Page 61 of Never a Duke
“I will be quizzed,” Duncan said, taking Ned’s favorite wing chair. “Her Grace will want to know if your housekeeper is maintaining standards. Stephen will ask if your libation was decent. Quinn will admit to general receptiveness regarding any reports I might make. My lady wife will ask if you are happy.”
How to answer that?I am in lovewould never serve, and yet, it had become the defining reality of Ned’s existence. He stared off into space while mentally recounting the most amazing two hours of his life. In his head, he calculated the minutes until tomorrow’s sunrise, for sixty minutes after dawn, he and Rosalind would meet in the park.
When he wasn’t praying that the weather would be fine, he was fretting over how to approach Rosalind’s father. Hence, this conference with the Wentworths’ most accomplished strategist.
“I am thriving,” Ned said, taking the end of the sofa. “As always. How are Matilda and the children?”
“Hoping you will soon come for a visit.”
Ned’s version of a visit now involved tooling along in the curricle, Rosalind at his side. Yesterday, that same visit would have meant making the journey alone, on horseback.
Nothing had changed, and yet, everything hadchanged.
“Ned, whatever it is, just get on with it. I wore a collar once upon a time. I know how to keep a confidence, even from my prying cousins. They are always well intended, but their concept of personal privacy can leave a fellow feeling like Prometheus, bound to the cliff face, raptors flapping about as they peck away at his peace.”
Precisely.“You were clergy,” Ned said, seizing on the least fraught aspect of Duncan’s recitation. “In the course of your duties you encountered courting couples.”
“I never progressed much past the disgraced curate phase of church work,” Duncan said, running a finger around the rim of his glass. “I did not have a true vocation as it turned out.”
And parting from the Church of England apparently troubled Duncan not one bit. “But you took holy orders.”
“So I did, and I have not been defrocked, as it happens. Do you require last rites, Ned? Her Grace won’t care for that idea at all.”
What Her Grace wanted had become subordinate to what Rosalind needed, a curiously fortifying thought.
“How do I approach the father of my intended about gaining permission to court his daughter?”
The sole clue that Duncan Wentworth had been caught by surprise manifested in the manner in which he set his drink down on the side table.
“You have an intended.”
“Lady Rosalind Kinwood. She has indicated a willingness to allow me to pay her my addresses.”
And in his head, Ned heard Lord Stephen muttering aboutfast work,airs above your station, anddon’t bungle this, Neddy.
“Her father is the Earl of Woodruff,” Duncan said. “Old-school aristocrat. Her grandfather was among the most enthusiastic about seeking enclosure acts for his common lands. The heir is a self-important fribble, while the spare fancies himself a poet. One will not envy you your in-laws.”
“One must first marry the lady to acquire those in-laws, and Rosalind confirmed that her father will expect protocol to be observed.”
Duncan rose and began a perambulation about the room. “Why her?”
“I esteem her greatly.”
“You esteem everybody, from your urchins to the flower girls, to Her Grace’s familiars, to the shopkeepers who flock to you for loans. One hopes you reserve a scintilla of esteem for yourself.” Duncan paused before the other piece of framed embroidery, which depicted a tabby cat curled among a border of pansies. “I can almost hear him purr.”
Her.Smokey had been a her, a friendly old besom who’d dozed away many an afternoon in Papa’s shop window. She’d gone to her reward just weeks before Papa had been impressed.
“A gentleman shows courtesy toward all,” Ned said, “but how do I inform Lord Woodruff that I intend to marry his daughter? I cannot approach him as a supplicant, for Rosalind paints him as a self-important boorwho will sneer at weakness. I cannot condescend to him, or I will inspire his antipathy. I know how to discuss money, I know how to discuss final arrangements, I know how to tell genteel old women that they must sell their silver as soon as may be, but an earl whose daughter I seek to marry? I am at a loss.”
Duncan took up a lean against the mantel, the posture reminiscent of Lord Stephen. Casual, elegant, thoughtful, and deceptively relaxed.
“If the earl is so difficult as all of that, then you must resign yourself to being disrespected. He has something you want badly.”
“Rosalind is not a thing.”
Duncan did not smile, but his gaze warmed. “Of course not. I allude to the tranquility of relations that ensue when a father reconciles himself to his daughter’s choice of spouse. For Rosalind’s sake, you want to get off on the best foot with the earl. What does the earl want that you can offer him?”
“I can offer him lifelong security for his daughter. Rosalind will have my utmost devotion and care. She will have the influence of the Wentworth family to call upon. She will have her own home to order and manage as she sees fit. What else could any man offer her?”
