The blue matches her eyes.
How quick he’d been to notice something she had not even realized. And they were her eyes. Did it mean something? Was she simply being silly and looking for crumbs where none existed?
“Josie, maybe we ought to–”
But whatever they ought to consider was forgotten as the sitting room door slammed open, the sound of angry, rushed voices preceding a tall figure bursting into the merriment with a cloud of violence gathered around him like a cloak.
“Lord Brisby!” Harbuttle admonished as he followed into the room on the tall man’s heels.
“You!” The man, Lord Brisby, yelled with one finger pointed out accusingly in front of him at the duke. He was a tall man, though not quite as tall as the duke, but in his rage, seemed to tower even further. His brown eyes were coals of righteous indignation, and his thick brows lowered as he stormed further into the room. “How dare you!”
Josephine’s mother and father had fallen silent in the wake of the interruption, their eyes cutting first to one another and then to Josephine worriedly as their host rose unhurriedly to his feet.
“Me?” Henry repeated silkily. “It is not I, dear brother-in-law, who have forced myself uninvited into your home.”
Lord Brisby sputtered, his dark eyes flashing as he took another two angry strides forward. “Not today, no! Did you think that my wife would not tell me? That she would take your sin to her grave?”
Brisby … As if lightning had struck her, Josephine suddenly remembered why that name sounded so familiar. Henry’s sister-in-law's pinched, furious features and all her angry tirade over their engagement flashed in her mind’s eye as her husband advanced with even more passion.
“I’ve borne no sin against either of you,” Henry bit out sharply, stepping in front of Josephine and her parents as Lord Brisby advanced. “If you are referring to my visit to your home the other day–”
“Of course I am referring to that day!” Lord Brisby shouted, cutting the duke off once more. “Is there another day you called upon my wife in private to treat her so roughly?! Another day that you forced yourself upon her?!”
Twin gasps were pulled from Josephine’s parents, horror filling both similar sounds, but Josephine couldn’t tear her eyes from the scene in front of her.
Force?
She would have doubted that he had engaged in such an act even if his sister-in-law had been willing after their talk – at all, given how desperately he still loved his late wife. But to hear him accused of forcing himself upon her? She couldn’t believe it even half-possible.
“I did no such thing,” the duke snapped. “Have you taken leave of your senses as well as your decorum?”
Lord Brisby’s already heightened colour deepened, his lips thinning out as he stopped mid-step with the first sign of hesitation since he’d burst through the door.
“Are you accusing my wife of willingly taking you to her bed?” he asked carefully, his eyes narrowing as if daring Henry to say yes.
But Henry only snorted.
“Willingly or unwillingly makes no difference as I have never been in her bed. Or with her in any such fashion outside of what would be considered appropriate, no matter how she tried to urge me to consider otherwise.” His words were sharp and caustic each one spat as if he despised having to do so.
And Lord Brisby seemed to deflate just hearing that much.
“I demand an explanation,” he muttered. But even that was lacklustre in the face of what he had arrived spewing. There was something in his eyes, a long-weary resignation that spoke to the fact that he already believed the duke.
“That makes two of us,” Josephine’s father muttered, his eyes narrowed in a glare that seemed ill-fitting for his face as he looked worriedly between both men.
The already sour pit in the centre of Josephine’s belly seemed to expand, her nails biting into her palms as she watched Henry run a hand frustratedly over his face.
“I had hoped to leave things as they were,” he started, his words halting as he seemed to search for what to say next. “The other night is not the first time she has suggested similar.” He paused there, his sigh heavy. “Nor the second.”
“Are you saying she proposed such a thing, Your Grace?”
Henry winced, his lips twisting sourly as he nodded.
“The first time was at Martha’s grave. It was only a mention there. A comment on how she would want me to be happy and move on, that I could do so with her. I attributed it to her grief, to the magnitude of the day.” He broke Lord Brisby’s gaze, his eyes darting to Josephine with a slightly apologetic glint. “And then she approached my fiance here at the seamstress.”
Lord Brisby’s eyes swung to Josephine as the duke indicated her, and she felt her stomach tighten responsively.
“She did, sir.” She didn’t know why she was talking. No one had asked her to. Her mother’s hand was a word of warning against her arm as she did, but the words just kept tumbling from her mouth regardless. “I did not know that she was your wife. I did not know her at all. But she came to warn me against marrying the duke. She even offered to pay me were I to call the engagement off.”
