He wasn’t dead.
The words whispered through her mind as she continued her project, resisting the urge to find a piece of paper and send him a note telling him in great detail what he could do with himself if he were dead. Resisting the more pressing urge to toss her whole embroidery hoop into the fire and make her way back to Covent Garden in broad daylight and see his dead body for herself.
It occurred to Felicity that a woman should be able to sense the death of a man if she’d nearly ruined herself with him in an ice hold beneath a warehouse mere hours earlier. And yet she sensed no such thing. The universe was frustrating, indeed.
She set her hoop on her lap and heaved a sigh. “He’d better not be dead.”
“Goodness, Felicity, of course he’s not dead!” her mother sang from the doorway, her trio of dachshunds barking excitedly to punctuate the declaration, startling Felicity from her talkative reverie.
Felicity turned. “I beg your pardon?”
The marchioness waved a hand in the air and laughed in that way that mothers laughed when they didn’t want their daughters embarrassing them. “He is decidedly not dead! He’s clearly had business to attend to since last you saw him.”
Felicity blinked. “I’m sorry, Mother. Who is it who is not dead?”
“The duke, of course!” her mother said, and one of the dachshunds barked, then promptly tipped over Felicity’s embroidery basket and began to gnaw upon the handle, prompting the marchioness to add, in dulcet tones, “No, no, Rosie, that’s not good for you.”
The dog growled and continued to chew.
“I wasn’t suggesting the duke was dead,” Felicity said, “but I might say, Mother, that it’s not an impossibility. After all, we haven’t seen the duke in several days, and so we don’t know he is alive.”
“We do assuming he hasn’t perished in your father’s study in the last five minutes,” the marchioness replied before reaching down to pluck the dog from the basket—which did not work as planned, as the dog simply tightened her grip and brought the whole thing with her into her mistress’s arms.
“Father is here?” Felicity’s brows rose. If the Marquess of Bumble was at home, something serious was happening, indeed.
“Of course he is,” Felicity’s mother said. “Where else would he be with your marriage in the balance?” She tugged on the basket and the dog growled. “Rosencrantz. Drop it, darling.”
Felicity rolled her eyes and stood, needlepoint in hand. “Is that what they’re discussing? My marriage?”
Her mother smiled. “Your duke is arrived to save us from a life of poverty.”
Felicity stilled at the words, honest and somehow flippant. An echo of Devil’s words two nights earlier. Your family will never be poor enough to fear poverty.
She had been defensive when he’d said it, as though he didn’t take her seriously.
But here, as the words echoed beneath her family’s roof, as they wore their fashionable frocks surrounded by her mother’s dogs, who ate better than the children in the rookery where Devil made his life and were safer than the boys who worked for him—she understood them.
What had his life been like?
She might have been manipulated in recent months—pushed to marry without being told why, leveled with disappointment without reason—but she’d never doubted her family’s love for her. She’d never feared for her safety, or her life.
But Devil had—she knew that as clearly as she knew his kiss. As she knew the feel of his touch. And the thought consumed her.
Who had saved Devil from his past?
Or had he been forced to save himself?
Her mother interrupted the thoughts. “Well done. Landing the hermit duke is a cracking good job. I knew you could do it.”
Felicity’s attention snapped to the marchioness. “Well, if one is thrown into the path of enough dukes, one is bound to win one of them, I suppose.”
Her mother’s brows rose. “Surely you aren’t unhappy about the match. This one is infinitely better than the last.”
“We don’t know that,” Felicity replied.
“Don’t be so silly,” the marchioness huffed. “The last one was already married.”
“At least the last one showed emotion.”
“He offered to marry you, Felicity.” Her mother’s tone was getting more and more curt. “That’s emotion enough.”
“As a matter of fact, he didn’t offer,” she replied. “He said I was convenient. That I made the search for a wife easier.”
“Well. I don’t see the lie in that. Indeed, it might be the first time you’ve ever been accommodating,” the marchioness retorted. “And lest you forget, it’s not as though you’re a trial . . . you are daughter to a marquess, sister to an earl!”
“And I’ve excellent teeth.”
“Precisely!” the marchioness replied.
But she was more than that. Didn’t her mother see? She wasn’t simply the wallflower at the ball, desperate to do whatever necessary to win herself a husband and save her family’s finances. She looked like sunshine and smelled like jasmine.
The thought sent a wave of heat through her. When he’d said it two nights ago, it had taken all she had not to make him explain himself. It hadn’t seemed like a compliment even as it had sounded like the most beautiful compliment she’d ever heard.
Men raised in the dark will do anything for light.
She wondered if he realized how much she wanted to explore the darkness.
Except she couldn’t. Her desires were second to the needs of her family. She was their only hope—and it did not matter that she’d never be free of the yoke they wished for her. It did not matter that she’d just had a glimpse of the dark and she was losing her taste for the light.
It did not matter that she had no interest in summoning the duke to her flame. That she wished another moth. A different set of singed wings.
A moth that seemed to have no interest in flying near her.
And so she was left here: not flame. Merely Felicity.
Her family’s last chance.
She met her mother’s gaze. “The duke is here for me?”
“Well, he’s here to meet your father. And your brother. To sort the ins and outs of your marriage.”
“He is here to fill our coffers once more.”
Her mother inclined her head—tacit acknowledgment. “He’s rich as the devil, I’m told.”
Felicity refrained from telling her mother that she knew the Devil, and he was richer than anyone she’d ever known. It didn’t matter, of course, because Devil’s money would never be the saving grace of the Marquessate of Bumble. It would never rescue her brother from certain ruin.
And what of her? Could he rescue her?
No. Devil’s money wasn’t for saving Felicity. And neither was the man.
Don’t come back.
His words echoed through her, cold and clear.
So, she was left here, with the duke. The duke Devil had promised her. The duke he’d somehow delivered. Somehow . . . without telling her how. Without telling her why. Surely there was a reason, wasn’t there? But it wasn’t important enough for her to know, just as it hadn’t been important enough for her family to tell her their plans. To tell her their fears. To tell her how she was intended to save them.
Just as it wasn’t important to the Duke of Marwick to tell her why he was so willing to marry her in the first place.