Mr. Cavendish, I Presume

did not take. And so they had to settle for my father.”

“Who thought he was settling for her,” Amelia guessed.

Thomas nodded grimly. “He disliked her from the moment he married her, but when his two older brothers died and he became duke, he loathed her. And he never bothered to hide it. Not in front of me, not in front of anyone.”

“Did she return the sentiment?”

“I don’t know,” Thomas replied, and he realized that it was odd, but he had never asked himself the same question. “She never retaliated, if that is what you are wondering.” He saw his mother in his mind’s eye-her perpetually stricken face, the constant exhaustion behind her pale blue eyes. “She just…accepted it. Listened to his insults, said nothing in return, and walked away. No. No,” he said, remembering it correctly. “That’s not how it happened. She never walked away. She always waited for him to leave. She would never have presumed to quit a room before he did. She would never have dared.”

“What did she do?” Amelia asked softly.

“She liked the garden,” Thomas recalled. “And when it rained, she spent a great deal of time looking out the window. She didn’t really have many friends. I don’t think…”

He’d been about to say that he could not recall her ever smiling, but then a memory fluttered through his head. He’d been seven, perhaps eight. He’d gathered a small posy of flowers for her. His father was enraged; the blooms had been part of an elaborately planned garden and were not for picking. But his mother had smiled. Right there in front of his father, her face lit up and she smiled.

Strange how he had not thought about that for so many years.

“She rarely smiled,” he said softly. “Almost never.”

She’d died when he was twenty, just a week before her husband. They’d been taken by the same lung fever. It had been a terrible, violent way to go, their bodies wracked by coughs, their eyes glazed with exhaustion and pain. The doctor, never one to speak delicately, said they were drowning in their own fluids. Thomas had always thought it bitterly ironic that his parents, who spent their lives avoiding each other, had died, essentially, together.

And his father had one last thing to blame her for. His final words, in fact, were, “She did this.”

“It is why we are here now,” he said suddenly, offering Amelia a dry smile. “Together.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He shrugged, as if none of it mattered. “Your mother was supposed to marry Charles Cavendish, did you know that?”

She nodded.

“He died four months before the wedding,” he said softly and without emotion, almost as if recounting a bit of news from the newspaper. “My father always felt that your mother should have been his wife.”

Amelia started with surprise. “Your father loved my mother?”

Thomas chuckled bitterly. “My father loved no one. But your mother’s family was as old and noble as his own.”

“Older,” Amelia said with a smile, “but not as noble.”

“If my father had known he was to be duke, he would never have married my mother.” He looked at her with an unreadable expression. “He would have married yours.”

Amelia’s lips parted, and she started to say something utterly deep and incisive, like, “Oh,” but he continued with:

“At any rate, it was why he was so quick to arrange my betrothal to you.”

“It would have been Elizabeth,” Amelia said softly, “except that my father wished his eldest to marry the son of his closest friend. He died, though, so Elizabeth had to go to London to look for a match.”

“My father was determined to join the families in the next generation.” Thomas laughed then, but there was an uncomfortable, exasperated note to it. “To rectify the unfortunate mongrelization caused by my mother’s entrance into the bloodlines.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Amelia said, even though she had a feeling he was not being silly at all. Still, she ached for the boy he must have been, growing up in such an unhappy household.

“Oh, no,” he assured her, “he said it quite often. I must marry a noble bride, and I must make certain my sons did the same. It was going to take generations to get the bloodlines back to where they should be.” He grinned at her then, but it was an utterly awful expression. “You, my dear, were meant to be our savior, even at the ripe old age of six months.”

Amelia looked away from him, trying to take this all in. No wonder he had been so uneager to set a date for the marriage. Who would want to marry her, when it was put in such terms?

“Don’t look so somber,” he said, and when she turned back to face him, he reached out and touched her cheek. “It isn’t your fault.”

“It isn’t yours, either,” she said, trying to resist the urge to turn and nuzzle his hand.

“No,” he murmured. “It isn’t.”

And then he leaned forward, and she leaned forward…because she couldn’t not lean forward, and even then, as the carriage rocked gently beneath them, he brushed his lips against hers.

She tingled. She sighed. And she would have gladly melted into another kiss, except that they hit an exceptionally vicious rut in the road, which sent both of them back to their respective seats.

Amelia let out a frustrated snort. Next time she’d figure out how to adjust her balance so she’d land on his seat. It would be so lovely, and even if she happened to find herself in a scandalous position, she’d be (almost) completely blameless.

Except that Thomas looked dreadful. Quite beyond green. The poor man was puce.

“Are you all right?” she asked, very carefully scooting across the carriage so she was not sitting directly across from him.

He said something, but she must have misheard, because it sounded like, “I need a radish.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’d kiss you again,” he said, sounding very droll and perhaps a bit queasy at the same time, “except that I’m quite certain you would not appreciate it.”

While she was trying to formulate a reply to that, he added, “The next kiss-”

(Brief moment of silence, followed by a grunt, both brought on by another rut.)

He cleared his throat. “The next kiss, you will appreciate. That, Amelia, is a vow.”

She was quite sure he was right, because the statement alone made her shiver.

Hugging her arms to her chest, she peered out the window. She’d noticed they were slowing down, and indeed, the carriage had wound into the small courtyard in front of the posting inn. The Happy Hare dated from Tudor times, and its black and white exterior was well-kept and inviting, each window adorned with a flower box, blooming all shades of red and gold. From the jettied upper story hung a rectangular sign featuring a toothsome rabbit, standing upright in his Elizabethan doublet and ruff.

Amelia found it all rather charming and intended to comment, but Thomas was already making for the door.

“Shouldn’t you wait for the carriage to come to a complete stop?” she asked mildly.

His hand went still upon the door handle, and he did not say a word until they had halted completely. “I’ll be but a moment,” he said, barely looking at her.

“I believe I will accompany you,” she replied.

He froze, then his head turned slowly toward her. “Wouldn’t you prefer to remain in the comfort of the carriage?”

If he had been trying to douse her curiosity, he was going about it the wrong way.

“I would like to stretch my legs,” she said, affixing her favorite bland smile onto her face. She’d used it with him a hundred times at least, but not since they had got to know each other a bit. She was no longer sure how well it would work.

He stared at her for a long moment, clearly baffled by her placid demeanor.

Like a charm, she decided. She blinked a couple of times-nothing too coy or obvious, just a couple of flutters in