“You’re thinking about your bride again,” she said bluntly. His godmother was the sole person of his acquaintance who thought absolutely nothing about bringing up that hardest, most humiliating part of his existence.
“I’m thinking that nothing bad can come from being cautious, but that pain is possible if you let yourself believe something that isn’t true.”
A sound of impatience escaped her, and she resumed cutting, this time with a greater zeal that made him more than a little regretful that he’d not removed the shears from her hands. “Just as not every man is the same as your miserable late father, not every woman is the same as your late wife.”
He paused. No, he wasn’t so cynical as to believe all women were mercenary and deceitful. But he also knew there were women of that ilk out there, and as such, it was better to be cautious until one could ascertain for certain their motives. He knew the motives of the scandalous sort he kept company with. The young ladies his godmother spoke of? The ones who had only marriage and a respectable life on their minds were to be avoided at all costs.
At his silence, the duchess looked up, a somber set to her graceful features. “Did you hear me?” She spoke with the gentleness she’d reserved for him as a boy who’d just lost his mother and had had for company only an aloof, distant father who couldn’t be bothered with him. “Not all women are like that treacherous liar you found yourself married to.”
“I know that.” Harris grinned. “Because I have a woman of honor and honesty and decency before me even now.”
A blush splashed upon the duchess’s cheeks. “Go on with you now,” she said gruffly, waving off those compliments—those true compliments—with a wave of her spare hand, “thinking to charm this lady. I was talking about a younger one than myself.”
He donned an affronted expression. “You’re hardly old. Why, you aren’t a day beyond thirty,” he said, following that with a wink.
“I’m just forty-five and you know it.” She chuckled. “You’d do well to find yourself a bride.”
“As you pointed out, I had a bride.”
“A new one,” the duchess clarified. “One who could appreciate that wink.”
Which his wife had decidedly not. As the duchess turned her attention back to the tabletop boxwood and snipped away, Harris stared blankly. As a rule, he avoided thinking of his late wife. Not because it hurt with her being gone—he was too hardened for that. Rather, because it was a reminder of how foolish he’d been, and trusting, and the careless mistakes that had seen him… trapped.
The woman he’d ended up with as a bride had been nothing more than a beautiful stranger carrying the babe of a handsome footman who’d never have made her a suitable husband, so she’d trapped an unsuspecting Harris, finding herself an arrangement that would let her carry on with her happy affair, while having Harris stuck in an unhappy union.
Snip, snip, snip.
“I never thought you should marry her, for what that is worth,” his godmother remarked, apparently knowing with the intuitiveness of one’s mother where Harris’ thoughts had landed. “I told your father he was a fool for insisting upon it.”
“The Clarendale name and the Ruthven title,” he said, unable to quell the bitterness. The late marquess had cared first, foremost, and only about that name and title. Harris had just happened to be the necessary conduit through which that great line would continue.
“But then, there were many ways in which he was a fool.” Her Grace paused in her cutting and assessed her meticulous work before resuming her shaping of the bush. “Wedding your dear mother was the only good decision he made. Unfortunately for your mother.” She muttered that last part under her breath. Her features suddenly warmed as she glanced up. “But fortunately for you. You were born to that union, and as such, it wasn’t all bad.”
No, but it had set a foundation early on to prove that many marriages were cold, empty unions. The few memories he carried of his mother were of her being confined to her chambers as she lost babe after babe the marquess had foisted upon her in the bid for a spare to Harris’ heir. Ultimately, his mother had lost… herself in that ruthless quest.
His eventual marriage to Lady Clarisse had only added cement to that truth he’d believed as a boy.
The duchess patted his shoulder. “Any man who lived your life would have turned out with the same cynicism, Harris. But there are good people out there, if you just open your eyes to see them.”
“People like Lady Adairia, who insists on being referred to as Lady Julia?” He couldn’t resist the droll retort.
She smiled. “Precisely.” But then her smile slipped, and she turned her famous—and famously fear-inducing—duchess’ frown upon him. “Now, stop scaring my niece.”
“You don’t know her,” he said gently. “All you know, Your Grace, is that she showed up one day with a pendant and professed to be your niece.” There were more reasons to be wary than welcoming.
“I will not be able to know her as long as you’re scowling around the girl, making her uncomfortable.” She rapped his knuckles. “Now. Behave.” She clipped out each syllable.
There came the quiet approach of footsteps outside, and Harris was prevented from saying anything else.
For she was there; studiously avoiding his eyes, and ironically, Harris, an unapologetic rogue, found himself looking anywhere but at her.
“Come, come, my dear,” the duchess called, waving Julia over. From the side of her mouth, she delivered one last whispered warning to Harris. “Open mind, dear boy. Open. Mind.”
Julia stood in the doorway, taking in the duchess and her tall, imposing godson. The gentleman who rightly didn’t trust her. Who’d
