“It means I’m responsible for your well-being.” He pursed his lips. “Would you sleep better in here?”
“But then where would you go?”
“I would be here too. On the settee.” He pointed quickly, not wanting her to get the wrong idea about his intentions. “I just thought you might be more at ease if you had someone in the room with you. But if not…”
“No,” she said quickly. “That… I think that would help, yes. Thank you.” She paused again. “Are you sure it’s all right? I wouldn’t want to put you out.”
“It will probably only be for one night,” he said. “I’m sure the storm will stop tomorrow, and then you can move back into a room of your own. But if you’re frightened, I don’t mind you staying here.” He gestured to the bed.
She came in and went over to it. “This really is very kind of you,” she said.
“I can be kind.” He plucked a pillow off the bed and tossed it onto the settee. “I wasn’t always a duke, you know. There was a time when I was just a man.”
“And kinder, by virtue of that?”
“And I learned kindness by virtue of that,” he corrected. “Growing up away from all this opulence and entitlement, you learn not to expect things given to you. You learn to fend for yourself in the world.”
She pulled the blankets up over her knees. Sitting upright, she gazed thoughtfully at him. “Is that what you think of me?” she asked. “That I expect to have things given to me?”
“No,” he admitted. “You’re… not what I expected. But most people in society are. There are very few surprised. You’ve been one of them.”
“I always assumed you were pleased to inherit your title. It does seem like it would be a good thing,” she said. “Not to have to worry about finances anymore…”
“You still have to worry about finances,” he told her. “I have more money now than I did as a commoner, yes, but I have more responsibilities too. All of Heathmare is under my care, after all. I owe it to the people here to do a good job tending to the place. Before, if I mismanaged my money, the only person who would be harmed was myself. It was more difficult in some ways, but it was easier in others.”
“That makes sense,” Susan admitted. “And yet, you were so eager to marry, to show everyone that you belong to this role you’re not sure you even want.”
“I’ve accepted Heathmare,” he said. “Once a man makes a decision, he can’t waver. I can’t sit here and tell myself I feel uncertain about this course of action. It’s the course I’ve taken. The only thing I can do is to try to make the best of it in every way.”
She was quiet for a moment. “You miss it, don’t you?”
“I miss what?”
“You miss being… just a man,” she said. “Even though you’ve accepted this life, even though you’ve committed to it. You miss the life you left behind.”
“There was more freedom,” he said. “I could do what I liked without worry about how it would be perceived. I almost never thought about what people would think of me, because it didn’t matter—peopledidn’tthink about me. I do miss that. Not being thought about.”
“That wasn’t isolating?”
“Not at all. I did have people in my life, of course. My good friend Reeves—the Duke of Greystone. He’s always been by my side.”
“You had a friend who was a duke, even then?” She wrapped her arms around her knees. “This life isn’t new to you after all.”
“I had exposure to all this,” he agreed. “That’s a large part of how I knew I wasn’t going to like it. Or at least, that there would be parts of it I wouldn’t like. I saw everything Reeves put up with. It always seemed dreadful to me. He insisted that it wasn’t so bad, of course, but he has always belonged to this world, just like you. He doesn’t know anything else, so it wouldn’t seem bad to him.”
“I don’t know about that,” Susan countered. “I’m able to perceive that there are things in my life I don’t like very much, even though it’s the only life I’ve ever known.”
He thought of the story she had told about her sister. He was sure she was thinking of the same thing, though he wasn’t going to mention it aloud. It seemed like the kind of thing that shouldn’t be named unless she was the one to name it.
“Is that why you agreed to accept the dukedom?” she asked him. “Because of your friend? You thought… I don’t know. Maybe you thought that you were equipped for this life because you knew him?”
“I’m sure that was part of it,” Norman agreed. “And I’m sure I’m far less overwhelmed with it than I would have been without his influence in my life. But no, he isn’t the reason. At the end of the day, I felt as though I would need a reason to refuse more than I needed a reason to accept. Perhaps that’s foolish, but… it’s what I thought.”
“And the person who left it to you. The old Duke. You don’t know him at all?”
“A distant cousin, apparently,” Norman said. “I didn’t even know I had a relative who was a duke.”
“That seems like something someone would have told you.”
