“Nobody has told me, but an exceedingly clever auditor taught me to notice what’s in front of me. You mentioned cousins, siblings, grandparents, all manner of family, but you never once brought up your parents. You do, though, threaten to abandon me for the shores of blasted France. Why is that, I asked myself, and then the answer presented itself.

“Will you do as I’ve been doing,” he went on, “and sacrifice your happiness for the sake of familial duty, Eleanora? Are you truly determined to rejoin your exiled parents rather than reach for the joy that’s standing before you, or will you find the courage to be my duchess?”

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Ellie cowered by the books lining the walls of the Walden library and tried to think. Elsmore looked very, very determined and willing to fight dirty to get what he wanted. Every duke should know how to fight dirty, though she didn’t want him resorting to such measures on her account.

“You cannot live in France,” she said, grasping at the nearest spar of reason floating among the wreckage of her morning. “You are an English duke.”

“I’m also a Scottish earl, but I don’t dwell in Peebleshire, do I?” He came closer, step by measured step. “I am a Surrey farmer, though I spend only a small portion of my time there where I’m happiest. I’m your lover—or I was—and I claim that identity on the strength of only a precious few hours that sparkle in my memory like every wish ever granted to a despairing man.”

“I cannot marry you.” Ellie had spent hopeless dark eternities telling herself that. “I cannot. You’d hate me.”

“Would I?” Elsmore came to a halt before her, a solid wall of black-clad man who looked more like a minion of darkness than a duke. “My cousin and heir has been embezzling not only from my bank customers, but also from my own sisters, aunts, and dependents. I am furious with him, but I do not hate him. James seized opportunities I put under his very nose. When he exploited those opportunities, I was too busy being bored witless at the theater to curb his greed.”

Do not touch Elsmore. Do not put your hand on his dear, handsome, fierce person. For if Ellie touched Elsmore, she’d want to cling to him.

“You blame yourself,” she said.

“In part, I do, and what I have allowed to go wrong, I must put right. James deserves hanging. Naylor forbid that course. He said you’d disapprove.”

Elsmore bore his signature beguiling scent, and his cheeks were freshly shaved. Ellie put her hands behind her back.

“Jack had no right to tell you what to do,” she said. “When a man commits multiple felonies and betrays the trust of family and customers alike, his fate should not be decided by my fancies.”