So that was it. He thought he was doing the right thing. She wanted to cry with frustration. There would be no changing his mind. Thomas had spent his entire life doing the right thing. Never for himself. Always for Wyndham. And now he thought he was doing the right thing for her.

“She has a name,” Mr. Audley retorted. “It’s Willoughby. And for the love of God, she’s the daughter of an earl. She’ll find someone else.”

“If you are the Duke of Wyndham,” Thomas said furiously, “you will honor your commitments.”

“If I’m the Duke of Wyndham, then you can’t tell me what to do.”

“Amelia,” Thomas said with deadly calm, “release my arm.”

Instead, she tightened her grip. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Her father chose that moment to intercede—finally. “Er, gentlemen, this is all hypothetical at this point. Perhaps we should wait until—”

“I wouldn’t be the seventh duke, anyway,” Mr. Audley muttered.

Her father looked somewhat irritated at the interruption. “I beg your pardon?”

“I wouldn’t.” Mr. Audley looked over at Thomas. “Would I? Because your father was the sixth duke. Except he wasn’t. If I am.” And then, if that weren’t confusing enough: “Would he have been? If I was?”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Amelia’s father demanded.

“Your father died before his own father,” Thomas said to Mr. Audley. “If your parents were married, then you would have inherited upon the fifth duke’s death, eliminating my father—and myself—from the succession entirely.”

“Which makes me number six.”

“Indeed,” Thomas said tightly.

“Then I am not bound to honor the contract,” Mr. Audley declared. “No court in the land would hold me to it. I doubt they’d do so even if I were the seventh duke.”

“It is not to a legal court you must appeal,” Thomas said quietly, “but to the court of your own moral responsibility.”

Amelia swallowed. How like him that was, how upstanding and true. How did one argue with a man such as that? She felt her lips begin to tremble, and she looked to the door, measuring how many steps it would take to remove her from this place.

Mr. Audley stood stiffly, and when he spoke, his words were rigid as well. “I did not ask for this.”

Thomas just shook his head. “Neither did I.”

Amelia lurched back, choking down the cry of pain in her throat. No, he’d never asked for any of this. He’d never asked for the title, for the lands, for the responsibility.

He’d never asked for her.

She’d known it, of course. She’d always known he hadn’t picked her, but she’d never thought it would hurt this much to hear him say it. She was just another of his many burdens, foisted onto him by virtue of his birth.