“I doubt I could ever find you tedious,” Philippa said, laughing again.
“And here comes my girl,” he said with desperate fondness, stopping not far from the bank and nodding toward one of the boats, which was already returning from downriver. “As happy asthe summertime. As though she had not suffered a day in her life. That girl is pluck to the backbone.”
His eyes were upon Jenny, who was in the boat, laughing at something her brother was saying and twirling her parasol over her head to keep off the direct rays of the sun. And he was smiling as he talked—and pulling strongly on the oars. He had removed both his hat and his coat, as a few other gentlemen had who were rowing a boat. It must be warm out there on the water. The sunlight gleamed on his dark red hair. The muscles of his shoulders and upper arms rippled against the white linen of his shirt.
“Grandpapa!” Lady Mayberry had come up on the duke’s other side. “What on earth are you doing all the way down here?”
Lord Mayberry smiled at Philippa.
“Standing on my own two feet, minding my own business, and conversing with a pretty young lady,” the duke said. “I need your permission to move from place to place, do I, Charlotte?”
“If you look behind you,” she said, “you will see that the return walk to the house is all uphill.”
“If I should suffer a heart seizure halfway there,” he said, “Sylvester will no doubt carry me the rest of the way.”
She tutted but said no more.
“Here they come,” her husband said, stepping forward to where the wheeled chair had been left by the bank. “I will help Luc lift Jenny safely to shore.”
“It iswonderfulout there,” Jenny called. “Grandpapa, did you come to watch?”
“Thank you, Sylvester. Hold it steady, will you?” the Marquess of Roath said before stepping out onto the bank, pulling his coat on hastily as he did so, and turning to lift his sister out.
He was thwarted, however, by the arrival upon the scene of Mr.Jamieson, who was smiling warmly at Jenny. “You see?” he said. “Youwere not frightened in the boat after all, Lady Jennifer. And if you do not now come back out there with me, I will believe it is my skill at the oars you distrust rather than the sturdiness of the boat.”
“Oh dear,” she said, smiling brightly at him. “I cannot do that to you, can I?”
The marquess straightened up and put on his hat. “You can swim, Jamieson?” he asked.
“Like a fish,” Mr.Jamieson said, and stepped into the boat and took up the oars. “Though I have no intention of putting on a demonstration this afternoon. Not when I have such a precious cargo.”
“If he breaks her heart,” the duke murmured as the boat moved away from the bank again, “I will breakhim.”
“His father has a gambling habit, and his properties are mortgaged to the hilt,” the marquess said. “But I have yet to uncover any great vice in Jamieson himself.”
“He smiles too much,” the duke observed. “Sylvester, I will borrow your arm for the return walk to the house. Luc will wish to stay to lift Jenny from the boat when it returns. And Lady Philippa likes being close to the water. She finds it peaceful. Charlotte, take my other arm.”
He was as subtle as a sledgehammer, Philippa thought. Besides, it was Jenny, not she, who had claimed to find proximity to the water peaceful.
“There is one thing you should know about my grandfather, Lady Philippa,” the Marquess of Roath said, squinting after him as he moved away between his granddaughter and grandson-in-law. “He never admits defeat.Ever.Not in my experience, anyway.”
Chapter Sixteen
Why?” she asked him. She was frowning and looking genuinely puzzled. “What is so special about me? His Grace must have seen you with Miss Thorpe as much as he has seen you with me, perhaps more, and there must be other women on your grandmother’s list he has seen. Surely there is at least one of them who would meet with his approval and yours. I have not even been particularly polite to him. When he told me on the way down here that it had never been his intention to harass me, I told him that indeed it had been. I also told him that the trouble with him was that he had had his own way all his life. But all he would say in return was that helikedme and that I reminded him of Her Grace.”
Lucas turned to look along the river. Every boat was in use, but he could pick out Jenny, a distant speck downriver in one of them with Jamieson. He had looked away in order to hide a grin, though he was not feeling entirely amused.
“Then that is one thing he finds special about you,” he said.“My grandfather likes people who stand up to him, though very few ever do and it is not easy to prevail with him even when one tries. You would have had better luck if you had simpered at him and flattered him and flatteredmeto him. But now you have sealed your own doom in his mind. If he is comparing you favorably with my grandmother, then he likes you indeed. He positively adores her, though he never stops complaining about her superior height.”
“Perhaps he favors me just because I do not favoryou,” she said. “I suppose every other single woman below the age of twenty-five or sodoesand makes no bones about it, whether she is on your grandmother’s list or not.”
“It is the red hair,” he said, turning his head to look at her over his shoulder. She was frowning. “The fact that I will be a duke one day, an almost indecentlywealthyduke, possibly has something to do with it too.”
“I have never liked red hair on men,” she said, and he grinned again. “I am going back up to the house. There is no need for you to accompany me.”
“Good,” he said. “I am going to be right here when the boat returns to lift Jenny out. I am not letting anyone who is not related to her do it.”
She gazed off to the distant boat. “I believe she likes him,” she said.
