“Is that what happened to you?” she asked.
When he realized just what it was she was asking, the intimately personal nature of the question, he felt such fury that it was on the tip of his tongue to dismiss her for the night. Her impertinence knew no bounds. But a conversation, of course, was a two-way thing, and he was the one who had tried to get a conversation going.
He never had conversations, even with his male friends. Not on personal matters. He never talked about himself.
Wasthat what had happened to him?
“I was always rather fond of Angeline and Ferdinand,” he said with a shrug. “We fought constantly, as I suppose most brothers and sisters do, though the fact that we were Dudleys doubtless made us a little more boisterous and quarrelsome than most. We also played and got into mischief together. Ferdinand and I were even gallant enough on occasion to take the thrashing for what Angeline had done, though I suppose we punished her for it in our own way.”
“Why does being a Dudley mean that you must be more unruly, more vicious, more dangerous than anyone else?” she asked.
He thought about it, about his family, about the vision of themselves and their place in the scheme of things that had been bred into them from birth onward, and even perhaps before then.
“If you had known my father and my grandfather,” he replied, “you would not even ask the question.”
“And you feel you must live up to their reputations?” she asked. “Is it from personal choice that you do so? Or did you become trapped in your role as eldest son and heir and eventually the Duke of Tresham yourself?”
He chuckled softly. “If you knew my full reputation, Miss Ingleby,” he said, “you would not need to ask that question either. I have not rested on the laurels of my forebears, I assure you. I have sufficient of my own.”
“I know,” she said, “that you are considered more proficient than any other gentleman with a wide range of weapons. I know that you have fought more than one duel. I suppose they were all over women?”
He inclined his head.
“I know,” she said, “that you consort with married ladies without any regard to the sanctity of marriage or the feelings of the spouse you wrong.”
“You presume to know a great deal about me,” he said mockingly.
“I would have to be both blind and deaf not to,” she said. “I know that you look upon everyone who is beneath you socially—and that is almost everyone—as scions to run and fetch for you and to obey your every command without question.”
“And without even a please or thank you,” he added.
“You engage in the most foolhardy wagers, I daresay,” she said. “You have shown no concern this week over Lord Ferdinand’s impending curricle race to Brighton. He could break his neck.”
“Not Ferdinand,” he said. “Like me, he has a neck made of steel.”
“All that matters to you,” she said, “is that he win the race. Indeed, I do believe that you wish you could take his place so that you could break yours instead.”
“There is little point in entering a race,” he explained, “unless one means to win it, Miss Ingleby, though one also must know how to behave like a gentleman when one loses, of course. Are you scolding me, by any chance? Is this a gentle tirade against my manners and morals?”
“They are not my concern, your grace,” she said. “I am merely commenting upon what I have observed.”
“You have a low opinion of me,” he said.
“But I daresay,” she retorted, “my opinion means no more to you than the snap of your fingers.”
He chuckled softly. “I was different once upon a time, you know,” he said. “My father rescued me. He made sure I took the final step in my education to become a gentleman after his own heart. Perhaps you are fortunate, Miss Ingleby, never to have known your father or mother.”
“They must have loved you,” she said.
“Love.” He laughed. “I suppose you have an idealized conception of the emotion because you have never known a great deal of it yourself, or of what sometimes passes for it. If love is a disinterested devotion to the beloved, Jane, then indeed there is no such thing. There is only selfishness, a dedication to one’s own comfort, which the beloved is used to enhance. Dependency is not love. Domination is not love. Lust is certainly not it, though it can be a happy enough substitute on occasion.”
“You poor man,” she said.
He found the handle of his quizzing glass and lifted it to his eye. She sat looking back at him, seemingly quite composed. Most women in his experience either preened or squirmed under the scrutiny of his glass. On this occasion its use was an affectation anyway. His eyesight was not so poor that he could not see her perfectly well without it. He let the glass fall to his chest.
“My mother and father were a perfectly happy couple,” he said. “I never heard them exchange a cross word or saw them frown at each other. They produced three children, a sure sign of their devotion to each other.”
“Well, then,” Jane said, “you have just disproved your own theory.”
