Drew glared. “Am I not to have a moment’s privacy to even change my clothes?”
Father shut the door behind him. He approached Drew slowly, arms spread. “I apologize if you feel I’m being insensitive again.”
“Oh, you are,” he bit out, starting to undress even with an audience. He strode to his dressing room and selected fresh attire despite his father’s glare. He laid out what he would wear to meet Aurora across his bed, and then stood back to decide whether it all seemed too plain for what he hoped would be a momentous occasion.
His second meeting with Aurora called for some ceremony, after all. He was going courting, and would ask her to marry him a second time if the moment was right. Go down on one knee and say the words he’d been practicing in his head since he’d begun his search.
Aurora deserved a properly done proposal, and more time to consider it. Wharton’s drawing room had not been the place. He’d rushed to insist he had honorable intentions after their kiss. He’d been swept away by anticipation and hadn’t considered how it might look to her.
But today there would be time to do things right. He imagined, hoped, Aurora had had sufficient time to consider the advantages of a marriage to him. She knew him well. He’d told her a great deal over the length of their acquaintance, and only held back revealing his amorous nature.
Desires she urged him to explore with other women.
He was never going to do that.
But she knew him completely. And what could be better than marrying a woman who knew him so well?
Northport cleared his throat. “The decision when to marry has been difficult for you.”
“Of course, it is.”
“I don’t mean to rush you,” Northport apologized.
“Oh yes you do,” Drew bit out, changing his mind about his brown coat and fetching one in dark green instead.
“I’m not getting any younger,” Northport complained.
“And neither am I. I know, I know,” he replied, stripping off as he headed for the washbasin.
The water was ice cold, but he hadn’t the time to waste waiting for a servant to heat some. He could not be late today. Thankfully, he’d already been shaved that morning and all he had to do was scrub his hands. “We’ve had this conversation a dozen times, Father. I will marry when and whom I please.”
Father blocked his path back to his fresh clothing. “I want to be alive to see it. To know you are wed to someone who deserves to be your duchess.”
“I’m sure she will be,” he said, dodging around the older man to change his trousers.
“I’m just not sure I will be here,” the duke admitted. “I worry about you. I worry that you’ll take so long that I might be dead when that day comes, at the rate you go.”
Drew turned and really looked at his father’s face. “You’ve the stamina of an ox. The growl of a lion still. It’s not your time yet, Father. You will live as long as you want to, I’m sure.”
“You’ve always said that,” Father muttered darkly. “But I’m seven and fifty years, you know.”
“That isn’t that old,” Drew promised. “Didn’t your father live to be over eighty years?”
“Yes, but I favor my mother more. She died at my age. Suddenly. She was there one day and gone the next. Same as your mother, and you lost Clare and Pip that same way. Death is inevitable. So, I worry that there will be no one to support you when I’m gone.”
Drew stared at his father, speechless for a long moment, and then rushed to finish dressing. When he was decently covered, he pulled his father into a fierce embrace. “I’m as strong as you. I’ll be all right, I promise.” He quickly sniffed back a tear.
Father remained rigid until Drew released him. “I must know the succession is not in doubt,” he warned.
Drew cared little for the succession. His thoughts were for his own future, and he thought he could be happy with Aurora.