“Oh. It wasn’t anything much. She implied that my father might be unhappy with some of my choices if he were alive.”
“That’s awful!”
He looked at her, obviously surprised by her strong response. “Do you think so?”
“Of course, I think so,” she said firmly. ‘To make you doubt the way your father would feel about the choices you’re making when you can never ask him for yourself is a very hurtful thing to do.”
“Grandmother has very firm ideas about the way things ought to be done,” the Duke explained. “I think she has trouble coping with her own lack of influence over the dukedom’s affairs. There are many things she would do differently from the way I’m doing them, and she has no opportunity to enforce that.”
“Well, I’m sorry that happened,” Edwina said, and she was surprised to find she meant it very earnestly. Whatever shethought of the Duke, she didn’t think he deserved to be spoken to like that or made to doubt the way his father would feel about him. No one should face such a thing.
It made her think about her mother whom she had never known. Lavinia and Matthew, who both had memories of their mother, had often told Edwina tales of what she had been like, and they always went out of their way to reassure her how much their mother would have loved her and how proud she would have been. Even now, when Edwina refused to marry, and her family despaired of her, no one had ever told her that her mother would be disappointed.
It had never occurred to her. She had never had to wonder about it.
Thinking about it now, she knew that if one of her siblings was to say something like that, it would break her heart.
And even though she had never wanted to care about the Duke, she did feel compassion for him. Nobody deserved that.
She wanted to take his mind off of things, she realized.
“I’m glad you were able to come out and see me today,” she said.
“Are you?” He smiled. “I thought you might be vexed by it when I sent the message. I don’t think you’ve ever been pleased to see me before.”
“Well, I’ve come to find value in the time we spend together,” she replied.
“So, you do like me.”
She glanced at him and saw that he was grinning.
The joke was at her expense, and ordinarily, she would have felt flustered and frustrated. She might have said something angrily to him. But right now, it was so good to see him acting like his old self again that she couldn’t bring herself to feel any sort of outrage.
“I never said I didn’tlikeyou,” she laughed.
“Oh, you said it many times and at great length.”
“Perhaps I implied it.”
“You heavily implied it. You left very little room for doubt.”
“All right,” she said. “Very well, I admit it—I like you.”
“I knew it.”
“A little bit. Don’t make me change my mind. I still could.”
“Oh, I doubt that. Within days, I’m sure you’ll be head over heels in love with me.” He gave her a roguish grin that would have hadher gnashing her teeth in frustration in the past, but today, she burst out laughing.
In spite of herself, she truly was enjoying his company far more than she had ever expected she could.
They walked further into town, and Edwina found herself hoping that the promenade might continue for a while. Suddenly, shockingly, she didn’t want their time together to be at an end.
CHAPTER 10
They paused outside a bookseller’s shop and looked in the window.
“Would you like to go in?” the Duke asked Edwina.
