Chapter 5

… I know what you're going to say. I'm taking this too far. Managing too much. Actually, I take it back. You would never say such a thing, and I adore you all the more for it.

—from Lady Selina Ravenscroft to her friend Lady Faiza Greenlaw, Countess of Clermont, currently visiting her family in Awadh, accompanied by her husband

There was no duke this time, Peter thought as the butler escorted him into the blue-and-cream drawing room of Rowland House.

Or—no, damn it. There was a duke. He was a duke.

Surely at some point that fact would become simply part of the way he conceived of himself and not a freakish anomaly he was forced to remind himself of multiple times a day.

In any case, there was no Duke of Rowland and no Duchess of Rowland either in the drawing room. Just one Lady Selina Ravenscroft. And one Peter Kent.

It made him strangely nervous, which was also a freakish anomaly. It wasn't as though he avoided the private company of women. In fact there had been times in his life when he'd quite sought it out, though his father's habit of dipping his wick in anything in skirts and fathering children on multiple continents had made Peter too damned cautious to ever be a buck of the first head.

Indeed, he had spent plenty of time in Selina's presence in the past. Had danced with her, had dined with the Ravenscrofts and watched her face shimmer with amusement at her twin's soft-voiced jokes. On one memorable occasion he had offered to carry her portmanteau—perhaps offer was not the right word; he'd practically wrestled with the cursed stubborn woman—and accidentally knocked them both onto their asses in a slick patch of mud.

But for some reason, sitting across from Selina while she neatly poured tea unnerved him.

It might have been the way she'd stripped off her gloves, all efficiency. No wasted movements, just quick tugs on each finger before she peeled off the fine leather gloves and stacked them in her lap.

There was nothing seductive about the way that she moved, about the quick gestures of her fingers, and yet somehow a little part of his brain was optimistically imagining that same ruthless competence directed toward the removal of other garments.

Hers. His.

And God, wouldn't it be a pleasure to slow her down. To see if he could turn those sharp amber eyes unfocused, watch her dark lashes flutter down to her cheeks.

And, right. He'd gone wildly off track here, and evidently he'd been right to be nervous, because five minutes alone in a room with Selina Ravenscroft and he'd mentally gotten them both naked and engaged in some mutual heavy petting.

"The truth is," Selina said, and he blinked at her, because even though he'd been undressing her in his head—well, to be fair, she'd been undressing herself in his head—he'd also been listening. And "the truth is" was apropos of exactly nothing she'd been saying a moment ago.

"The truth is," she said again, "I'd like to know if you are open to marrying."

"Er," he said.

To… marrying?

Did she mean marriage in general? Or marriage to her ? Was she offering him the most frank proposal he could possibly imagine, or was his mind so enraptured by the fantasy of what her capable fingers could do that he'd totally lost the plot?

And how in the world did he delicately try to find out?

"Yes," he said decisively. "I am open to marrying."

There, that did it. He'd either accepted her proposal or agreed to some kind of scheme she had in mind, and either way, he'd have his answer in about a minute.

Her eyes lit up. "Oh good," she said in a relieved sort of way. "I'm so pleased. I think it's an excellent idea."

Amazingly, he still had no idea if she thought they were now betrothed.

"Me… too?" Hmm, he sounded awfully tentative. If they were betrothed, surely he should sound more eager. "I also think it's an excellent idea."

She was nodding away cheerfully, and a dark-blond curl slipped free from her coiffure and coiled along the pale skin of her neck. "For the children, of course," she said.

He had no idea what she was talking about, but he nodded manfully and tried not to think about what all that hair would look like loose and cascading over his chest. "Certainly the children do need… a mother?"

She looked rather startled at that. "Why, yes, I suppose so. But I meant for the purposes of securing their guardianship, of course."

"Oh," he said, but as he thought about it, it did make a kind of sense. "I suppose I'm rather less objectionable if I'm married."

"Yes!" she said eagerly. "That's exactly what I said to Lydia."

She'd said he was less objectionable? As though his current state of objectionability needed to be remedied?

Perhaps they weren't betrothed.

The bizarre twinge of disappointment in his chest did not bear thinking about.

"What's more," she was saying, "I think Lord Eldon must secretly be a romantic, what with the story of how he eloped with Lady Eldon. I think if you marry by special license in the next handful of weeks, he might find your appeal more compelling. And I'm hopeful that we might get Lady Eldon on your side as well."

All right, they definitely weren't betrothed. It was a scheme, then. A scheme in which he identified some unknown woman willing to become the Duchess of Stanhope and then tied himself to her for life for the purpose of getting what he wanted from the Court of Chancery.

The whole thing felt a trifle cold-blooded.

"You think I should find a woman to marry in the next six weeks so that I might be more popular with a capricious old baron who dislikes me because I have had the temerity to be born in Louisiana and to say outright that slavery is an abomination?"

"Um," said Selina, and she looked somewhat agonized. "That's… it… It sounds much worse when you put it like that."

"How would you put it?"

She lifted her chin a bit, and he liked the way she didn't back down. "I would say that you should devote a considerable part of the next six weeks to the project of matrimony. If you discover a woman with whom you think you might make a suitable match, then you should make it. And if that action leads Lord Eldon to approve your petition for guardianship of Freddie and Lu, then you've achieved your goals and gotten a wife in the bargain."

Freddie and Lu. Yes. Damn it, that's what this was about. He wanted to be better for his brother and sister. More cautious and prudent and bleeding parental.

But Selina was still talking. "And of course there's nothing wrong with being born in Louisiana, and there's nothing wrong with speaking the truth about slavery. I think you should continue to speak against slavery. You must. I believe in doing what's right even if it isn't in one's own best interests." She pressed her lips together. "And your wife should understand that."

The woman was as persuasive a talker as her brother.

"All right," he said. "I see the wisdom of this plan. And in truth I am open to matrimony. And I am willing to do whatever it takes to secure Freddie and Lu's future. Anything."

Her wide mouth curled up at the ends. "Perhaps it won't be as bad as all that."

The prospect of hurling himself into the sea of marriageable daughters of the ton , along with their ambitious mothers and condescending fathers, didn't exactly strike him as pleasant. For the last two years, he'd discovered precisely what kind of prospect he was: highly desirable as the heir to a wealthy dukedom, yet indubitably suspect because of his French mother, and an accent that marked him as not-quite-English-enough. Watching the members of the beau monde try to work out the contradiction had been gratifyingly amusing, so long as he maintained his detachment.

Less amusing, he supposed, if he had to take it all seriously.

He had never been one of those men who regarded marriage as the parson's noose. Marriage seemed perfectly fine as a social institution. Better than fine, if one actually liked the woman to whom one attached oneself. He'd always meant to marry eventually. The timetable was simply accelerating. At a rapid pace.

Hopefully he could find a woman he liked in the next six weeks, because Freddie and Lu needed him to do whatever the situation damn well required.

His mind helpfully suggested one woman whom he liked quite a lot, and who happened to be sitting within arm's reach. He gave his mind a very firm squelching.

"I'd like to help you," Selina said, and to his surprise, she reached out and cupped a hand over his own. Her long, tapered fingers touched the back of his hand lightly, and then withdrew.

He wanted to flex his fingers, but he made himself be still.

"I've made up a short list," she said, "of women I'd like to introduce you to. Women I think you should get to know better. Each, I think, would make a superb duchess."

Good God, "superb duchess" wasn't exactly the primary characteristic he'd imagined using to select a future wife. Not that he'd imagined many characteristics beyond likes my jokes and grabbable rump .

"Er," he said. "All right. I appreciate your assistance."

"Excellent," she said, and then she plucked a folded sheet of paper from the table beside her and handed it to him.

He unfolded it.

Matrimonial Candidates, it read. Miss Iris Duggleby. Miss Lydia Hope-Wallace. Lady Georgiana Cleeve.

Peter wasn't entirely certain how he had progressed from thinking they were maybe, possibly, potentially affianced to accepting a list of women she'd hand-selected for him to woo and win.

"Surely," he said, "you did not need to write down a list of three names. I am confident I can recall all three without a textual aid."

"Don't be ridiculous," she said crisply.

He couldn't stop himself from grinning at her. "I've been told from time to time that it's my defining feature."

She tucked the wayward curl behind her ear. "If you don't need the list, then you may simply"—she waved a hand—"toss it away. Do you know any of these women?"

He glanced back down at the paper in his hand.

"Ha!" she said. "You do need the list."

Well, point to her for that one.

"I certainly remember your friend Miss Hope-Wallace," he said.

He looked up in time to catch the expression of glee on her face, which she hastily smoothed away into something more restrained. "Do you?" she said. "That's wonderful. Lydia is incomparable. I'd be so delighted for you to marry her."

Perhaps it was all the imaginary nudity or the brief whisper of time in which he'd thought she was asking for his hand, but somehow Peter felt mildly insulted by the sheer enthusiasm of her desire to see him married to someone else.

"I shall, er, certainly consider it," he said.

He hadn't actually ever spoken to Lydia Hope-Wallace beyond a cursory good evening—in fact, he didn't think he'd heard her speak at all, ever—but he wasn't opposed to getting to know her. He figured she probably had a good reason for vomiting in a potted palm.

Though what, he wondered, would be a bad reason for vomiting in a plant? A pointed dislike of indoor foliage?

"Lady Georgiana you are likely to have met this Season," Selina said, returning to the list. "She's just been brought out this year. The daughter of Alistair Cleeve, Earl of Alverthorpe—and for all the man is widely disliked, his daughter is popular indeed."

The name didn't call anyone in particular to mind, though there were plenty of fresh-faced debutantes to go around. "I have to say, the idea of a bride closer in age to Lucinda than to myself is somewhat unsettling."

She gave him a forced-looking smile. "I suggest you hold off on making a judgment until you meet Lady Georgiana."

Hmm. Perhaps Selina meant to imply that Lady Georgiana was an older-than-average eligible daughter.

"Nor do I know Miss Duggleby," he said.

Selina winced. "You have probably seen her about. At balls. She's not precisely the most popular girl of our set." Her brows—dark, like her lashes, in startling contrast with her blond hair—drew together as she looked at him. "But Iris is exceptional, even if most men of the ton are too foolish to realize it."

Peter felt chastened for some reason. "I look forward to meeting her as well."

Selina picked up the gloves in her lap and put them decisively back on. "Marvelous."

He supposed the donning of her garments meant their tête-à-tête was finished. He wasn't sure if the meeting had gone about as well as he'd expected—Selina did, after all, have a fresh thought on how he might secure his siblings—or if it had veered quite off course.

Certainly he was feeling rather less optimistic than when she had been taking her clothes off .

Mother of God, he needed to get hold of himself. Removing her gloves to pour tea could not, under any reasonable definition, be termed taking her clothes off.

"Would you like to walk with me in the Park on Sunday?" Selina asked as they both rose.

"To… plan out my marital campaign?" he inquired cautiously.

And there went that look of delight again. "Precisely. Yes. Campaign is just the word for it, don't you think?"

"I do now."

"Hyde Park will be packed. It's the ideal place for some early reconnaissance."

He'd told Lu and Freddie that he'd take them for an outing on Sunday afternoon, so why not the Park? He supposed it couldn't hurt to mix business with pleasure.

Although upon further consideration, he wasn't sure either his siblings or his incipient entrance onto the Marriage Mart really deserved the label of pleasure .

Business with business, maybe? Family with business? Alarming familial responsibility of overwhelming magnitude with additional alarming responsibility slightly offset by the possibility of regular tupping?

"How about a picnic?" he said. "I'll have someone pack us something."

"Even better," said Selina.

She rose, and he was quite certain now that he was dismissed.