“Not if he can help it,” he said. “Forsafelyto him means married with a son. He will try to live another nine months.”
Her spoon paused halfway to her mouth. She returned it to the bowl.
“But you knew this,” he said, keeping his voice low, as she was doing so that the butler and the footman would not overhear more than the odd word or two of their conversation. “You knew that as soon as you married me your primary duty—and mine—would be to provide the dukedom with an heir to come after me.”
“It is always so with men of property and fortune,” she said. “It is even more urgent for men with hereditary titles. But I do not like to think of marriage as being solely for the production of heirs. And I do not like to think of having children for that reason alone. What would be the point? Where would be the happiness?”
He looked at her bent head as she drank her soup noiselessly—and with a perfectly steady hand.
“Duty and happiness cannot coexist?” he asked her.
“I keep remembering your telling me that you were taken away from your home and your sisters when you had so recently lost both your mother and your father,” she said. “You were taken to Greystone—what an apt name that must have seemed to you at the time—tolearn to be a duke.I am not sure if those were your exact words. You must have learned then, though you were only fifteenat the time, that your foremost duty was going to be to marry and secure the thin thread of your grandfather’s line.”
“I did,” he said. “Though, to his credit, my grandfather did not insist upon my marrying as soon as I was of age—as had happened even sooner for him, by the way. He became Duke of Wilby when he was sixteen. He had no brothers and only one male first cousin.”
She set down her spoon, having finished the soup, and looked fully at him. “Have you ever been happy, Lord Roath?” she asked him.
“Luc,” he said, irritated. “Or Lucas if you must. I am yourhusband, Phil.”
“Yes.” She was still gazing at him. “I know. Lucas. I prefer to use your full name. Everyone calls you Luc.”
Just as everyone called her Pippa.Pippasounded bouncy and pretty, a little girl’s name.Philippa, though lovely, was too long. It had not occurred to him until now that names were actually important to those who used them.
“Haveyou ever been happy?” she asked again. “Since you were fourteen, that is.”
Oh, he thought, this was so like women. Everything had to be about feelings. Well, he would confound her. Maybe silence her.
“Yes,” he said, gazing back at her. “I was happy this afternoon.”
She was both confounded and silenced. She sat back in her chair for the footman to remove her soup bowl and bring on the next course. And then, dash it all, when the servant had moved back more or less out of earshot,sheconfoundedhim.
“So was I,” she told him.
“You were not wishing like hell that you could go back to last night and give a different answer to the question I asked you?” he said.
“Like hell?”She was frowning.
“I beg your pardon,” he said.
“You are pardoned,” she told him, and for the merest moment he thought he saw laughter in her eyes. “I donotwish to go back. It could not be done anyway. We cannot change last night. Or this afternoon. Or four years ago in Sidney Johnson’s barn. Or... anything that is in the past. As you observed a few moments ago, you are my husband. Lucas.”
“It is a little difficult to comprehend, is it not?” he said. “That the brief service in the drawing room this afternoon completely changed the course of our lives.”
“Yes,” she said.
“It must be more difficult for you than it is for me,” he said, frowning. He could remember Charlotte saying so a few months after she married Sylvester, even though she had also said she was more blissfully happy than she had ever imagined was possible—Charlotte had always been a bit given to hyperbole. “You have had to leave your home and family behind today. Your home from now on will always be with me. I, on the other hand, remain in my home with my family.”
“But you have a wife in your home too from now on,” she said. “Perhaps it is easier to adjust to everything being new than just one thing.”
“Shall we admit, then,” he said, “that growing accustomed to our new state will require effort? And patience.”
It sounded very dull. He had not meant it that way.
“Patience.”She smiled—one of the few smiles he had seen on her face today. “I wonder how much patience your grandmother had to practice when she married your grandfather.”
He sat back in his chair and laughed.
“The patience of Job, I would wager,” he said. “Multiplied by two and then doubled. It may have helped that by his ownadmission he fell in love with her almost immediately, while it took her a year to fall in love with him.”
