Page 219 of Courting the Wrong Duke

Whatever his father had done, none of it had belonged to him.

He needed someone to hold him.

So she had.

And he became yours, William had said.

His mother's answer had come without hesitation.

He was always mine.

William had embraced her then.

Before they parted that afternoon, his mother had held his face between her hands and told him there was one thing for which she would always be grateful.

He had become nothing like his father.

William had not been entirely certain he deserved that assessment. Whether he did was something he suspected he would spend the rest of his life proving.

“You are staring at me.”

His mother’s voice pulled him back into the garden. She stood several feet away with one brow raised and a freshly cut rose in her hand.

“I was thinking.”

“Dangerous on your wedding day.”

His mother smiled, and William came farther along the path, nodding toward the basket. “What are the roses for?”

“The wedding.”

“We already have flowers.”

“One can never have too many.”

“I suspect the florist would agree with you.”

She snipped another bloom and added it to the basket while William watched her. Three weeks had not made everything easier, and he doubted three years would. Somewhere in the midst of everything that followed Bryn Hir, William had become the Duke of Aldermere, a title he had never wanted and still had not grown accustomed to hearing attached to his name.

But there was something different between them now. For the first time in his life, there were no carefully selected truths between them, no secrets kept in the name of protecting someone else.

“How is your side?” she asked.

“Perfectly healed.”

“That is not what the physician said yesterday.”

“The physician lacks imagination. He said I was healing very well, which is essentially the same thing.”

“It is not the same thing at all.”

He smiled and bent to kiss her cheek, but before he could straighten, her hand closed around his arm.

“You went to see Algernon last week.”

The humor between them faded.

William nodded. “I did.”