Page 78 of A Lady's Key to Passion

He could mind his affairs, and his wife could mind hers. It seemed like a grand idea. Buthisparents had always emphasised love above all else. He’d spent his entire life feeling as though he were being raised by a couple in one of those silly novels for ladies, a pair of lovers who triumphed against all odds.

Their closeness made it rather puzzling to Harry that his mother seemed to have accepted her husband’s death so quickly. Harry didn’t ask about that. He’d have felt too ashamed, too cold. Who was he to decide how his mother grieved? Maybe they just weren’t creatures cut from the same cloth. His mother loved too much and grieved too little, and Harry grieved too much and—maybe—wasn’t even able to love a woman the way his father had.

The maids Emma and Kitty brought in their tea, and for a moment, the only sound was the clinking of dishes and pouring of tea. Once they were gone, Violet took her teacup in hand and gazed at Harry over the rim of it.

“Don’t settle, dear heart,” she said. “Marry an interesting girl. Your father would not want you to choose a wife just to have the matter done with.”

Harry shook his head. “I’ve never said I would.”

“You didn’t have to say it. I know you.”

Too well,he privately thought.

Mercifully, his mother decided to speak no further on the matter of marriage, and their conversation turned towards safer territory. He did not mind conversing about the weather and preparations needed for their journey to London for the Season. As long as he did not have to think about matrimony.

Once tea was finished, Harry’s mother retired, and Harry dragged himself up the stairs to his father’s study. He ran his hand through his hair and grimaced at everything there was to do. The estate’s ledgers would be there.

His arrival. Becausehewas the Duke of Gillingham. His father’s hands would never touch those ledgers again.

***

“Well, I am glad to see that you have not lost your negotiating skills,” Alan Rutherford, the Baron of Whitmore said. “I thought so much time spent in America might’ve dulled your wits.”

Harry cast his friend a look of mock offence, which Alan met with sparkling blue eyes and a rakish grin. He was a singularly attractive fellow, something which seemed to bring him far more than his share of trouble. Admittedly, Harry had been a willing participant in such trouble more times than not.

“Careful, Rutherford. My mother is American.”

“So she is,” Alan replied. “But she married an Englishmen, proof that she has uncommonly good taste for an American. She is the exception to the rule, my dear Lyndon.”

They approached his carriage, and Harry looked over the bustling market spread before him. Lively and exciting, it reminded him a bit of Boston, where most of the people had not cared in the least that he was a duke. He’d walked the streets like any other man, guided by a local attorney of modest means who’d done some work for abolitionism.

“Shall we walk a little?” Harry asked, feeling a sharp and unidentifiable spark of longing within him.

“As you wish,” Alan said. “I’ve some time.”

Harry set a leisurely pace, taking time to survey the familiar houses and well-trodden stones, silently revelling at the way the breeze whistled through the buildings and around the heavy grasses in the park. At present, bits of frost still clung to the grey-green strands, the last evidence of winter, which would quickly fade in the gentle warmth of spring. In the air, he smelled spices and baking bread mingled with the heavy, comforting scent of freshly fallen rain.

“So, how are you?” Alan asked.

Harry furrowed his brow. “How do you mean?”

“You’ve told me about your journey to America, about your mother, about your frustration with being asked to wed, about the genuinely impressive number of women whom you bedded,” Alan replied, ticking the issues off with his fingers. “What youhave notdeigned to express, however, is how you feel.”

“Feelings are for poets,” Harry said, “and I—”

“Am entirely lacking a poetic soul,” Alan replied. “I shall never forget your attempts at verse for as long as I live.”

Harry snorted. While attending Oxford with Alan, he’d taken a fancy to poetry. The poems he produced wereinterestingif one wished to describe them in a kind way.Atrociouswas perhaps the more apt description. It was fortunate that he was a handsome man, for Harry had quickly discovered his verse wasn’t going to impress even the most uncultured of women.

“And yet,” Alan continued, “every man feels, whether or not we wish to acknowledge it. I cannot imagine this is easy on you.”

“What do you mean bythis?”

Harry paused, pretending to be engrossed with the fruits displayed in a nearby stand. A small part of himwantedto talk about everything—his father and his new position as the Duke of Gillingham—but doing so willingly somehow seemed a profound show of weakness. He was supposed to be a strong man.

A man with a strong constitution and the will to see the duchy through its most difficult times. Never mind that he felt as though he were already cracking apart from the grief of his father’s death. He’d spent years preparing to be a duke, only to feel woefully inadequate of preserving his father’s legacy when the time came.

“I lost my father when I was a boy,” Alan said flatly.

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