Page 71 of Married to the Duke By Midnight

“Because we don’t need to fight!” Robert exclaimed. “That is not us. We are not people who fight.”

“Perhaps we are!” Jo shouted at him, then added in an only slightly lower voice: “There are still so many aspects of each other’s personalities we know nothing about.”

“But that is…” Robert swallowed as he thought of all the fights he had had with Lucretia. The relief he had felt in the past ten days with Jo when he realized that it would be different with her.

“What? Ridiculous?” Jo demanded with her hands on her hips but did not let him finish. “But that is not even the worst of it.”

Robert closed his eyes and cursed inwardly. Fuck, there was more. Of course, there was more. Something he had been completely oblivious to, yet she would be able to pinpoint exactly. Lucretia had been the same, never telling him what he had done wrong, but demanding that he apologize for it.

“What is the worst?” he asked through gritted teeth, not expecting an answer. Lucretia would never have answered him.

But at least Jo was different in this matter, because she took a deep breath and then said:

“The worst is that I am not certain you know what you want out of this marriage.”

She was holding another pair of slippers. Her index finger was running over a loose thread in the embroidery on it, almost on its own accord, while she stared into his eyes. He could see the fear in them but did not know how to appease it.

“I do know, Jo,” he told her, his voice going hoarse. “I told you; I want a partnership, a friendship.”

Jo blinked, and quick tears ran down her cheeks.

“I am not sure you do,” she told him quietly and placed the slippers in the portmanteau. “If you did, you wouldn’t have spoken to the solicitor.”

She plunked down on the bed with a heavy sigh.

“You are a duke, Robert. You could have married any woman at the Thistleworth ball. Why choose me if you wanted to control everything?”

All the wrong answers flooded around in Robert’s mind: Because you were the easy choice. Because I did not have the energy to court anyone else. Because I had given up on love but wanted to start a family soon. Because you seemed competent and capable. Someone who would make a good duchess and mother.

At least now he knew not to voice any of them.

“That is what I thought,” Jo said quietly as she looked at her hands. “I think it will be good for both of us if we spend some time apart.”

And even though he already hated the idea, Robert nodded.

32

Arriving at the seaside cottage and finding that everything looked exactly the same was almost a shock to Jo’s system. It felt like several years since she had left, so thoroughly and irrevocably had her life changed. And yet everything had happened in only a month.

She looked at the small room that had been the frame around her life in the six months she had been living here. The bookcase full of her books; the one high-backed chair in front of it. The lone chair in front of the fireplace with her abandoned basket of handiwork beside it. The desk at the far wall by the window facing the garden. Where she realized she had no choice but to marry. Where she had written the first drafts for her lists.

It was impossible not to notice how the room had been centered around one person living there: One high-backed chair, one lounge chair. She had meant to find a small sofa and a tea table to be placed opposite the bookcase so she had room for visitors, but she had never found the time.

“Is there anything you need, Miss, I mean Ma’am, I mean, Your Grace,” the housekeeper asked behind her.

“Oh, no, thank you, Mrs. Brown. I should like to rest my legs for a while, before I retire,” she told the housekeeper and tried to smile, but knew she did not succeed.

Mrs. Brown sent her a comforting smile and closed the door behind her.

Jo walked to the high-backed chair and sank into the plush velvet of it. It had been Uncle Horace’s favorite chair. The wood needed polishing and the upholstery needed changing but it was comfortable, which was what her uncle had needed. Jo had not wanted to deprive him of it, simply for the sake of vanity. When she had asked Ambrose whether she could bring it, he had scoffed and not even bothered to answer, which she had taken as a yes.

The sun was setting and Jo could see it over the top of the shrubbery protecting the house from the wind. She had wanted it removed to have a view of the sea, but the gardener she had spoken to had told her it would be better to wait until autumn when the birds would no longer be nesting in it. She could hardly argue with that. It had made her rethink whether removing as large a section as she had planned was a good idea. She could have the part right in front of the window cut down and then keep the rest for the birds.

She could see the sea from the house when she was standing up. If she had had the strength, she would have been leaning against the windowsill and staring at it, trying to find the calm she always felt while there. But her entire body was tired from traveling.

After she had left Brighton the day before, she had traveled as far as possible in the carriage before Robert’s driver had told her it would be best to stop. She had spent the night at an inn and then continued early in the morning. Stopping only for food and to change horses. Feeling the constant need to push herself and the staff to create as great a distance as possible between them and Robert.

Jo sighed as she leaned back in her chair and looked at the small empty space opposite her where a small two-person sofa would fit snugly between the outer wall and the fireplace.