“I will always save you from a tiger, that I swear to you.”
“And you won’t mind if I decide to bake cakes or change my name to Tulip?”
“Not a bit.”
“And then, there is one other thing.”
“I am prepared to hear you plan on driving your own team of horses or taking up a sword.”
“It is far worse, I’m afraid,” Felicity said, firm in her mind that there could be no more secrets between them. “I have a bit of a temper. More than a bit, on occasion. My nickname is Ferocity.”
Mr. Stratton laughed surprisingly hard at that revelation. “I am not surprised.”
“You are not put off by it?”
“No. I do not have much of a temper at all, but I am so inured to my father threatening to burn down the world that I suspect I will hardly notice.”
Though Felicity was vastly relieved to hear that Mr. Percy Stratton was not at all put off by the idea that she might have a temper from time to time, she did pause at the mention of his father.
“Gracious, your father,” she said. “How will your father take the news of an engagement? He does not seem too very fond of me. I do not suppose he is at all fond of my father.”
“Do not you worry about my father, and I’ll do my best not to worry aboutyourfather.”
“Papa is a darling really, once you get to know him. And I will counsel him sternly about calling your father Sir Pineapple.”
Percy laughed into her hair. “The duke may be a darling toyou, but perhaps less of a darling to other people. Though, he has grown on me, I will not deny it.”
They walked, hand in hand, to the very back of the drawing room where Felicity noticed it was delightfully dim. There, very conveniently, Lady Marchfield had what was meant to be a small reading nook. There was just a large and overstuffed chair meant for one person, but they squeezed in together.
Now that her face was so near his it was no trouble at all to kiss it all over, and end on her lips.
Nobody had ever said anything about kissing to her. Of course, nobody had said anything at all about anything of the sort to her. For all that, she was not unaware of how human relations proceeded, she lived on a working estate after all. One could not miss how the animals got on with it.
But the animals did not kiss.
She felt very sorry for them, it was marvelous. Her hair was becoming terribly disheveled, as was her dress. Felicity did not give a toss about it—Mr. Percy Stratton could muss her all he liked.
He kissed the tip of her nose. She said, “Tell me of our future—what will it be like? Where will we live?”
Percy leaned back and Felicity settled comfortably in the crook of his arm. “I will leave it up to you. There are two choices, really. There is the main house, the dower house which is just now occupied by my grandmother, and a hunting lodge about a mile off from the main houses. The main house is plenty large, but it also contains my father. He shouts a lot. The lodge is smaller, but still commodious for a lodge and far enough away that my father’s shouts cannot be heard.”
“We’d best go to the lodge,” Felicity said. “And then of course we will wish to visit Yorkshire for extended periods.”
“Of course,” he said. “I must suppose your father’s various harassments will not extend to a son-in-law?”
“Well, as to that…”
“I see,” Percy said, laughing.
“You will get used to it, though, and then you will find it amusing.”
“My god, I did not even ask him for permission to ask for your hand.”
“Goodness, yes, you ought to have done. I thought you must have before they all set off with you to come here.”
“He understood my intentions,” Percy said. “Though I never came right out and asked.”
They were silent for a moment, the only sounds that of the duke telling Lady Misery she might as well calm down.
