Chapter 7 #2
“Firstly, you’ve seen the color of the embroidery on my stockings. I am quite proud of the color blue. And second, how incredibly rude,” she huffed. “I am not a bonbon, Your Grace. At best, I am a sandwich. A rather delicious one, I’ll have you know, but I have substance.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Perhaps I’m more like a good roast dinner.”
He laughed. “Excuse me, a good roast dinner?”
“Yes,” she affirmed, clearly preferring the analogy. “I’m full of flavor, and I am definitely meant to sustain one.”
“Well, that definitely sounds better than a bonbon at the end of the day,” he agreed.
She nodded. “Exactly, Your Grace. Bonbons don’t last very long. You can pop one in your mouth. It’ll melt and be done. No lady wishes to have such a short season.”
“I understand, but I confess, I do look forward to a bonbon in my mouth.”
Oh, how he wanted to take her in his mouth. And he was fairly certain she knew it.
“Your cheeks are growing quite pink,” he observed.
“Well, you just said something rather shocking.”
“Did I?” he asked.
“You know that you did, Your Grace.”
“Then I must beg your forgiveness, but I will say, a bonbon would make a terrible duchess. A good roast dinner is a far better possibility.”
He titled his head to the side, considering her anew. “A bonbon wouldn’t find it very interesting as a duchess. It’s running estates. It’s not buying pretty clothes. It’s making sure that poor people aren’t trodden upon.”
She laughed. A sudden, shocking sound. “Poor people are trodden upon all over, especially by the highest in our society, and I do not think duchesses are doing a very good job of lifting them out of the mud.”
Her sudden pivot shocked him. “Go on.”
“Are you familiar with what most of the poor houses are actually like, and even the foundling hospitals, Your Grace? They’re terrible, terrible places.”
He shook his head. “The founding hospitals are necessary. What else would mothers do—”
“I know that poor mothers do apply to have their children in them, and it is quite hard to get in, but by God, Your Grace, the state of orphaned children in this world is really quite appalling.”
Indeed, she was not a bonbon. She was a force to be reckoned with, for in but a few short moments, his frothy young woman who loved to dance to Mozart and banter about drama had turned fierce. “And why do you care about orphaned children?”
“Well, if you must know,” she began somewhat chagrined, “one of my sisters was quite preoccupied by the possibility that our mother and father could die. They had a terrible brush with smallpox and luckily both came out unscathed. Our entire family did, but several of our servants died. It was a terrible state of affairs, and she kept asking what it would be like if she was an orphan. And then, unfortunately, several of us did quite a lot of research, and we realized how very terrible it would be.”
He shook his head. “But you would be wealthy orphans and would have been taken in by a good family.”
“That doesn’t mean we didn’t do the research, Your Grace, and find out just how awful it is for those born without our resources. The mortality rate of orphans in London is positively scandalous. Are you aware of the mortality rate?”
He blinked. “I confess I am not.”
“Well, if you are going to rabbit on about duchesses taking care of the poor, you should be,” she said. “You should be completely aware of the mortality rate of all children in London if you do as much as you say you do.”
“I consider myself chastened,” he said, stunned at how he admired her. Stunned at how quickly she was changing in his eyes into a young woman to be reckoned with and not just desired.
“Good,” she said. “You should chasten yourself. More people should do things for all children. I find that wealthy men really only care about other wealthy men.”
He gaped at her blunt, damning assessment of his kind. “I wish I could disagree with you, but I cannot.”
She shrugged her elegant shoulders, which caused the ribbons on her bodice to dance. “You all protect each other, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said honestly. “Most do.”
“And you’ve got no interest in protecting ladies and no interest in protecting children. And—”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he cut in swiftly, feeling as if he was now proving his capability.
“Right then. Prove it,” she said, raising her chin. “Tell me about all the bills you’ve passed to protect the ladies and children.”
“This was not at all how I envisioned this conversation going.”
And for some reason, that caused her to beam at him, which lit up her whole face.
That light, that face, could warm a whole winter, and suddenly he felt like a plant that had somehow endured the cruel cold months and was at last feeing the healing rays of the sun.
“You should be glad,” she said. “It’s good to be surprised.
You’re going to have a very terrible life if you’re not surprised.
You’ll die younger if you’re not surprised.
At least this is what I have come to understand.
Humans require a great deal of variety. If you get stuck in a rut, like a coach on a country road, you’ll never get out, and you’ll be positively miserable.
” She peered up as if she was on the brink of saying something but was holding back.
“Go on then,” he urged as the music died and they spun to a halt. “Say it.”
She pressed her lips together, then rushed, “I think you’re very close to being stuck in a rut.”
“You have made this assessment from our short acquaintance?” he rumbled, knowing now that he needed to get her out of his embrace and lead her off the floor. But he didn’t want to. He wanted this conversation, the most honest and odd of his life, to go on forever.
“Yes,” she said plainly. “You’re very handsome, and yet for some reason, you, well, perhaps it’s being a duke, as you say, but you don’t allow yourself a great deal of enjoyment.”
The pain that stabbed in his heart shocked him.
“Did you ever?” she breathed.
“Yes, I suppose I did for a brief period of time, but then when I became a duke, I could not. I have also been trained to know that enjoyment is not my primary function.”
Couples were leaving the floor, but he could sense the gaze of everyone in the room upon them. He needed to walk away from her. To take her to her mother. To end this.
But he didn’t want to. And it was the first time in a long time that he’d done what he wanted rather than what he should.
She gaped at him. “Your primary function? What is your primary function?”
“Being a duke, passing the dukedom on,” he said without hesitation.
Her brows quirked as if such a thing was absurd. “So your only function is as a sort of conveying processes of genealogy?”
He laughed. “Yes. Isn’t that the truth of all powerful people?”
Though he was loath to, he began to guide her off the floor, taking his time, savoring the feel of her skirts skimming along his thigh.
“No,” she explained. “Have you not read the annals of history, Your Grace? People in history who are powerful do absolutely outrageous things. That’s how they get the power to begin with.”
“Consider your application submitted.” And he meant it. How could he not? This was the best conversation, the wildest, the most erratic, and the most earnest that he had experienced in more than a decade.
“What?” she yelped.
“It’s too late to go back now.”
“Don’t tease,” she said. “I don’t think it’s funny to tease about something like this.”
“Right then,” he said, as he led her towards her American friend.
But then he paused, turning ever so slightly towards her, feeling an intensity that he knew the entire room would comment upon, and yet he couldn’t stop himself.
“I shall be terribly, terribly serious. You are not suited for the application, and yet I wish to consider it, to read it thoroughly, to go over it carefully…”
He was being ridiculous in this analogy, but he did long to know her. Know her in a way he was not supposed to know his future wife.
“And what if I don’t actually want the job?” she whispered.
He could see the hesitation on her face, the understanding that something was happening that neither of them had anticipated and that neither of them could truly control.
“Then don’t come tomorrow,” he said simply. “Don’t tell your mother and father about any of this. Don’t tell them about what happened between us or how very much I think…”
“What?” she whispered.
“How very much I want to kiss you.”