Page 74 of Married to the Duke By Midnight

Robert only grunted, not in the mood to point out that he already was.

“Are you in love with her?”

Robert stilled at the words and had to think of how he normally moved his body when he was sitting in the sand. He stared at the sea while he tried to process Thornston’s words. His mind kept coming up with arguments about why he could not be in love with Jo, but all of them seemed to stumble into the abyss that her leaving had caused.

“This is not what being in love feels like,” he finally said out loud in a hoarse voice. Because he had to say something. He could not keep the words contained in his mind any longer.

“I wouldn’t know,” Thornston told him as he looked at the sea.

He had taken off his beaver hat and carefully placed it on his jacket beside him so that it would not touch the sand. His light brown curls were blowing in the wind. He looked younger and less like the charming, slightly world-weary dandy he tried to present himself as to the rest of the world. He looked much more like the boy Robert had once befriended.

“I am marrying a stranger, remember?” Thornston’s voice was casual, but Robert sensed the vulnerability behind it.

“Have you found them?” Robert asked quietly, referring to Thornston’s cousins. His friend shook his head as he looked at the sand.

“Soon, I think.” Thornston gulped loudly. “Do you have any advice on proposing to a stranger?” Some of the mirth was back in his friend’s eyes as he looked at Robert, who shook his head and huffed a laugh.

“You will have to ask Jo, I suppose,” he muttered and thought of the courage it had taken for Jo to walk up to a stranger and propose marriage. She was so brave. So clever. So funny. So beautiful. Robert’s body felt hollow at being so far from her.

“When I met Lucretia, I knew the instant I saw her. That I loved her,” Robert told Thornston and looked back at the sea. This conversation would probably be much easier to have if they were not looking at each other.

“You did?”

“Yes, I remember seeing her laughing and instantly knowing that I wanted to become intimately acquainted with her… not just like that,” he told Thornston and shoved his arm when his friend huffed a suggestive laugh.

“And what did you think when you saw Jo?”

Robert thought back to the meeting in the Thistleworth ballroom. Jo, who stood opposite him and proposed to him. But before that, before she had even said anything…

“I found her attractive, before she said anything, but after she spoke, I wanted to let her down kindly. Then protect her from her cousin and cronies laughing at her.”

“And what made you marry her? I have never understood.” Thornston’s voice was kind as he said it.

Robert thought of the dark night in the garden. How Jo had intrigued him, her meticulousness, her lists – the first and then presenting him with the second. Allowing him to kiss her and knowing he could stoke her desire. But he had made up his mind before that.

“I remember I had this image in my mind,” Robert told Thornston in a low voice as he buried his feet in the sand and looked at them. “Of us at Riddlesmarsh Hall – with our children.” He had to swallow before he went on. “It would be mayhem as they were brought into the sitting room, all five of them,” he trailed off, as Thornston chuckled and muttered:

“Of course, you would want a large brood.”

“I thought of how we would call them to order; I would have the youngest on my knee while the rest of them settled around Jo on the sofa as she read a book to them.” Robert swallowed several times, becoming emotional at the vividness of the picture and remembering it so clearly again. He had not allowed himself to do so for the past four days, since it felt impossible that it would ever come to be.

“But couldn’t you have that with whomever you married?” Thornston asked, sounding genuinely confused.

Robert mulled the matter over as he ran his hands through the coarse sand.

Jo had said something similar, that he could have chosen anyone at the Thistleworth ball. It did not feel like it, though.

He had never imagined having a family with Lucretia, despite it being his wish. He had assumed children would come when they married and did not take the necessary precautions anymore. Lucretia had had two sons with her late husband when she was very young, before they met, but had always been careful not to conceive again. Now that he thought of it, she had never spoken much of her children.

Robert wracked his brain with remembering any other woman who had been at the Thistleworth ball. None of them had captured his interest the way Jo had. He had gone along with Thornston’s half-assed idea to have a tryst with someone but had never truly considered any of the women there.

“But when you fall in love, it happens instantly,” Robert argued without answering Thornston’s question. “Look at Xavier. He spent one night with that woman and is still pining over her five years later.”

“Heavens, I wish I had been there that night.” Thornston straightened as he spoke. “To see the type of woman to twist his head like that.”

Robert smiled at the memory, forgetting his own troubles for a moment. He and Xavier had been in Vauxhall Gardens. The plan had originally been Thornston’s, but he had stood them up to visit whomever he had been sleeping with at the time. Robert remembered the way Xavier had hung on the dark-haired woman’s every word and Robert’s surprise and delight when his stepbrother disappeared into one of the dark walkways with her. He had felt certain that his brother had found the woman he was going to marry, even though she was evidently lower class, but afterwards, Xavier had refused to speak about what had happened and would become upset whenever Robert did.

“Exactly, it happened in just one night,” Robert said hotly, even though Thornston was not arguing with him. Truth be told, he was not certain who he was arguing with.