Lucy pressed a hand to her throat. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right. It’s been several years. He knew I’d been promoted. But he never knew I was a lieutenant general, or a duke,” Derek finished with a humorless laugh.
Lucy stopped and faced him. “He’d be proud of you, Derek. I’m certain of it.”
A look passed between them. One that was intense and real.
Derek glanced away. “No, he’d say he expected no less.”
Lucy swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. “He sounds as if he was quite demanding.”
He expelled his breath. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“More than demanding?” she ventured.
“My father’s favorite word wasdecisive. He ensured I was decisive.”
The Duke of Decisive. The memory of the moniker shot through her mind. She furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”
He pulled on his lapels, looked down his nose at her, and affected a deeper voice. “A man is decisive, always.”
Lucy watched him carefully, suddenly fascinated by the idea that a father would demand that his son be decisive. If Ralph had lived, would her father have demanded that of him? “What did he do? To ensure you were decisive?”
Derek shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Suffice it to say, it worked.”
She stopped, put her hand on his sleeve, and looked him in the eye. “I’d truly like to know.”
He blew a deep breath through his nostrils and, taking off his hat, ran his hand through his hair. “Very well. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
She nodded and swallowed again.
Derek leaned his shoulder against another tree and took a long, deep breath. “When I was six years old, my father taught me how to swim. After I got the right of it, he brought out two of my favorite things.”
Lucy eyed him carefully. “What things?”
“One was my favorite toy. A tin soldier. I’d had it as long as I could remember. I took it everywhere with me.”
Lucy put her hand to her throat. A chill suddenly came over her. “What was the other thing?”
“My eight-week-old puppy.”
Lucy gasped. “What did he do?”
Derek shook his head. Looking down at his boots, he scuffed the tip of one of them in the dirt. “Before I knew what he intended, he tossed both of them in the creek several yards apart.”
Lucy grasped her throat. “No.”
“He threw them in opposite directions at the same time. Choose,” he shouted. “Decide! Now!”
“What did you do?” Lucy bit the back of her knuckles.
“I did the only thing I could. I picked the puppy. I dove in the creek and saved him from drowning.”
Lucy’s throat clogged with tears. “And your toy soldier?”
“It sank. I never saw it again. Though I used to dive in that spot looking for it. I never found it.”
Lucy clenched her fist. “What an awful man.”
