“He detests her.”
She shook her head, then looked back out at the sunset, which was in its death throes over the horizon. “What a tangle.”
“What an understatement.”
“What a knot?” she offered, feeling very nautical.
She heard him let out a little snuff of amusement, and then he rose to his feet. She looked up; he was blotting out the last shafts of the sun. Indeed, he seemed to fill her entire vision.
“We could have been friends,” she heard herself say.
“Could?”
“Would,” she corrected, and she was smiling. It seemed the most amazing thing. How was it possible she had anything to smile about? “I think we would have been friends, if not for…If all this…”
“If everything were different?”
“Yes. No. Not everything. Just…some things.” She began to feel lighter. Happier. And she had not the slightest clue why. “Maybe if we’d met in London.”
“And we hadn’t been betrothed?”
She nodded. “And you hadn’t been a duke.”
His brows rose.
“Dukes are very intimidating,” she explained. “It would have been so much easier if you hadn’t been one.”
“And your mother had not been engaged to marry my uncle,” he added.
“If we’d just met.”
“No history between us.”
“None.”
His brows rose and he smiled. “If I’d seen you across a crowded room?”
“No, no, nothing like that.” She shook her head. He was not getting this at all. She wasn’t talking about romance. She couldn’t bear to even think of it. But friendship…that was something else entirely. “Something far more ordinary,” she said. “If you’d sat next to me on a bench.”
“Like this one?”
“Perhaps in a park.”
“Or a garden,” he murmured.
“You would sit down next to me—”
“And ask your opinion of Mercator projections.”
She laughed. “I would tell you that they are useful for navigation but that they distort area terribly.”
“I would think—how nice, a woman who does not hide her intelligence.”
“And I would think—how lovely, a man who does not assume I have none.”
He smiled. “We would have been friends.”
“Yes.” She closed her eyes. Just for a moment. Not for long enough to allow her to dream. “Yes, we would.”
He was quiet for a moment, and then he picked up her hand and kissed it. “You will make a spectacular duchess,” he said softly.
She tried to smile, but it was difficult; the lump in her throat was blocking her way.
Then, softly—but not so softly that she was not intended to hear—he said, “My only regret is that you never were mine.”
Chapter 16
The following day, at the Queen’s Arms, Dublin
Do you think,” Thomas murmured, leaning down to speak his words in Amelia’s ear, “that there are packets leaving directly from Dublin port, heading to the Outer Hebrides?”
She made a choking sound, followed by a very stern look, which amused him to no end. They were standing, along with the rest of their traveling party, in the front room of the Queen’s Arms, where Thomas’s secretary had arranged for their rooms on the way to Butlersbridge, the small village in County Cavan where Jack Audley had grown up. They had reached the port of Dublin in the late afternoon, but by the time they collected their belongings and made their way into town, it was well after dark. Thomas was tired and hungry, and he was fairly certain that Amelia, her father, Grace, and Jack were as well.
His grandmother, however, was having none of it.
“It is not too late!” she insisted, her shrill voice filling every corner of the room. They were now on minute three of her tantrum. Thomas suspected that the entire neighborhood had been made aware that she wished to press on toward Butlersbridge that evening.
“Ma’am,” Grace said, in that calm, soothing way of hers, “it is past seven. We are all tired and hungry, and the roads are dark and unknown to us.”
“Not to him,” the dowager snapped, jerking her head toward Jack.
“I am tired and hungry,” Jack snapped right back, “and thanks to you, I no longer travel the roads by moonlight.”
Thomas bit back a smile. He might actually grow to like this fellow.
“Don’t you wish to have this matter settled, once and for all?” the dowager demanded.
“Not really,” Jack answered. “Certainly not as much as I want a slice of shepherd’s pie and a tankard of ale.”
“Hear hear,” Thomas murmured, but only Amelia heard.
It was strange, but his mood had been improving the closer they got to their destination. He would have thought he’d grow more and more tortured; he was about to lose everything, after all, right down to his name. By his estimation, he ought to be snapping off heads by now.
But instead he felt almost cheerful.
Cheerful. It was the damnedest thing. He’d spent the entire morning on deck with Amelia, swapping tales and laughing uproariously. It had been enough to make his stomach forget to be seasick.
Thank the Lord, he thought, for very large favors. It had been a close thing, the night before—keeping the three bites he’d eaten of supper in his belly, where it belonged.
He wondered if his odd amiability was because he had already accepted that Jack was the rightful duke. Once he had stopped fighting that, he just wanted to get the whole bloody mess over and done with. The waiting, truly, was the hardest part.
He’d gotten his affairs in order. He’d done everything required for a smooth transition. All that was left was to get it done. And then he could go off and do whatever it was he would have done had he not been tied to Belgrave.
Somewhere in the midst of his ponderings he realized that Jack was leaving, presumably to get that slice of shepherd’s pie. “I do believe he has the right idea of it,” Thomas murmured. “Supper sounds infinitely more appealing than a night on the roads.”
His grandmother whipped her head around and glared at him.
“Not,” Thomas added, “that I am attempting to delay the inevitable. Even soon-to-be-dispossessed dukes get hungry.”
Lord Crowland laughed aloud at that. “He has you there, Augusta,” he said jovially, and he wandered off to the taproom.
“I shall take my supper in my room,” the dowager announced. Or really, it was more of a bark. “Miss Eversleigh, you may attend to me.”
Grace sighed wearily and started to follow.
“No,” Thomas said.
“No?” the dowager echoed.
Thomas allowed himself a small smile. He truly had got all of his affairs in order. “Grace will dine with us,” he told his grandmother. “In the dining room.”
“She is my companion,” the dowager hissed.
Oh, he was enjoying this. Far more than he’d thought. “Not anymore.” He smiled genially at Grace, who was staring at him as if he’d lost his mind. “As I have not yet been removed from my position,” he said, “I took the liberty of making a few last minute provisions.”
“What the devil are you talking about?” the dowager demanded.
He ignored her. “Grace,” he said, “you are officially relieved of your duties to my grandmother. When you return home, you will find a cottage deeded in your name, along with funds enough to provide an income for the rest of your life.”
“Are you mad?” the dowager sputtered.
Grace just stared at him in shock.
“I should have done it long ago,” he said. “I was too selfish. I couldn’t bear the thought of living with her”—he jerked his head toward his grandmother—“without you there to act as a buffer.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Grace whispered.
He shrugged modestly. “Normally, I’d advise ‘Thank you,’ but as I am the one thanking you, a mere ‘You are a pri
nce among men’ would suffice.”
Grace managed a wobbly smile and whispered, “You are a prince among men.”
“It is always lovely to hear it,” Thomas said. “Now, would you care to join the rest of us for supper?”
Grace turned toward the dowager, who was red-faced with rage.