He blinked, still confused.
“My project, I’m afraid, will take longer than a day. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” he said, looking slightly bemused. “You didn’t expect to rearrange the entire Harbury collection in a single afternoon, did you?”
“I’m not sure I had a plan.”
“Well…”
He smiled in the way she found equally infuriating and enticing.
“I suppose all is fair in libraries and war.”
He was jesting with her. Then again, perhaps the library, the verbal sparring, even this tea, were all part of a larger negotiation. One that might, in the end, lead to something more than either of them had expected.
Dare she hope?
“While you were wreaking havoc on my books, did you discoveranything interesting?”
“Our books,” she braved.
“Our.” His eyes glowed with approval.
Cassie grew breathless, as if the air had suddenly thinned. “Not much, yet.” She forced herself to concentrate. “Did you know your father published a treatise on grasses?”
His shoulders lifted slightly, probably even involuntarily, confirming his surprise. “Impressive.”
“Impractical, more like.”
He chuckled.
“I was rude again.” She winced. “I’m sorry.”
He made a thoughtful noise. “Most people held my father in awe. Rarely have I ever heard anyone even hint at the possibility he had any shortcomings.”
“Didyou?Hold him in awe?”
His head jerked up, and his gaze fixed on a portrait of his father. “I respected him.” He frowned as if he hadn’t expected his lackluster answer. “Of course.”
“Of course?”
In her experience, there wasn’t anyof coursewhen it came to one’s esteem for one’s parents.
She’d given her own father deference but not always esteem. Her father had been a lauded Member of Parliament in public and a selfish brute in private. She’d never been able to reconcile his good qualities with his poor ones, which had far more effect on her and her sisters. As for her mother…
Unconsciously, she touched her locket.
She’d loved her mother, but she also understood things might have been very different for them all if her mother had learned to stand up for herself. Instead, whenever her father had appeared, her mama, or at least the version ofmamathe Wainwright girls had known, had simply disappeared beneath a compliant, docile façade.
She wouldnotrepeat her mother’s marital mistakes, even if she did not quite know how to assert herself yet.
Oblivious to her thoughts, Harbury leaned forward and then rested his elbows on his knees.
“I’ve been duke for two years, now. Already, I’ve made mistakes. Mistakes”—he raised his brows—“he likely expected me to make. To be honest, I fear I will make more.”
Mistakes?She unclasped and then reclasped her hands. Was he referring to their marriage?
“What mistakes?” she managed to ask, though her voice came out too strained, too needful.
