Page 24 of The Duke's Rules Of Engagement
“I’m so sorry, Your Grace.”
He shrugged, then looked back to her, his expression flat. “They were my favorite people. When I was younger. That is what you asked, correct?”
“Correct.” She swallowed back her sympathy. He didn’t want it right now, and that she understood, as well. “What about when you were older? Who was your favorite person after your parents?”
“I haven’t had one,” he said.
She opened her mouth to argue, then decided to allow him this. “Perhaps that will be your wife.”
His eyes went narrow again, and she knew she’d made a mistake. “That’s not necessary.”
But it should be, Your Grace. You deserve to have a favorite person again. You deserve to be someone’s favorite person.
Jo bit her tongue.
“I would appreciate it if you didn’t look at me like that,” he said.
“Like what?” she asked. But she knew.
“Like you pity me. Don’t. I am not alone in this world. There are several people in this world I care deeply for. I have friends.”
She managed a smile. “Well, that’s a relief,” she said lightly.
After a moment of silence, he asked, “Do you have more questions? I really think we’re almost—”
“I have a few more,” she said. “Please bear with me.”
“Very well.” He sat stone-still, as if bracing himself for a punch.
Goodness, she hoped he didn’t feel like she’d been metaphorically punching him.
“What do you do in your life that brings you joy?” she asked him.
He looked at her blankly.
“Do you have a favorite pursuit? Like…” What did aristocrats do for fun these days? “Um…cards, perhaps. Cricket? Horse racing? Hunting?”Women?She didn’t say that out loud, but she always wished she could. It would tell her so much about her aspiring grooms. “Star-gazing? Meteorology?”
“Meteorology, as you already know.”
“A fascinating pursuit, to be sure.”
“And I row.”
“You row? Like…a waterman?”
“Something like that.”
She leaned forward, rapt. “Will you tell me more?”
For a long moment, he kept his lips stubbornly pursed. Then, he huffed out a sigh. “Very well. When I was a boy at Eton, some friends and I found an abandoned old rowboat. We restored it and began the Lions and the Lilies, a rowing club whose name we derived from the school’s coat of arms.” For the first time, he seemed to relax a little, settling back in the chair. His lips quirked at a memory as he continued. “Though at first, we called ourselves the Lion, singular, and the Lilies, as only one lion appears on the crest, but that resulted in quite a few—rather violent—disagreements. Obviously,Iwas the lion, as the founding member and the eldest, but none of the other lads understood basic logic.”
She smiled. Finally.Finally, they were getting somewhere.
“So eventually, I decided to make the lion plural and generously allowed all the other club members to be lions as well, and we thought of all those slow boats we passed on the river as lilies. In any case, by the time I left Eton, we had four boats, two of which were quite fast boats we’d built on our own. I continued rowing after that, and now I own a boathouse on the Thames, where I build boats with the same group of friends and we race them against each other.”
“Ah,” Jo said, understanding dawning. “Your appointment on the Thames this afternoon?”
“Exactly.”
