Page 2 of Good Duke Gone Rogue

Another shiver tingled her spine. Thinking of Reggie as a man surely meant he had experience, too. What kind of experience did he have? What did he enjoy doing? Sharing? She shook her head. She could do this. She could see him and put her last encounter with him out of her mind. She could steel her strength, all her resolve, and fixate on her goal.

And not fixate on Reggie, his wavy locks, and locked in a box experience.

Maybe it would help to remember an earlier time. Recall their childhood innocence. Bernadette guided her thoughts about Reggie to a time when they were younger. He had been the closest in age to her. Despite being a couple of years younger than her, they had got along famously. He could always make her laugh. He just had a way about him. Whenever she knew she was going to see him, her heart would flutter in excitement. She loved how he made her feel. They had been great friends. But friends could always become more…

These thoughts were not entirely helpful to her think-about-a-time-of-innocence place. Thankfully, her son was helpful.

“The boy? Why would you be friends with a boy?”

“He was funny. He made me laugh.” It was the simplest answer. And the most truthful. There was no need to complicate it.

Jacob scowled. “I guess that could make sense. If I met a girl and she made me laugh, I might want to be her friend. But only if she made me laugh a lot.”

“Well, he did make me laugh a lot. Little girls and boys can be friends, you know.”

“Are you still friends?”

“Well, it’s not the same when you’re an adult.”Not the same at all.

“Why not?”

“That’s a good question…” How could she give a truthful answer to that when she wasn’t even sure herself?

“Does he still make you laugh?”

She thought back to the last time she had hung out with Reggie. He had made her laugh…but it hadn’t been the same. Something about his words had stung rather than soothed, so the laugh it induced was more to ease the awkwardness than anything. She didn’t want to think about that right now.

Instead, she focused again on the simple part of the truth, and answered, “Yes, he does still make me laugh.”

“Then you can be friends.”

“That may be true.” Time and proximity would tell. She wasn’t visiting the Bainsbury family to see Reggie. Seeing him was a byproduct of a necessary action. She was staying with them because she trusted his mother and sisters as dear friends. If Reggie happened to be there, well…her heart fluttered. She would cross that bridge, or not, when she came to it.

Jacob plodded on with one final thought before turning to gaze out the window again, “If he still makes you laugh, then you can have fun together and be friends. And maybe he’ll be my friend too.”

Reggie friends with her son? That would be something. Fun was not quite the word Bernadette would use.

It had all been fun. Before. And now…well, life must have its reasons for its seasons. This one was still a mystery to her. It had been two years since she had been widowed, and all the funds were gone. It had taken the full two years for all of the late earl’s gambling secrets to come to light. The supposedly rich old Earl of Simcott had left her nothing. Nothing but a note from a solicitor that came when the last gambling debt was called in.

The note that was her ridiculously thin thread of a lifeline to any semblance of a future. But what the deuce was she going to do with it? The right to stud a famous racehorse. That’s what was described in the note. And that’s all that was standing between her and the poor house. Potential.

And what was she going to do with this note and its alleged breeding rights? Walk up to the owner and say, give me a foal? First of all, she didn’t know a thing about breeding horses. And really, there needn’t be a second of all, because such a fatal first of all sufficed for an argument.

But since she had a second and third of all, she may as well remind herself. Second of all, she had no mare. Third of all, she didn’t know the horse owner. Who was the Duke of Greyshire? She was pretty sure she recalled him being a stuffy, old duke. But weren’t they all? That wasn’t fair. She did know a few good ones. Not knowing this one, in conjunction with knowing the absurdness of her objective in seeing him, how far did she really want to travel to be greeted by a laughing duke?

It was all unbearable. Truthfully. She knew her only real option. Remarry.

Remarry for money. Again.

If she had wanted to marry, for money or otherwise, she knew she should have made an appearance at the recent Ashbourne wedding. It was the perfect place to snag a desperate man inneed of a wife. She would likely have had her pick. But she wasn’t ready. She simply wasn’t ready to throw her heart aside again, pretending it didn’t exist. Pretending it didn’t have dreams, desires, needs even.

Her heart had lain latent for far too long. A short reprieve of some kind was warranted. She deserved it. Was that too selfish to say? She squeezed Jacob’s hand again. She was a daughter. Then a wife. And then a mother. But when was she just Bernadette?

She loved her roles in life, well, most of them, most of the time. But…was it too much to ask to just be…? She didn’t even know what. Just be herself. Not herself as it related to someone else. But simply, her. There was nothing in her life that was for her alone. And she knew that there wouldn’t be anything in the future to change that. As a lady, her options were minimal, and she accepted her fate. Marry for money.

But for now…for a few short months only…she wanted a break from it all. During this break, she would sort out her heart and remind it that much more was at stake than a silly little thing called love. And then she would remind it that her dreams didn’t matter unless her and her son were fed.

The awful part of it was that she didn’t really have dreams at the moment. So it felt extremely selfish and guilt ridden to want time for herself to do nothing. Surely as a child she had had some dreams, but they were long forgotten now. No, she didn’t have any specific dreams she wanted to fulfill, she just wanted the time, the space, the permission to be able to have dreams. If nothing else, she would make this life a place for Jacob to dream. That would be enough. One day he would need to be the earl in action not just in title, and when that day came, she didn’t want him drowning in debt and sacrificing his life for the mistakes of his father.

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