How the Marquess Was Won by Julie Anne Long Page A

seventeen years old and still at school when my father died, leaving me with debts and enormous responsibilities and everyone in the family flailing and looking to me, like so many baby birds with their mouths open, to save them. I needed to make decisions, important ones, difficult ones, on behalf of my family and . . . impulsiveness was a luxury. One learns things when the circumstances are dire. One learns precision, for one thing. And timing. For a wrong move could have brought it all crashing down. And I paid the debts. I built the fortune. I ensured everyone associated with my name thrived.”
    The marquess was trying to explain himself to her.
    Estates, she’d said mockingly. Suddenly she saw them for what they were . . . ballast. Slung about the neck of a seventeen-year-old blue blood. Huge tracts of lands, great houses, and families, for that matter, didn’t run themselves profitably through magic. He’d cared for everyone from the beginning. He’d managed. He’d looked out for everything and everyone associated with his name and done them proud. And he’d never stopped.
    She was ashamed she’d teased him.
    “The wrong man could have brought it all crashing down,” she told him. “A different man might have collapsed under the weight of the responsibility.”
    He widened his eyes in surprise, as if the option to allow it to crash down around him had never occurred to him. Then he gave a short laugh. No humor in it, but it was a bit wistful. “It was like walking a tightrope at times,” he said absently. Perhaps reflecting on that time.
    “And now?”
    “And now . . .” He tipped his head back in thought. “Now it’s almost second nature.” He gave another abbreviated almost-laugh. “Doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons.” He glanced sideways at her. “Almost,” he added cryptically.
    The man who never put a foot wrong. Who was grace personified. Who was particular and “lucky” and “reckless.” Who’d become a legend as a result of all of these things, who was admired and imitated but never matched.
    No one understood what his legend had cost him.
    Her stomach knotted. She felt the sides of the box he voluntarily occupied as if it had been lowered over the two of them. And for an infinitesimal moment she felt grateful not to be him.
    “You must have been frightened at times.”
    He seemed to consider this. He shrugged with one shoulder. And then he reached up, deftly captured a moth in one hand before it could dash itself to death in the lamplight.
    “I think it’s remarkable,” she added softly. “What you’ve done.”
    “Perhaps. But you see how amusing I find it that I’m considered reckless . I am never . . .” He freed the moth with a wry twist of his mouth, knowing it would try for the light again, as it was its nature. “. . . reckless.”
    She saw how very true this was. How a juggler, a tightrope walker, must learn precision and timing . . . or perish.
    “You should be very proud,” she said softly. Surprisingly, vehemently. “Of everything. Your family is fortunate indeed to have you.”
    “I am,” he said offhandedly, after a moment. Sounding surprised that it was ever in question. “And they are.”
    He turned to her with a half smile.
    It made her shake her head. She was certain, somehow, the arrogance was native, not something he acquired along the way. She liked it.
    “I promised my mother I’d restore all of the lands that had been sold to pay off debt. Little by little, over the years, I’ve rebuilt my family’s legacy and honor. How fragile it is, really, when what was built over centuries can be torn asunder by one man. Only one more tract of land remains to be reacquired—an expanse of Sussex not entailed to the title that my father lost in a card game. The estate that occupies it was part of my mother’s dowry, and her childhood home. I wonder if you can guess who owns it.”
    She didn’t have to guess. She