Page 73 of Married to the Duke By Midnight

“Fine then.” Jo crossed her arms over her chest. “You have gotten your chair and your frame. Now leave. And I don’t ever want to see you again. You have no claim over my money, and no right to visit me unannounced. If we see each other again, we will greet each other politely, but nothing more. From this day on, we are mere acquaintances and nothing more.”

Ambrose looked stunned at her outburst for a moment.

“Fine, Josephine, if that is the way you want it,” he snapped as he made his way past her.

“Don’t you ever call me that again!” Jo shouted after him. “From now on it is ‘Your Grace’ or ‘Duchess’ if you ever need to address me again. And I'd prefer that you don’t!”

Ambrose slammed her front door so hard that the window beside it rattled.

Slowly, Jo made her way to the chair as she looked at the space where the high-backed chair had once been. She wished she could have sought the comfort of it, but even more so, she wished she could have sought comfort in Robert. Sitting in his lap, feeling his arms around her, and recounting the events of the past half an hour.

Jo was acutely aware that this was what he had wanted to spare her. Had she been too harsh on him, when she demanded to be included? No, she had needed to hear Ambrose say these things, and she had needed to cut him out of her life herself. She only wished Robert would have been there to experience it with her.

Her chest felt hollow at the thought that it might never happen. She had heard nothing from Robert since she left, and she needed him to reach out first. She needed to know that he had figured out what he wanted.

He had said he wanted them to be partners yet went above her head with important decisions. He had said they could only ever be friends yet treated her like a loved one.

Jo’s heart ached at the thought as she stood by the window and looked at the sea below her. She knew she had been foolish and let herself believe, but by God, a much too large part of her wished that he could love her like she was starting to understand that she did him.

No, she had not been foolish. She was allowed to fall in love, even if Robert could not reciprocate her feelings. You could not help who you fell in love with, and Robert should be grateful for her love, even if it was not what he had looked or wished for.

There were three different outcomes to their situation as far as Jo could see. They could live estranged from each other; they could try to find a way to live with each other, or – Jo’s heart pounded at the thought – Robert could miraculously in time fall in love with her. She had always thought that she was an acquired taste; perhaps with enough time and patience, he would come to love her. Even if he might never feel for her the way he did for Lady Egerton.

With a sigh, Jo walked to the desk and found three sheets of paper and started a list on each. One for either outcome of the conversation that they inevitably had to have.

33

“Come now, fresh air will do you good,” Thornston said as he practically dragged Robert out of the house and into the too-bright sunshine.

Robert growled and shielded his eyes as he shook his friend’s hand from his lower arm and followed him.

“I doubt it,” he mumbled under his breath as they made their way through the garden to the path to the beach.

“I am certain of it. You have been sequestered in the house for days, doing God knows what.”

Robert made a non-committal sound.

He was not going to tell his friend of the hundreds of letters he had tried to write Jo over the past four days. All of them had ended up in the stove in the kitchen late at night, when everyone else was asleep.

Besides that, he had not done much. Hardly eaten, slept through the day, but been awake at night. Not washed, not even changed his clothes. It was a wonder Thornston wanted to be seen with him in this state. Robert was sporting four-day-old stubble. Luckily, the state of his hair could be covered by his hat.

They walked along the beach in silence. When they were so far from Brighton that they felt certain they would not meet others, they removed their coats, shoes and stockings and continued. Thornston waded through the water, apparently not caring that his beige breeches became wet, and Robert walked parallel with him in the sand, about fourteen or fifteen feet between them at all times.

A couple of times, Thornston stopped and handed Robert a leather flask of water, and Robert drank greedily as the heat started to affect him. They did not stop until they reached the part of the cliff that had fallen. Robert’s stomach turned at the sight of it. The fear of Jo being buried underneath it felt fresh and raw again. He stared at the mixture of grass, sand and chalk that could crush a person underneath it. He could see his own feeble attempts at digging into it on one side.

Luckily, she was not there, but she felt just as far away as if she had been. He lifted his gaze, hoping to see her tracks on the other side as he had that day, but they had been washed away by the high tide and occasional rain. He had to swallow at the thought that this trace of Jo had disappeared.

“I have never seen you as scared as when you thought she was trapped beneath this,” Thornston told him quietly. He was standing much closer now than Robert had realized. “Not even when Philomena was sick. Or your stepfather.”

Robert gulped at the painful memories.

“I was… that was… different…” he mumbled as he tried to figure out why Thornston’s quiet observation affected him so.

“Why don’t we sit? I had your cook make us a couple of sandwiches,” Thornston said as if his words had not been a grenade to Robert’s mind.

They sat beside each other on the sand a good thirty or so feet from the debris. Thornston found a couple of slightly smashed sandwiches in the pocket of his jacket and handed one to Robert without a word. Robert wolfed it down in only a couple of bites, suddenly feeling starving.

“Can I ask you something?” Thornston was looking at the ocean as he spoke.