“Fourteen months?” Her hands halted. “Did the duchess not live here during all that time?”

“No, your grace.” The housekeeper kept her eyes on the piles of linen, but her lips pursed. “Her ladyship chose to reside in the house in town.”

It was hardly uncommon for aristocratic husbands and wives to live separately for part of the year. But the duchess had clearly abandoned her ailing husband.

“I suspect she visited regularly, then.” Arabella knew Mrs. Pickett would think her a gossip. But she must know. “It isn’t such a long journey, of course.”

“No, your grace.”

No?

She could not ignore the opening the housekeeper was clearly offering her. “After he fell ill, did she ever visit Combe?”

“She is not fond of travel.” Mrs. Pickett’s eyes connected with Arabella’s for a brief, instructive moment.

Suddenly the servants’ insistence that Luc was the duke did not seem like impertinence. And the suspicious eyes and sunken cheeks of the Goodes and the other tenant farmer families became clear now. They did not fear Luc. They feared Adina’s unborn child, who they believed to be illegitimate.

Even so, why fear a helpless infant? Unless they actually feared the infant’s guardian.

“Mrs. Pickett.” She pressed a crease into a lace doily, set it on the pile, and turned to the housekeeper. “Do you know where I might find the comte now?” She was ashamed to admit that she knew nothing of her husband’s activities in the evenings after dinner. But Mrs. Pickett’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction.

“He is in the study, your grace.”

It required all of Arabella’s discipline not to run.

She knocked, then entered without waiting. Buoyed by her newfound knowledge, she refused to accept the distance that he had imposed on her.

Lit by a single lamp on the desk and a blaze in the hearth, and furnished with masculine elegance, the study was sunk in shadows along walls paneled in walnut and painted above in dark blue studded with silver stars. A pair of bookcases flanked the marble mantel, and he sat before one of them, books and journals at his feet and an open volume across his knee. On a table at his elbow rested a silver tray with a crystal bottle and glass of amber liquid. Another, empty glass sat on the tray.

He looked up and seemed to take a moment to focus.

“Duchess,” he only said. His voice was quite low.

“What are you . . .” Her courage faltered. The firelight cut dramatically across his scar and he looked very large, male, and forbidding. When she did not see him frequently she forgot how his nearness made her weak-kneed. “What are you reading?”

He closed the book and set it beside him, then stood. “Nothing, now that you are here. I imagined you long since gone to bed.”

“I was engaged in a project with Mrs. Pickett.”

“Industrious of you so late at night.”

“It is not particularly late.” She glanced at the gold and crystal clock on the desk beneath the darkened panes of the window. She moved toward it. “It is barely eight o’clock.” She drew the drapes closed. She knew he watched her, and it made her heart beat fast. She turned to him and he stood exactly as before, tall and broad and impossibly distant.

“Won’t you offer me a drink?” she said. “Or is that empty glass intended for another?”

“For whom else would it be intended? The butler is a Puritan and my valet turns up his nose at French brandy.”

She tried to smile. “Brandy?” Now her hands were shaking.

He lifted a brow. “Would you care for some?”

She nodded, and as he poured she moved to the other side of the hearth. She traced her fingers nervously along the gilded leather bindings of the books.

“It seems as though you are engaged in a research project.” She turned, and he caught her hand in his. His touch was warm and complete. He tucked the glass into her palm, wrapped her fingers around it and released her. But he did not move away. She’d not been so close to him since the Channel crossing.

“I was reading about crop rotation and corn yields,” he said close to her, the scents of brandy and leather about him. “Fascinating stuff. Shall I share what I have learned with you?”

She lifted the glass to her lips and sipped. “I would like that.”

He leaned closer. “While I would like instead to admire this fetching confection you are wearing. Very nice . . .” He lifted his glass and with the back of his knuckles stroked across the bared skin of her bosom above the tiny fichu. She shivered. “ . . . design,” he finished, and held her gaze as he raised the glass to his mouth.

“Are you drunk?” she whispered.

“Only on you, duchess. Only ever on you.”

She pressed a palm to her hot cheek.

“Too close to the fire?” he said. “You can step away if you wish.”

“I do not wish.” She wanted to plunge into it. “I want to help you.”

“With what?” His voice now hesitated.

“I want to help you with whatever it is you are doing to solve the mystery of the tenant farmers’ losses. Tonight I—”

“Tonight when you were sorting linens like a housemaid?”

“How do you know that was my project?”

“I make it my business to know what you are doing always, little governess.” He passed his cheek across her hair. “Mm. Eau de dust. Positively enchanting.”

“If you don’t like my parfum domestique then do not stand so close to me,” she said without any conviction whatsoever.

His breaths stirred the hair that had fallen out of its combs and over her brow.

“Why are you laboring like a servant, Arabella? Do you believe that in this manner you are fulfilling your role as the dutiful wife, as you promised?”

“You . . .” she began, then made herself speak the words. “You haven’t given me the opportunity to be a dutiful wife in weeks.”

He seemed to go quite still.

“If I offered you the opportunity,” he said, “would you welcome it out of duty?”

“No. In fact I fear that if you made that offer I would prove a disappointing wife, for there would be nothing of duty about the welcome I would show you.”

He set down his glass on the mantel. Then his hand came around her waist and slipped up beneath her arm. He held her firmly and his thumb stroked beneath her breast. His touch, even so slight and teasing, made her tremble.

“Arabella?” His voice was husky.

She closed her eyes and felt his hands on her and never wanted him to stop. “Luc?”

He seemed to breathe her in. “Will you marry me?”

A sob rose in her throat. She knew it was ridiculous, but a ray of pure happiness lit her.

“I understood, my lord,” she said shakily, “that we were already married.”

“Will you marry me?” His other hand encompassed her waist and he spoke against her cheek. His thumb caressed again, stroking up the side of her breast. “Yes or no?”

She wanted to see his face, but he held her tight. “Yes.”

He cupped her breast and slipped his thumb across the nipple, and she felt her body open for him.

“You may have carte blanche in planning the wedding,” he said. “Anything you wish. But it must be soon. Three weeks.”

Only long enough for the banns to be read.

“Anywhere?” She could barely hear her voice or feel the books pressing into her back. His hands were on her, teasing her, and she ached for him.

“Where else but here?”

“London,” she said. “The Thames. On the deck of the Victory.”

His hands stilled and she wished immediately that she had not spoken. He drew back and his expression was inscrutable.

“Can it be done?” she asked unsteadily.

“Yes.” His smile was slow. “Yes, I believe that can be done.”

“Uh, ehm.” A man cleared his throat at the door she had left open. “My lord?”

Luc backed away from her, and Arabella thanked God for the darkness that hid her flaming cheeks.

“Arabella, this is Mr. Parsons, the land steward here at Combe,” Luc said without any suggestion in his voice that a moment ago he had been fondling her breast and proposing marriage to her. But he was a lord, and a lord could make love to his wife on the high street if he so desired and the traffic would be obliged to go around him. “Parsons, this is—” He glanced at her and a slight crease appeared beside his mouth. “My comtesse.”