“At the expense of being a boy,” she pointed out. “You can be grateful while still wishing you had lived a normal life. I am grateful to my father, against all odds, because I know that he has done his best for my sister and I, but that does not mean I have to feel only good things for him. I am angry with him, unbelievably so, and it is entirely possible for me to feel those two ways.”
Philip considered her words carefully. She was entirely correct; he had spent his entire life trying to be perfect—the perfect gentleman, the perfect son, the perfect duke, and after his accident he had seen it as all having been in vain. The truth, however, was that he was a person with bad experiences as well as good, and he could not be too unkind to himself because of that.
“I do not know how you do it,” he sighed.
“How I do what, Your Grace?”
“Remain so good. You are kind and wise and intelligent, where most people would have been furious and given back every unkind thing that had happened to them twice as hard as they had ever received it.”
“Well, I suppose that it simply would not help anyone to do so. I could be angry. I could be positively furious, but what good would it do? Perhaps I would momentarily feel better, but what then? It would only cause hurt to others, and that is simply not the person I am.”
“And that is remarkable.”
“Were you…” she said gingerly. “Were you ever angry, Your Grace?”
He had not expected that.
“I… yes, for the longest time I was, and I did not know how to contain all of that anger. When I was recovering, I could hardly do anything at all. After spending my entire life constantly learning or doing things, I had to lay there and do nothing, and it infuriated me. All that fury, of course, had nowhere to go, as I could barely even speak at first, never mind raise my voice. It was all locked within.”
“That must have been horrible,” she said gently. “But the relief you must have felt when you played the pianoforte again for the first time must have felt magical.”
“It did, but I cried the first few times.”
He bit his tongue. Lady Jacqueline seemed to naturally pull secrets out of him, and he did not want to fight it.
“I mean,” he continued, “it was this great release of months of anger and hurt. It was tremendous, but I could not look at the pianoforte for a while after. I had missed it so much, but I couldn’t bear the sight of it.”
“Then you have come a long way, much further than anyone would ever know from looking at you.”
A comfortable silence settled between them, but not for long before Lady Jacqueline gasped, rushing to her feet with a smirk.
“In spite of our situation,” she blurted out with a giggle. “I believe it is improper for the two of us to be here alone together.”
“Oh! Yes, I suppose that it is.”
He could see the blush creeping across her cheeks, and he dared to believe that it was because she was near him, even if he knew it was impossible. She took her leave, and he watched her go, hoping it would not be too long before she stumbled her way back to him again.
Chapter 12
It was not like Jackie to think about an encounter the following day, yet that was precisely what she was doing.
Had she not been thinking about the gentleman that she was in a courtship with, she would have scolded herself. But that was not her situation; the duke was courting her, and so she had every right to think about him, did she not?
“Jackie?” Elizabeth interrupted her thoughts. “You have hardly touched your tea. Is everything alright?”
Jackie blinked, and became aware of where she was and what she was supposed to be doing. She was in the parlor with her sister and the Dowager Duchess, and she was sure that she had been lost in thought for so long that her tea would be cold, and the bread of her sandwiches would be going stale. The dowager reached for her teacup, offering to get her another, but Jackie pulled it back quickly.
“Do not trouble yourself,” she assured her. “I prefer my tea on the cooler side anyway.”
She did not, of course, but she did not wish to be a burden, and besides that she could not stand wasting good food and drink.
“If you are sure, Dear,” the dowager replied, somewhat in disbelief. “Now, as you were saying, Elizabeth?”
“Yes, Lord Greene. Oh, isn’t he wonderful? Why, at dinner last night he was telling me all about his mother’s ring. It is an heirloom, he says, and has been in his family for five generations. Can you believe it?”
“We have a similar ring, though it has not been passed down for as long as yours. Perhaps if my son came down to dinner, he could have such conversations himself.”
“Will he be joining us soon?” Jackie asked absent-mindedly. “It is strange not having the head of the household present.”
