“You owe me nothing.”
“You saved my life,” he countered.
“I knew it. So, you only approached me last night because you wanted to save me in return. Well, I wouldn’t have needed any saving if you hadn’t involved yourself in my affairs.”
“That isn’t how it looked from where I was standing.”
“Then perhaps you need spectacles.”
“Enough, Madeleine,” Uncle Joseph said firmly. He turned to the Duke with an expression of despair. “Do you see why I wanted to conduct this agreement without bringing her into it?”
“But shewillmarry me of her own free will? I won’t force her.”
“She’ll do it,” Uncle Joseph said. “Won’t you, Madeleine?”
Madeleine nodded. There was no point in resisting. She could see that if she put her foot down about it, the Duke would refuse to marry her and would leave. But it was clear now that Uncle Joseph was determined to see her married. He would go all the way to Paris to make it happen if he had to, but if he could find someone for her here, he would arrange a marriage in London. And Madeleine knew, too, that whoever her uncle found to marry a lady in disgrace might not be as kind—though she didn’t like to admit it—as the Duke was being.
She might not like him, but nothing he had done so far had actually harmed her in any real way. She could see that he had believed himself to be defending her from the ladies who’d been cruel to her, even though he had been foolish about it. And now that he was here asking to marry her—well, it was irritating that he got to feel noble about rescuing her from a plight that he had caused, but that didn’t change the fact that he was trying to rescue her.
He was a good man, in other words. He was trying to do a good thing. The next man who looked her way might not be so noble.
And Madeleine couldn’t afford to take that kind of chance.
What was more, she didn’t want Uncle Joseph to have to say goodbye to his life here and move to Paris—and she was sure he would do it. Her uncle had always been devoted to her happiness. She didn’t agree with his way of providing for it, but his life shouldn’t be sacrificed for the goal of making her happy.
So yes, she would marry the Duke. She would do what was asked of her.
There was still the curse to worry about. More than anything else, that was her reason for not wanting this marriage to move forward. She couldn’t stand it if her back luck caused the death of someone else she was close to.
But that would be easily remedied. She would just have to keep herself distant from him. If she kept her heart to herself, the curse wouldn’t touch him. She was sure of it. It wouldn’t care that she’d married—what mattered was whether or not she was in love. And she would never love him…
“You may go, Madeleine,” her uncle said.
“Not yet,” Madeleine said. There was one thing that wasn’t negotiable for her. “Sally.”
“The dog? What about her?”
“I want to bring her with me.”
Her uncle looked at the Duke.
The Duke nodded. “I have no objection,” he said. “It’s a well-behaved dog?”
“She’s very well-behaved,” Uncle Joseph confirmed. “In truth, I’ll miss having her about the place. I might have to get a dog of my own!” He laughed. “I suppose I’ll have a lot to think about now that I’m going to be a lonely old bachelor once more.”
Madeleine didn’t appreciate the humor. Her uncle might find all this funny but to her, it wasn’t a joke at all. Her whole life was about to change, and no one seemed to be taking the matter seriously.
It was in that instant that Madeleine knew she was going to have to look out for herself from this moment on. She might be marrying a duke, but she could never permit herself to get close to him or depend on him.
She was on her own.
CHAPTERELEVEN
“You were insulting,” Uncle Joseph commented when the Duke was gone.
“You don’t seem very angry about it,” Madeleine noticed.
“I thought he might be put off by you, but he wasn’t, was he? We got what we wanted.”
