Page 85 of The Duke's Rules Of Engagement
“Of course,” Jameson said. “Disaster.”
“Exactly.”
“But that was different. You were just a boy. You’d just lost your parents and were vulnerable to that woman’s scheming. She took advantage of you. It doesn’t mean love doesn’t exist for you—just that it didn’t work out the first time. That kind of thing won’t happen to you again. You’re an old man now. Grizzled and wrinkled and older and wiser, etcetera.”
“Grizzled and wrinkled?” Matthew scoffed. “I hardly think so.”
Staring at Matthew’s hairline, Jameson narrowed his eyes. “I think I see a few grays in there, friend.”
“Nonsense.” Matthew flicked his fingers at the offending and no-doubt invisible strands. “In any case, what I am doing with Miss Cherrington is safer. How could generations of my forebears have it wrong? One finds an appropriate match in order to maintain one’s status and continue one’s line, not for any frivolous notions of love.”
His parents had been a rare exception to the rule. He, clearly, wouldn’t be another exception.
Just then, there was a soft knock on the door.
“Come in.”
“Forgive me for the interruption, Your Grace,” Simms said. “But Lord George Leighton has just arrived.”
Matthew frowned. “My uncle?”
“Yes, sir.”
Matthew groaned. George did visit once in a while, unannounced and unwelcome, though Matthew always let him stay out of some—perhaps misplaced—sense of familial duty. After all, his uncle and his wife and sonswerethe only family Matthew had. And George was his heir. If some horrific misdeed or terrible accident killed Matthew, George would need to know what to do. Dozens of people lived on Matthew’s lands and relied on him for their livelihoods. Their security and happiness depended on him. These were lessons he tried to drum into his uncle each time he saw him, and though he doubted they made a difference, he had to try.
He glanced at Jameson, who gazed back at him with sympathy. Jameson knew all about George and his antics over the years.
“Show him to his room, Simms, and tell him I’ll join him in the drawing room presently.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” The butler closed the door softly behind him.
“Well,” Jameson said, rising, “that would be my cue to leave.”
Uncle George had met Jameson once before, a meeting that had entailed George first turning his nose up at Jameson, then overtly ignoring him, having deemed him a lesser being. Since then, Jameson avoided the man at all costs. Matthew only wished he himself had that luxury.
Matthew rose to see Jameson out. As he turned to go, his friend clasped his shoulder. “Put yourself out of your misery, Matthew. Propose.”
“I will,” Matthew said. “Tomorrow.”
And he would. Tomorrow, both he and Miss Cherrington were to attend the annual Houghton House outdoor ball sponsored by the Duke of Trent. The event drew at least a thousand revelers every year. Matthew would find a time to draw Miss Cherrington aside and ask her to marry him. After he proposed to Miss Cherrington, he’d speak with Charles Cherrington, who’d also be in attendance. And it would be done. He’d kill the proverbial two birds with one stone.
He wouldn’t fail this time.
Chapter Twenty-Five
When Jo returned home after spending the afternoon with Matthew, she claimed a headache to avoid dinner and their usual gathering in the parlor afterward.
Shedidhave an ache. More than one, but none of them was in her head. There was the physical ache, the echo of him between her legs, her tender tissues and sore muscles. Then there was the ache in her heart, cracked straight through to its core.
For she’d realized, as his carriage rumbled away from his house, that her heart had been deaf to her commands. She was in love with the Duke of Crestmont. Madly, irrevocably in love with a man who thought of her neither as a potential duchess nor as his equal. It would never cross his mind that she could be either thing to him.
Only, she knew she could. She knew she would make a good partner to him. She knew she could be his friend and his lover. She knew she could stand beside him through the good times and the difficult ones. Sheknewthey could be happy together.
But he didn’t know any of that. To him, a duchess meant something else. Something Jo wasn’t and never could be. And that ideal had been ingrained in him his entire life, reinforced by his experiences with Fanny Fleming, and nailed painfully into him by his Uncle George.
How could Jo undo a lifetime of conditioning? She couldn’t. And if she tried and somehow magically succeeded, he would question whether she’d manipulated him. Whether he would have been happier with a younger woman with the proper breeding who could sing and draw and play the piano and smile graciously at his guests.
Jo couldn’t blame him—he was who he was meant to be, who he’d been trained to be since birth, and who society demanded he be. She could only blame herself for falling in love with a man who could never value her the way she deserved to be valued.
