a lonely life, and perhaps the perception was accurate. Perhaps those people who had blamed him twelve years ago felt he deserved his loneliness at the very least.
What would it be like, taking Miss Debbins there as his duchess? There would be no unpleasantness toward her, surely? Or . . . worse. But what could be worse? All those events, about which he never spoke, not even to his fellow Survivors, had come to their dreadful conclusion many years ago.
Surely he was entitled not to forget—he could never do that—but to live again, to reach for companionship, contentment, perhaps even a little love?
He strode along the driveway within the park gates in the direction of the house and shook off the strange sense of foreboding that had struck him, seemingly from nowhere.
* * *