SHE PRETENDED TO BE A “BOY” FOR 7 MONTHS TO AVOID AN ARRANGED MARRIAGE—UNTIL THE DUKE FOUND OUT…

Chapter 16

Arthur Foster arrived on a Tuesday.

Josephine knew he had come before she saw him. She knew because Millie came flying out the kitchen door with her apron still on, and because Edith was standing at the top of the back stairs and would not come down, and because the whole yard had gone quiet in the particular way a stable yard goes quiet when the horses all turn their heads at once.

She walked to the front of the house because she would not be found hiding in a stable.

He was in the entry hall, shaking out his hat, being received by an extremely unamused Mrs. Osborne. He was taller than she remembered. Wider, greyer, redder in the face. He wore a coat that had been good ten years ago and a watch chain with nothing on the end of it, and he looked around the entry hall with the naked, calculating greed of a man taking inventory.

Then he saw her in the doorway, and his face did something complicated.

“Josephine.”

“Uncle.”

He looked her up and down — the rough shirt, the coat, the cropped hair, the mud on her boots — and laughed.

“Well,” he said. “There she is. My runaway niece. What a picture.” He turned to Mrs. Osborne. “You see? You see what you’ve been harboring? This is not a boy. This is my ward, Josephine Foster, who is legally contracted—”

“Mrs. Osborne.”

The voice came from the top of the stairs.

Raymond Hawthorne descended slowly, in a coat of charcoal grey, and the whole entry hall seemed to contract around him.

“Your Grace,” said Mrs. Osborne, and stepped back.

Raymond reached the bottom of the stairs and looked at Arthur Foster with the exact expression he might use on a dog that had wandered into a dining room.

“Mr. Foster.”

“Your Grace.” Arthur recovered quickly. “I am glad to find you at home. I have come to collect my ward, who has been living in your house under a false name. I am sure you will agree that this is a matter of some delicacy—”

“I am aware of every fact of the matter.”

“Then you know she is contracted in marriage to Mr. Collingwood of Harrowfield—”

“Mr. Collingwood’s claim was settled in March.”

Arthur’s mouth opened and closed.

“Settled?”

“Repaid. In full. To the man himself, in his own house, before a witness.” Raymond’s voice did not rise. “The contract was unlawful — there is no marriage without consent, and consent cannot be purchased from an uncle. Mr. Collingwood has accepted this and will not pursue it. I have his signature on the matter, if you would care to see it.”

Arthur’s face had gone from red to a pale, ugly grey.

“You had no right—”

“Mr. Foster.” Raymond took one step forward. “You signed your brother’s daughter over to a man old enough to be her grandsire, in exchange for money, without her knowledge or consent, on the night before she fled your house for her life.” He stopped, and the temperature of the room dropped. “You have no standing here. Not moral. Not legal. Not any kind there is.”

“She is my ward—”

“She is twenty-one years of age,” said Raymond. “She is of full age and full legal capacity, and she may live wherever she likes, and she does not answer to you. Or to anyone.” He paused. “You will leave this house now.”

Arthur Foster’s hands had begun to shake.

“She’s my brother’s child. Blood. You can’t keep my own blood from me.”

“I am not keeping anything from you.” Raymond’s eyes were flat. “She is standing right there. If she wishes to go with you, she is free to walk out that door with you this instant.”

The whole hall turned to look at Josephine.

Josephine looked at her uncle — at the man who had sold her, who had laughed when he saw her, who stood in this hallway with his hand out and his greed naked on his face.

Then she looked at Raymond.

And she understood, all at once, exactly what he was doing. He was not claiming her. He was not protecting her like furniture. He was giving her back the one thing Arthur Foster had taken from her the night she cut her hair, the thing she had fled across a county to get back.

A choice.

She turned to her uncle.

“I am staying.”

Arthur Foster’s mouth worked. “Josephine—”

“No.” The word came out steady and clear. “You signed a paper in a study and did not ask me. You took money for me like a horse at auction. I will not go with you. I will never go with you. If you want something from me, you will have to look at me and ask, and you have never once done that in my life.”

Silence.

Arthur looked from her to the Duke to the assembled staff, and something in his eyes flickered — the last faint spark of a fight he could not win.

“You will regret this,” he said.

“I have regretted you for years,” said Josephine. “This is the first day I have not.”

Raymond moved toward the door.

“Mrs. Osborne will see you out.”

Arthur Foster looked at him with pure hatred. Then he turned and walked out, and the door closed behind him, and the entry hall of Hawthorne House was quiet for a long moment.

Then Millie started to cry, and Edith said, “Well,” and Dennis, who had come up from the stables and was standing in the servants’ doorway with his cap in his hands, said, “That’ll be that, then.”

Josephine stood in the middle of the great entry hall with the winter light coming through the tall windows, and she was still standing there when Raymond Hawthorne turned to her and said, in a voice that only she could hear:

“Come into the study. There is something I want to give you.”

And the way he said it made her heart turn over, because it was not the voice of a duke giving an order.

It was the voice of a man who had been waiting a very long time to say something else.