Giles doubted that was entirely true. He knew from experience that a person was perfectly capable of being hard at work whilst grieving tragedy at the same time. Felicity’s childhood could not have been easy.
“I’m glad your father was the sort who brought his son on picnics.” Her expression was pensive. “There’s nothing Cole and I wouldn’t do for each other. That’s why I know about carriages. We spent our childhoods working at a forge.”
He tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “I’ve no doubt you were a deuce of an apprentice.”
“By the time I was ten, I told everyone who would listen that I was going to be a blacksmith one day,” she confessed with a self-deprecating smile. “How about you? Did you always want to be a coach smith?”
“Very much so,” he answered. “My family would not have disowned me if I’d wished to be a butcher or a chemist instead, but for me there was never any question. I was born to it.”
His family had never been rich, but they had always believed in each other and in him.
“Have you always wanted to be a duchess?” he asked, thinking of her list. “Or a countess or a marchioness?”
She wrinkled her nose. “No. For so long, I was too worried about today to think about tomorrow. That all turned on its head when Cole inherited a dukedom. Suddenly there was a future to worry about. All I can do is make the best choices I can.”
Giles wanted a happy, loving marriage like his parents had. Joy and contentment for thirty-five years and counting.
“Have you considered,” he asked carefully, “the possibility of a love match?”
“Love doesn’t buy bread.” Felicity’s dark eyes were haunted. “I refuse to raise a family in poverty, and I intend to lift as many other children up from that mire as I can. I’ll marry whichever man whose advantages can create the most good.”
Giles handed her a plate of fruit in silence. He did not find fault with her goals to improve children’s futures. He shared them. They were just following two different paths to do so.
The big heart he admired so much was the reason she would never let herself see him as anything but a temporary diversion. He could offer love, but she was not seeking it. He lacked the high society pedigree required for his name to be added to her list.
Yet he could not help but wish there was some way to convince her to see him as something more.
“I wish you’d let me work on Baby,” she said as she popped a grape into her mouth.
He finished off the last apple slice. “You’ll never work on Baby.”
“I saw you race,” she said. “I could help.”
“Iwon,” he reminded her. “Handily, you might recall.”
“But wouldn’t it be splendid to leave your competitors behind in an evenbiggercloud of dust?” she insisted, brown eyes sparkling. “I could shave at least thirty seconds off your time.”
“No one would know.” He lifted his pocket watch from his waistcoat pocket. “Most timepieces don’t display seconds.”
“Youwould know,” she said confidently. “The only reason you aren’t saying yes is because it would wound you to admit that the Curricle King might have missed a trick or two.”
A slow smile threatened to take over his face. There was indeed a trick or two that it would wound him not to take advantage of. And it had nothing to do with races on Rotten Row.
“Very well,” he said. “But a favor for a favor. Right here. Right now.”
Her eyes widened in alarm. “W-what kind of favor?”
“I’ll neither ask for your hand nor for your virginity,” he assured her. At least, not without her enthusiastic consent.
Her frown deepened. “Then what do you want?”
A chance.
He stood up and held out his hand. “A waltz.”
“A waltz?” she repeated in confusion as she placed her hand in his.
He pulled her to her feet and led her to the center of the soft grass.
