Page 53 of My Own True Duchess
“Don’t, Theo. You chose your six names, I’m doing my penance, and you shall be my duchess when you’re done watching me genuflect before the altar of polite ritual.”
Genuine irritation marked those words, so Theo let irritation show in her reply. “I decide whose duchess I shall be, and I have not decided to be yours. Lady Della is young, but she’s quite well connected, she’s blazingly intelligent, and you’re on good terms with her family.”
“No, I am not. They tolerate me for Lady Della’s sake.”
The horses clip-clopped along. The coach swayed around a corner.
“You are upset,” Theo said, though it wasn’t a version of upset she recognized. Archie had stormed and threatened when in his cups. An unhappy Seraphina brooded in silence, while Diana scratched out rhymed couplets of juvenile indignation.
“I’ve told you how it was between my father and me,” Jonathan said, taking Theo’s hand. “You might think I judge him harshly, but Lady Della is my half-sister. She was told this, though I know not why, and she had letters… she has them still.”
He stared straight ahead, into the shadows, and his voice was flat. Not angry, so much as resigned.
He’d surprised Theo, also relieved a worry. Lady Della had most assuredly not been flirting with him, and yet, she’d held his attention for the entirety of their conversation. Lady Bellefonte had pointedly ignored the whole business—very pointedly—while Theo’s curiosity had been piqued.
“These situations arise frequently in polite society,” she said. “A woman does her duty by the title, and then she’s free to discreetly—”
“Don’t make excuses for them, Theo.”
“Don’t judge them. Bellefonte has brothers and sisters in abundance. Lady Della is the youngest. You have no idea what the late Lady Bellefonte was enduring in her marriage when she indulged in an affair with your father. Bellefonte’s father was no saint, and neither are you.”
Jonathan turned his head to regard Theo in the gloom. A trick of the light reflected his gaze unnaturally, as if he were a lurking predator and not the same gentleman who’d shared such a lovely kiss with her.
“Explain yourself, Mrs. Haviland.”
Not even Archie at his drunken worst had attempted that tone with Theo. “Comport yourself with an iota of manners, and I might.”
A fraught silence, then a bark of laughter. Jonathan peeled off Theo’s glove, his touch far from seductive.
“My nose was broken three times,” he said, drawing her middle and index fingers down the slope of said nose.
The bone was uneven, though Theo would not have said his nose was crooked. “That sounds painful.”
He linked his fingers with hers and curled her hand on his thigh. “Do you know what hurts worse than having your nose broken? Having it set. The Quimbey spare was not permitted to be disfigured by schoolyard brawling.”
“This has to do with your father?”
“With my mother. Papa’s philandering was far from discreet. Mama retaliated in a predictable manner. My classmates made sure I was aware of her every flirtation. I made sure they regretted passing along the gossip. I now sit on the board of governors for a boys’ school, in part as a penance for having been such a disruptive youth.”
“Were there duels?” Please say no. Please say your self-restraint was adequate to the challenge of controlling your temper. For if he said yes, Theo certainly could not marry him—not that she was considering such folly—and she couldn’t in good conscience allow any decent woman to yoke herself to such a hothead.
“Of course not. I was twelve when Quimbey became aware of my temper. You know him as a dear old fellow with charm to spare. He stormed into the headmaster’s office like the wrath of God and delivered me such a dressing down… I’d rather he’d gone at me with the birch rod. Until that day, I hadn’t understood that I was the spare—the only spare. In some dim corner of my boyish mind, I recognized the theoretical possibility that I might be a duke someday, but not… the duke. Not His Grace of Quimbey.”
In a sunny alley, Theo had kissed Jonathan the way a woman kisses when she knows what intimacy between the sexes is, in all its messy, glorious details. This conversation was intimate in a more complicated way, one that had nothing to do with pleasure.
“You stopped brawling?”
“I became a model student, for which I was regularly pummeled. I fought back, but no longer so hard that my opponent took two days to wake up or had to learn to write with his left hand.”
“You were very angry.” Is he angry still?
“I was very determined to gain my father’s notice. In the end, I did, but whether he took note of my accomplishments no longer mattered.”
The coach slowed as they turned onto Theo’s street, which was mostly a relief. This conversation wanted pondering, as did Theo’s entire situation.
“I did not like seeing you with those other women.” She hadn’t planned to admit that.
“Good. If I’m suffering, you should suffer too, though when I’m seen to choose you from among a throng of lovely ladies, your consequence as my duchess will be off on the right foot.”
