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office. She took a steadying breath and entered the lair.
    “Your Grace.” She prided herself on the steady way she delivered that greeting.
    “Close it,” he instructed a hovering servant.
    She cast one longing glance towards the exit. This had been the moment she’d dreaded since the scandal had erupted. She was alone with the dragon.
    Alexandra sighed. She’d always been a bit of a coward where the duke was concerned.
    “I don’t have all day, Alexandra. Take a seat.”
    She dropped her eyes demurely and counted the steps it took to place her directly in front of the Duke of Danby. “Twenty.”
    “Twenty what, Alexandra?”
    Alexandra gave a startled shake of her head. “Nothing, Your Grace,” she murmured and slid into the seat. It was large, so large it nearly dwarfed her. She felt like a child about to be delivered a stern scolding, which, in a way, she supposed she was.
    “You know why you are here.”
    “Because you missed your granddaughters and Mother and desperately and wanted to see us?” She blinked at the boldness of her own cheeky retort.
    Danby gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Seems you acquired a backbone during your time in London.”
    And a broken heart.
    “I’m getting on in age, girl. I’m not as hale as I once was.”
    “You seem to be in fine health,” she countered.
    “Yes, yes. You and the physician are of like mind. That isn’t the point. I’ve had enough of reading about the scandalous behaviors of my offspring. I never expected it of you, though.”
    Alexandra sighed. “I never expected it of myself, Your Grace.”
    He leaned forward in his chair. “So then why did you make a cake of yourself over some gentleman?”
    She could give him two thousand and twenty-five reasons she’d counted in the carriage ride. She settled for one. “I loved him.”
    Danby arched a brow. “Loved? Are my granddaughter’s sentiments so fleeting then?”
    Alas, someone who didn’t expect her feelings for Nathan to simply vanish like a cold breath of air on a winter’s day. Who would have believed the Duke of Danby would be the one?
    “No, Your Grace. I love him still.”
    “I take it your sniveling father was not particularly fond of Pembroke.”
    “That is putting it mildly, Your Grace,” she concurred.
    “What? That your father is sniveling or that he wasn’t fond of him?”
    Alexandra’s lips twitched with her first real amusement since she’d learned of Nathan’s betrayal. “Both, Your Grace.”
    Danby laughed and settled back into his seat, eying her. The easy camaraderie they’d shared dissipated under his ducal regard.
    She shifted in her seat.
    “You said you love him?”
    This again? Must he torture her?
    “Yes,” she said patiently.
    He drummed his fingertips on the desktop, the quiet staccato the only sound in the otherwise silent library. “My reports indicated Pembroke is a handsome chap. Is that what captured your fancy?”
    Indignation swelled in Alexandra’s breast. She gritted her teeth. “I assure you I am not so empty-headed to fall in love with a gentleman simply because he is handsome.”
    She tried not to be offended when Danby didn’t concur.
    “You do know the previous Earl of Pembroke was a rotten bounder? I’m sure his son is not very different.”
    Alexandra flew from her seat. “He is nothing like his father. Why he is hard-working and kind and—”
    Danby arched an intimidating brow, bringing her words to a staggering halt as she realized she’d not only challenged the duke, but also defended a man wholly undeserving of her support.
    Perhaps it was fatigue from her two and a half days of travel at a breakneck speed. Perhaps it was the presence of her grandfather. But all energy seeped from her and she slid into her seat. Alexandra closed her eyes and wished, for the thousandth time, that some mistake had been made, that Nathan was not a scoundrel, and that her father had been wrong.
    “Are you finished, Alexandra?”
    She