“Lady Catherine Brisby?”
Her name was like icy fingers down Henry’s back, his wince more reactive than anything else.
“Martha’s sister,” he stated with a sigh.
“Yes … that is what she said.” Josephine hesitated, taking a quick sip of her wine as an obvious ploy for time.
“What else did she say that has you so uncomfortable to bring up?” Henry asked, loathe to hear the answer or even imagine what it might be.
“She asked me to call off our engagement.” Josephine didn’t meet his gaze as she took another quick drink. “Demanded it, rather. She said that our getting married was a slight to her sister’s memory and … oh, several other things in such a vein as well. I think she was really rather peeved when I refused.”
Henry felt his frown deepen at her words, his relief only matched by his disbelief. He didn’t know what he might have done if she had insinuated anything close to what she had been trying to do at his home the other day.
“I apologize for her behaviour, really. Had I known she meant to approach you, I would have warned you. I thought it was only me that she was comfortable voicing such things to.”
“She voiced opposition to you as well?”
Henry winced again. “She hasn’t been a well-woman since the passing of Martha,” he admitted, the words carefully picked. There was, as it was, still a great deal of sympathy for her for it. “I do not think she’s thinking very clearly. I don’t like to imagine that she has been like this the whole time, but I do know for a fact the day of her passing, she struggled with it …and I think perhaps the announcement of our engagement has just upset her enough for it to be an issue once more.”
“That must be difficult for you,” Josephine murmured, her eyes searching his. “I can take care of myself. I’m not worried about it, per se. I just thought it was something that, with you being my future husband, you ought to know.”
“Something a spouse would share?” Henry guessed, finding himself amused with the way she had reasoned it.
“Well … Yes.”
“I think whatever is important enough for you to want to talk about is important enough to impart to me, no matter the subject or my involvement in it.”
Josephine’s expression shifted, her pupils dilating slightly as the blue of her eyes seemed to deepen.
“I think that’s a very well-crafted response, Your Grace,” she muttered, a faint red tinting her cheekbones as she looked up at him.
Henry found himself unable to look away.
Josephine’s eyes darted between his, that red growing deeper, and before he could think of anything to say, she liftedher glass, downing the rest of her wine and looking considerably more red for it.
Henry fought the urge to grin, his cheeks aching with the unfamiliarity of it as he reached to take her glass and set it off to the side. He surprised them both when he took her hand with his free one and folded his fingers over hers once more as well.
If he were going to be a good husband, he reasoned as he finished off his port to set to the side as well, then he would need practice, would he not?
Chapter 13
Josephine didn’t know if it was the wine going to her head or the smooth delivery of his last line that had her feeling so out of sorts, but she felt positively flushed as the duke took her hand. What had seemed like an innocent gesture before suddenly felt sinful, her bodice too tight and her entire body aflame with a heat that she didn’t know how to endure.
“It was an honest one,” he answered with a shrug, as if unaffected at all by the flames that licked at Josephine. “A page out of your book,” he teased. “Forthright. Too much so?”
Josephine could only shake her head, fighting to keep from biting down too hard on her tongue and swallowing it whole.
“I don’t think I’ve read that genre before,” she quipped, trying to ease the tension growing inside her. “Honest books … I don’t imagine it would apply to any fictional work, do you?”
The duke laughed, his penetrating green eyes lighting with mirth as he shook his head. “I always preferred an adventure if I was reading fiction.”
“And I wouldn’t think you read at all saying such sacrilege as taking pages out.” Josephine leaned forward despite herself, the corners of her lips twitching as she watched that amusement grow even further in the duke’s features.
“Spoken like a true aficionado,” he snorted. “Other than honest books, if such things exist, what is it that you prefer, Lady Josephine?”
“Walter Scott, if we’re talking about highland adventures,” Josephine answered after a moment’s pause. “Mary Shelley, certainly, though I know many men won’t deign to read her, and I doubt very much that she could be classified as an adventure.”
The duke’s eyebrows rose with each sentence, his expression becoming almost appreciative as he appraised her anew. “No, I don’t think adventure would suit,” he agreed musingly. “Gothic, certainly.”
