“It was so bad that I had to give up my life entirely. I changed my name. I was born Minerva Lane. When I was…when I was pretending, my father called me Maximilian.”

“Huh,” he repeated. His jaw moved, but he didn’t speak.

“Say something,” she said. “Say anything at all. You didn’t know when you proposed marriage. I won’t fault you for walking away.” She looked up into his eyes. “Just say something.”

He searched her face for a moment, and then shrugged. “Did you like being a boy?”

“I—well.” It was not a question she’d ever been asked, and it startled her out of her fear. “It was all I really knew at first. The deception started when I was so young. I didn’t think anything of it.” She sighed. “I hated lying, though. All the pretenses to avoid removing clothing around others. I hated that a great deal. And when I was twelve, I started to fancy one of my friends. That was…deeply awkward.”

“I should say.” He blinked at her. “This explains a great deal about you.”

“I had to learn to be a girl again, afterward. How to walk. How to talk. So many little things to do wrong. It was just…easier to be small and quiet. I couldn’t make any mistakes that way.”

“It makes me think I should have a very long talk with you about the appropriate subjects for female education,” he said with a sudden smile. “After we’re married.”

“You’re not being serious. Your Grace, I’m a scandal waiting to happen.”

“Minnie, I want to abolish the peerage. I write radical pamphlets in secret. I am not going to shriek, ‘Oh, no! A scandal!’ and run away. I don’t mind scandal.”

Minnie looked him in the eyes. “But I do, Your Grace. I do.”

The door rattled once, then again. A few moments later, after some more extremely loud fumbling with the handle, Lydia opened the door. She came in carrying a pitcher of water.

“That,” Minnie said, “must be water fetched all the way from Bath. Did you walk there yourself or take the train?”

Lydia gave her a cheeky grin. “Well? Is everything settled?”

“My question exactly.” Robert raised an eyebrow.

And Minnie found she couldn’t answer. She wanted him. She liked him. If he’d been any other man, she’d have taken him. But marrying him would put her in front of not just a few people, but the entire country. And with him at her side, they would all be looking. She felt ill just thinking about it.

She looked away. “I need more time.”

“Time? Time for what?” Lydia demanded.

But Robert held up his hand. “Then have it,” he said. “Think it through from all angles. Consider your strategies, if you must, and advance your supply lines. Whatever it is you must do to feel secure.” He flashed her a smile, a confident smile. A smile that said he knew she wouldn’t turn him down.

“Take your time,” he said, stepping closer to her and leaning in. “And in the end, Minnie, take me.”

Chapter Sixteen

ROBERT SHOULD HAVE GUESSED what the gossip would bring, but the next morning’s visitor still came as a surprise. He was on the verge of going out—had just stepped outside his door, in fact—when a carriage drew up in front of the house. A servant leaped from the back and placed a stool on the pavement.

The door opened, and his mother disembarked. Her eyes landed on Robert. She didn’t frown. She didn’t squint. In fact, the duchess did not show any emotion at all. Instead, she simply stepped onto the pavement and floated up the steps.

“Clermont,” she said in greeting.

He inclined his head a half inch. “Duchess.”

She swept in the open door as if he were holding it for her. Without asking permission, she accosted a passing maid and ordered tea. He followed in bemusement. Two minutes later, she’d seated herself in his front parlor. She waved her own maid away and faced him.

“I take it,” she said, “that you haven’t made a general practice of debauching genteel young women of the middle class.”

She said the words middle class as if they smelled of rotten eggs.

“You are referring to the events of last night?” he said, matching her tone. “I make it a habit to ruin a pair before tea. I find the anticipation makes the morning hours pass with delightful alacrity.”

She sniffed. “That is the sort of joke your father would have made.”

Robert’s hand clenched in his glove. “No,” he said. “That is the sort of thing my father would have done. He would never have joked about it, not in mixed company.”

She waved a hand in acknowledgment. “This is not the first I have heard your name coupled with that of Miss Pursling. Tell me you are not considering anything untoward.”

“I don’t see why you should care. You never have.”

The Duchess of Clermont simply shrugged. “Your actions, such as they are, reflect on me.”

Of course. She wasn’t taking an interest in him; she never had. She was simply seeing to her own reputation, worrying about the difficulties that he might cause her. He’d waited his entire life for her to notice him.

He’d studied hard when he first went to school, earning praise from all his tutors. He’d written her in excitement, hoping that she’d read his letter, that he would have done enough to make her proud.

But his first letter had received no response. So he’d tried harder. If he was not just good, but great… Surely then his mother would be proud of him. So he’d studied harder, tried more, achieved even more. He’d written her again after four months, shyly placing his accomplishments before her.

The post had brought an endless round of nothing.

Undaunted, he’d tried harder. He’d sent his third letter at the end of the year, informing her that he’d been first in his class. For a week that summer, he’d held his breath every day when the post arrived. For a week, he’d been disappointed.

And then, one day, he’d received a one-line response.

Tell your father that this strategy won’t work, either.

It had been a matter of principle to continue on as he had before—to prove that all that effort hadn’t been for her. Even so, it had taken him years to break the habit of hoping.

“Well?” she said, studying him now. “What is it that you intend with the girl?”

Robert stared across the room. “I believe,” he said slowly, “that a son ought to defer to his mother. To answer her queries, because he owes her respect for the years of care she has given.”