“Most people travel to Venice for the canals.”
She knew that, of course. Maybe that was part of the reason she’d never wanted to go there. “I want to see Amsterdam.”
“I hope you shall,” he said. He was quiet for just long
enough to make the moment noticeable. And then, softly: “Everybody should be able to realize at least one of their dreams.”
Amelia turned. He was looking at her with the most gentle expression. It nearly broke her heart. What was left of it, at least. So she looked away. It was too hard otherwise. “Grace went below,” she said.
“Yes, you’d said.”
“Oh.” How embarrassing. “Yes, of course. The fan.”
He did not reply, so she added, “There was something about soup, as well.”
“Soup,” he repeated, shaking his head.
“I could not decipher the message,” Amelia admitted.
He gave her a rather dry half smile. “Now there is one responsibility I am not sorry to shed.”
A little laugh rose in Amelia’s throat. “Oh, I’m sorry,”
she said quickly, trying to force it down. “That was terribly rude of me.”
“Not at all,” he assured her. His face dipped closer to hers, his expression terribly conspiratorial. “Do you think Audley will have the nerve to send her away? ”
“You didn’t.”
He held up his hands. “She’s my grandmother.”
“She is his, as well.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t know her, lucky chap.” He leaned toward her. “I suggested the Outer Hebrides.”
“Oh, stop.”
“I did,” he insisted. “Told Audley I was thinking of buying something there, just so I could maroon her.”
This time she did laugh. “We should not be speaking of her this way.”
“Why is it,” he mused, “that everyone I know speaks of crotchety old ladies who, underneath their acerbic exteriors, have a heart of gold?”
She looked at him with amusement.
“Mine doesn’t,” he said, almost as if he could not quite believe the unfairness of it all.
She tried not to smile. “No.” She gave up. She sputtered, then grinned. “She doesn’t.”
He looked at her, and their eyes caught each other’s amusement, and they both burst out laughing.
“She’s miserable,” Thomas said.
“She doesn’t like me,” Amelia said.
“She doesn’t like anyone.”
“I think she likes Grace.”
“No, she just dislikes her less than she dislikes everyone else. She doesn’t even like Mr. Audley, even as she works so tirelessly to gain him the title.”
“She doesn’t like Mr. Audley?”
“He detests her.”
She shook her head, then looked back out at the sunset, which was in its death throes over the horizon.
“What a tangle.”
“What an understatement.”
“What a knot?” she offered, feeling very nautical.
She heard him let out a little snuff of amusement, and then he rose to his feet. She looked up; he was blotting out the last shafts of the sun. Indeed, he seemed to fill her entire vision.
“We could have been friends,” she heard herself say.
“Could?”
“Would,” she corrected, and she was smiling. It seemed the most amazing thing. How was it possible she had anything to smile about? “I think we would have been friends, if not for . . . If all this . . . ”
“If everything were different?”
“Yes. No. Not everything. Just . . . some things.” She began to feel lighter. Happier. And she had not the slightest clue why. “Maybe if we’d met in London.”
“And we hadn’t been betrothed?”
She nodded. “And you hadn’t been a duke.”
His brows rose.
“Dukes are very intimidating,” she explained. “It would have been so much easier if you hadn’t been one.”
“And your mother had not been engaged to marry my uncle,” he added.
“If we’d just met.”
“No history between us.”
“None.”
His brows rose and he smiled. “If I’d seen you across a crowded room?”
“No, no, nothing like that.” She shook her head. He was not getting this at all. She wasn’t talking about romance. She couldn’t bear to even think of it. But friendship . . . that was something else entirely. “Something far more ordinary,” she said. “If you’d sat next to me on a bench.”
“Like this one?”
“Perhaps in a park.”
“Or a garden,” he murmured.
“You would sit down next to me—”
“And ask your opinion of Mercator projections.”
She laughed. “I would tell you that they are useful for navigation but that they distort area terribly.”
“I would think—how nice, a woman who does not hide her intelligence.”
“And I would think—how lovely, a man who does not assume I have none.”
He smiled. “We would have been friends.”
“Yes.” She closed her eyes. Just for a moment. Not for long enough to allow her to dream. “Yes, we would.”
He was quiet for a moment, and then he picked up her hand and kissed it. “You will make a spectacular duchess,” he said softly.
She tried to smile, but it was difficult; the lump in her throat was blocking her way.
Then, softly—but not so softly that she was not intended to hear—he said, “My only regret is that you never were mine.”