Page 131 of A Duke in the Rough

“Hmph.” Although he wasn’t looking at her, she crossed her arms over her bosom to make her point.

“We both love you more than ourselves.”

“You have a strange way of showing it. Both of you.” She turned on him. “And I thought you hated Drake. Why are you defending him?”

He shook his head, still staring at the infernal river. “I’m not. What he did was wrong.” He turned, meeting her gaze fully. “But I was wrong, too. I’ve come to apologize.”

She huffed her disbelief, and his gray brows rose. “Oh, I’m certain you’re agreeable to the match now that you know he’s a duke.”

“When he offered for you, I agreed before I knew.”

The heavy stone she was still clutching, slipped from her fingers, falling to the ground with athud. “You did?”

He nodded, once. “And I never hated him. Not really, which made it all the harder to refuse his suit years ago. I knew him to be a good man, young though you both were. Hard-working. Loyal to a fault.” He paused, and a ghost of a smile crossed his lips. “Much like myself.”

Her hands fisted at her sides. “You called him a fortune-hunting upstart. As if he couldn’t truly want me forme.”The words snapped from her.

He winced. “I was trying to protect you. You deserved so much more than the prospect of living hand-to-mouth. He may have loved you, but how would he have provided for you? You were destined for greatness, Honoria, not as the wife of a groom.”

She picked up the heavy stone and drew her arm back. With all her might, she threw it into the water. It made a glorious splash indeed. “I had a dowry, and you could have helped us.”

“Which is precisely what a fortune hunter would expect.” He chose a stone from the ground, considered its weight, then pitched it farther than hers. “You were young. I believed it was a young girl’s infatuation, and you would soon forget him once he was out of your life.”

Toe-to-toe with her father, she glared. “Did you know he would enlist?”

He had the gall to look sheepish. “I offered to purchase his commission.”

“What?” She shook her muddled head.

“To protect your reputation, although it was too late for that. If itmakes a difference, he turned it down initially, only accepting when you refused him.”

Oh!And she believed he’d enlisted because he thought he was better off without her. No wonder he had tried to protest her explanation.

“That doesn’t change what you did.”

He met her eyes. “No. It does not. And I’m here to apologize. Not because of whoheis or is not. But because of you. I love you, daughter, and I want you to be happy. And if marrying Drake Merrick makes you happy, then so be it. You have my blessing.”

“I don’t want to marry him now.” She flung the words, heedless of her recalcitrant behavior.

He jerked back. “Because he’s a duke?”

Oh, how she wanted to stamp her foot like a petulant child. What didn’t these men understand? “Because he lied!”

Her father wisely remained silent, staring back at the moving current. He stooped, picked up another rock, but rather than throw it, he turned it over in his hand.

“Do you ever think about the power of water?”

What?

“It is gentle and yielding. You can put your hand in it, your whole body, and it doesn’t hurt; it simply flows around any obstacle. But over time, water has the power to smooth the rough edges of an unyielding stone so it’s smooth as glass. It’s the persistence of water over time that makes big changes.”

He tossed the stone into the river. “Give Drake a chance to explain. It will take time to win back your trust.” His smile wavered. “And I will venture to win your trust as well.” With another glance toward the river, he said, “Try not to remain out here too much longer. Your mother is beside herself with worry.”

Without another word, he strode back to his horse, mounted, and rode off, his head and shoulders tall and proud as she always remembered him.

Out of sight,and at some distance from Honoria, Drake reined in Major under a copse of trees and waited. “Easy, boy.” He could hardly blame the horse when he was just as restless. Strange how he’d rode alongside Stratford in relative silence, searching for Honoria but sharing an unusual camaraderie.

Even stranger when Stratford suggested—rather than demanded—he approach Honoria first.

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