Desiring The Duke (Strong Women Find True Love 4)

“Why do you feel that?” she asked, feigning disinterest; her bitter expression canted towards the stones, arms tightening atop her chest in disappointment.

“The manner in which I exchanged words with that man, particularly in front of a proper woman like yourself—”

“Please,” Anne interjected. “I’ve no interest in whether you regret your words and thoughts simply on the silly, broken principle of social impropriety. A man can show to the world whatever face he likes, and I’d support him in that,” she bristled. “It’s not a matter of whether it’s socially improper, but of whether it’s morally right.” Her response clearly caught the gentleman off-guard, and he stammered, searching for the right response.

“I had not meant to offend,” he sighed.

“I take no offense to the manner of your speech. But if you feel as blustery about the nature of women, and your belief in their position in society, as your friend the earl, then I’ve nothing else I feel compelled to speak to you about,” Anne cuts back at him, turning herself in a whirl away to search for Smith and her carriage, and an escape from this disaster.

“I don’t!” Lawrence called after her, much to her surprise. She stopped in her tracks, glancing at him over her shoulder. Conflict brewed in her chest. She had already evaluated the duke as a rather terrible liar, and he seemed genuine in his claim; she had sensed earlier an unease within him about the earl’s brash choice of words. “The Earl of Carteret is, begging your pardon, m’lady, something of a sniveling swine,” he said, the rather unassuming man putting quite a bit of work into his insults. She held back a snicker. She couldn’t deny that he had quite a charming side to him.

“And if you hold those beliefs, about women, then why did you inherit your estate over your sister? As a man of privilege, you could have used your place to challenge that silly belief,” Anne excoriated him, turning to him once more with anger in her expression. “And yet you simply saw fit to take your family’s fortune and titles instead.”

“I… m’lady, the world we function in, it’s a complicated place,” he stammered, trying to save his floundering chances of leaving the exchange with Anne on a positive note.

“And you think it possible that you, a man in a position of power, could explain precisely to me just how complicated it is?” Anne brimmed with vitriol at the suggestion. “You do not think a woman like myself has already faced all of those complications, and many more than you could hope to conceive of?”

“I… m’lady, I had not meant it in that manner, simply that…” he struggled.

“You had meant that you found it inconvenient to lobby for the inheritance of your sister over yourself, and that you had no interest in doing so,” Anne retorted sharply. “I certainly cannot blame you - the system that we’ve built up for men like yourself has certainly helped you to do quite well, hasn’t it, m’lord?”

“I had no interest in inheriting over my sister, in point of fact,” the duke exclaimed rather unceremoniously, a deep, baritone wave of emotion creeping into his voice. “I did not think myself completely worthy of the position. And yet, father wanted it that way - when he passed, neither my sister nor myself could stand against his wishes, or the old-fashioned manner in which he saw that such decisions needed to be made,” the duke sighed. “We are sometimes prisoners of our own opulence, of the success of our families.”

“What do you know of being a prisoner?” Anne struck back. “I’ve my own shackles under which I labor - and I’m certain they weigh just as heavy as the burden upon your own shoulders. Those burdens of wealth and title, mostly certainly must be quite painful,” Anne imparted with dripping sarcasm. “Instead, I find myself shackled to the concept of marriage, to…” she took a deep breath. “Of the manner in which this society treats women.” The duke fell into melancholy thought, glancing across the rows of carriages; a cool breeze passed between them as Anne quietly lamented her situation. “I shall not think you know the curse a woman bears in struggling to keep her family and home singular, while also fighting to maintain her own independence.”

“I… apologize, m’lady,” the duke resigned himself, full of pained dread. “It was presumptuous of me to assume I could understand the burden upon you. I should bid you good eve, then,” he said with a defeated nod. She watched him; something inside of her screamed out, begging for her not to let him go - the honesty in his words felt like knives against her heart.

But she did not call out to him. Instead, he disappeared with shoulders slumped amid the sea of carriage wheels and cabins, and Anne breathed out in dusky disappointment. She had felt something elemental when she saw him - when she heard him speak, when they exchanged those pleased laughs over her confusion. She knew him to be charming, and she had discovered him to be honest.

But no matter the charm or the pleasure of company he may have brought to her, she could never find herself falling for someone who had so crassly benefited from the system that chained her. For her whole life, she had fought to be something independent, something strong - something standing apart from all of the ‘well-behaved’ women who simply lived to bear children and attend fancy balls, clad in expensive dresses, giggling at bad jokes. She had seen those types of women, lined up along the Earl of Carteret, eager to prove themselves worthy of his attention.

But why should a woman seek to attract the attention of a man? Why should she not, with her own great merits, deserve the eyes and the interested ears of the right man?

Nonetheless, the weight of her father’s condition bore down on her as she approached her carriage, a simple black iron-and-wood cabin with a broad, gleaming window. She would find someone who could accept her as she was - eventually.

But it could not be a man like that… a man who benefited from this wretched system.

“M’lady,” Smith imparted in his thick Londoner drawl, his expression perking pleased when he saw her. “I had not expected your arrival quite so soon. By my count of time, they’ll only be serving the twentieth course right about now,” he joked.

“The first nineteen filled me up quite more than I could manage, Smith,” Anne replied wryly. “Shall we depart, then?”

“I’m quite ready when you are, m’lady,” Smith nodded.

Chapter Five

The carriage pulls round the ragged roadway leading to a towering manor striped in black and gossamer white and the powerful gray-eyed gaze of the man inside turned dour. He glanced nervously upon the invitation lain out in his hands to check and to double-check that he had read the name properly. When he saw the letters hand-written with talented precision upon expensive white paper, his heart sank, full of embarrassed dread.

The Viscount of Roxborough formally invites you to a meeting of particular importance concerning the future and disposition of all estates and titles of Roxborough, it read triumphantly. Memory had indeed not failed him - he knew quite well whose manor he stood poised to step out into.

He knew the woman who waited inside - Anne, whom he had made a fool of himself in front of at the Earl of Carteret’s gala. The night of his failure he had cursed himself every clop of the horse’s hooves, back to the Amhurst estate - when he arrived he had grasped at bottles of fine brandy and drunken himself into a misery-mired stupor, lamenting the loss of perhaps the only fledgling spark of feeling he had experienced for so tempestuous a woman, in as long as he had lived. It proved again to him that he had only failure to offer to this world, and to the women within it - even when his charm and coy manner seemed to draw interested eyes, he failed to truly stand up for what he felt in the face of scoundrels and conservatives like the young, rapacious earl. That painful night had ended with him lain upon the armchair of his study, the fireplace dead and an empty bottle at his feet, dreams of misery running muddied through his mired mind.

Yet less than a fortnight later and here Lawrence stands, in a place he had never expected to see - upon the cobblestones leading to the grand oak doorway of the Roxborough estate. He had considered not even coming to this place - but it would be dreadfully impolite to refuse the request of a man as important as the viscount of the estate. He had long served as friend both political and financial advisor to much of the nobility and estates of much of England, and to refuse his request would not doubt send scandal and whispers through the festering, choking vines the nobles called their social circles. The talk of titular disposition drew his interest - he had wondered at the meaning of Anne and her curious attitude over dinner weeks before, and had deduced that perhaps some urgent matter had pressed her into the painful position of searching for an heir.

And all at once, as the lord of Amhurst stepped from his carriage and waved to his chauffeur, did he push together disparate pieces of scattered thought in his mind and realized just what lay before him. She had talked about the chains of her life - the chaos of her estate. So flustered had Lawrence been, that he did not think upon the logical conclusion of the way she had acted and the consternation evidenced in her confrontation of him among the carriages.

He had been sent for by the master of the estate to… evaluate. For marriage.

The very thought turned his stomach, and he spun back to where his carriage had set only moments before, to find it and its driver continuing dutifully along the path to the stables. His breath hitched as he feared disappointment - the same disappointment he had battered upon poor Anne that night, in the presumptuous manner he had shown to her. He considered fleeing; calling upon the chauffeur once more and hastily pretending he had never arrived upon the doorstep. Unfortunately, that particular plan ceased as a possibility when the doors to the manor swung open; Lord Amhurst’s chest thumped in fearful anticipation, expecting to be met by that excoriating gaze of the fiery young woman he had offended at the dinner that night.