Then her eyes narrowed.
“Because she asked you to?”
“She has not asked me for anything.”
“Then because you’ve fallen in love between breakfast and supper?”
“No.”
The blunt answer seemed to offend her almost as much as the dismissal.
“How romantic.”
“This is not romance.”
“Then what is it?”
Duke looked toward the closed drawing-room doors.
For years he had believed character revealed itself in great decisions—contracts signed, businesses rescued, elections influenced, fortunes risked.
That morning, a woman who had been traded into his household had shown him something simpler.
She expected nothing from him because men like him had taught her not to.
And he had intended to reward that silence by using it as permission.
“I saw what I was asking her to live with,” he said.
Vivian gave a short, disbelieving laugh.
“You knew what you were asking before you married her.”
“I knew the arrangement.
I did not look at the person inside it.”
“And now you’ve looked? Once?”
“Once was enough to see what I should have seen before.”
Vivian’s face went cold.
“You self-righteous coward.”
Duke accepted the insult without moving.
“Probably.”
“You think dismissing me on your wedding day makes you honorable?”
“No.”
“You think she’ll thank you?”
“No.”
“Then what do you expect?”
“Nothing.”
That answer finally frightened her.
Not because Duke threatened her.
He did not.
Because Vivian knew transactions.
She knew gifts, jealousy, secrecy, possession.
Those things could be negotiated.
A decision made without demand for reward gave her nothing to bargain against.
She moved toward the hall table and snatched up her note.
“Two years,” she said.
“For two years, I accepted every rule you set.
I never appeared where I wasn’t wanted.
I never embarrassed you.
I never demanded marriage.
And now a girl sits silently beside you for one breakfast and suddenly I am the sin you cannot bear to look at?”
“You are not the only person responsible for what we did.”
“How generous.”
“I am ending my part in it.”
Vivian tore the note once through the middle.
“Do you imagine society won’t laugh? They know about me.
They know why you married her.
Half the people at your breakfast today have kept arrangements more complicated than ours.”
“Then they may laugh.”
“And if I speak?”
Duke met her gaze.
“You may speak.”
