“It is nothing. I wish you to. I can pay more, even, than the asking price. They’ll have the most stylish retirement of anyone they know. My parents—”
“I cannot,” Devon snapped. “I am the one who will be paying for the coffeehouse. Not you. Hell, Lillian, I should likely give up on the notion. I flirted with telling Freddy it would never happen. But I just can’t. I know it’s unlikely, but I have to try. The mess at the patent offices is a bit of a setback. I’ve no idea when my invention will be protected and viable now.”
She reached across the desk, her fingers calling to him to accept their offer of comfort, support.
He gripped the chair arms, refusing to budge.
She withdrew her arm with a sigh. “I wish you would allow me to help. Do you fear that I will think the coffeehouse my own if I pay for it? I will not. It will be a gift. As I said. From a wife to her husband.”
“The husband will not wish for that particular gift.” Devon looked away from her.
She threw up her hands. “You are impossible. Entirely too stubborn and independent.”
Finally, his eyes flashed to hers, the hard line of his jaw melted, and he graced her with his best grin. “I cannot take your money, Lillian. If we use my inheritance, then it’s my family providing for us. Not me. If you use your inheritance, your dowry, then I’ve still done nothing to earn it.”
“If we may live only on what you’ve earned, then that leads me to my next question.” She crossed a line through the first item on her list and moved the point of her pen to the second. “Where shall we live? If you will not use your inheritance nor mine, nor my dowry, then we must beg to live with my parents or your brother. Which is better in your mind, Devon, living with others or using money that is yours but came from others?”
His jaw felt like it would break, and his tongue had become so big it nearly choked him. The situation she recounted seemed impossible and all of his making. He’d seen these wounds coming since the night of the explosion and the sealing of his future. He’d known taking a wife would complicate his life, his dreams. She’d offered him a way out, and he’d refused to take it because the notion of not marrying her had seemed like cutting off an arm or leg, unbearable to consider. How had two such contradictory impulses—keeping Lillian and earning a life that stemmed from no man but himself—come to mean so much within the same man’s mind? Deuced inconvenient, that. And confusing.
He relaxed his jaw and leaned forward, turning his palms upward, offering her what he could of himself. “It will not always be like this. As soon as I procure Freddy’s—”
“Which you must do on your own with money that only comes from your wit or labor.”
“Precisely. Once I do that, we will do well enough, particularly after my invention is in use. No one will have coffee as we do.”
“How much time is left? Until Freddy sells to another?”
“A month.”
“Wouldn’t you rather have the coffeehouse by any means necessary than not at all?”
“No.”
“Hmph. Immovable. Very well, then. I shall be immovable on a few of my own points. First, to close out discussions of where we shall live, I propose we stay with your brother.”
He opened his mouth to object.
“Nah-ah-ah. I do not wish to continue living with my parents after I am wed, and sharing a residence with a duke for a short—yes, a short—time, may do much for our questionable reputations.”
He twisted his lips and cracked his neck, arching his head left then right. “You have a point.”
“Then”—she folded her hands on the table before her and lifted a defiant gaze to him—“we shall use my dowry to procure a townhouse.” Her shoulders sat straight and bold as any army officer’s, and she may as well have faced him across a battlefield. She would not concede on this, as he would not budge on Freddy’s.
He fell backward into the chair, ceding the point to her. “As you wish.”
Her eyes widened, a momentary show of shock before her lips flicked into a satisfied grin, and her eyes warmed to a delicious shade of cocoa. “Excellent.” She crossed a line through the second item on her list. “That brings us to our next matter. What else we must do to repair our reputations?”
They were to deal with every frustration in his life, then. He tried to keep his lazy lounging posture.
“No gambling,” she said, “or overdrinking, especially not in public.”
He frowned. “I’ll not be mothered or moralized to.”
“It’s for both our benefits. You’re barely hanging on to a respectable name, and once I take your name, I’ll be similarly placed in a precarious position. You and I—we—must behave ourselves. No more stealing cloaks and fleeing ballrooms.”
The urge to leave made every muscle in his body rigid, but he allowed only his finger to move,tap, tap, tappingagainst his thigh. “I gamble to increase my funds. It’s a perfectly acceptable activity. Unless you lose everything. I have no plans to be so careless.”
“I concede that point, then. I trust you are not careless there.” She pointed her pen at him, narrowed her eyes. “No brawling, though. And no ruining even more maidens’ reputations.”
