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“Did you know I have always suspected that men were idiots,” Daphne ground out, “but I was never positive until today.”
“Good,” Anthony grunted, “because the third condition is this: If I ever, even once, catch you in any behavior that compromises her . . . If I ever even catch you kissing her bloody hand without a chaperon, I shall tear your head off.” Daphne blinked. “Don’t you think that’s a bit excessive?” Anthony leveled a hard stare in her direction. “No.”
“I would wager then, that your interests did not lie in abstract mathematics.”
“You sorts who excel at arithmetic simply don’t understand how we lesser mortals can look at a page of numbers and not know the answer—or at least how to get to the answer—instantly.
Anthony indicated his location with a rather ill-tempered grunt.
“Thank heavens,” Simon breathed, clasping one hand to his chest for added effect. He was having far more fun with this than he would have ever dreamed possible. “You Bridgerton ladies are very demanding, did you know that?”
Violet yanked on her arm. “I highly suggest you don’t laugh.” Daphne pinched her lips together in an effort to comply, but it was difficult. “You’re laughing,” she pointed out. “I’m not,” Violet lied. Her entire neck was quivering with the exertion required to keep her laughter inside. “And besides, I’m a mother. They wouldn’t dare do anything to me.”
“Any man, you’ll soon learn, has an insurmountable need to blame someone else when he is made to look a fool.”
Daphne, who had always been the girl everyone liked but no one adored, was suddenly proclaimed the season’s Incomparable.
And so Simon stayed away. And Daphne was miserable.
Many a woman has been ruined by a single kiss. Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers, 14 May 1813
“Stand up,” Anthony grunted, “so I can hit you again.”
“I-I’ve always known that I wasn’t the sort of woman men dream of, but I never thought anyone would prefer death to marriage with me.”
For one thing, men tended to be mulish idiots when it came to things like honor and duels,
Simon stomped across the grass, murder in his eyes. “I meant the idiot Bridgerton.” “That, I believe,” Anthony said mildly, tilting his chin toward Colin, “would refer to you.”
Simon searched her face, but he couldn’t read her emotions the way he usually could. Normally her expressions were so open, her eyes startlingly honest—it was as if he could see to her very soul and back. But right now she looked shuttered and frozen.
To say that men can be bullheaded would be insulting to the bull. Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers, 2 June 1813
Secrets could be deadly, and now there were no more between them. Surely that had to be a good thing.
“No.” “What the hell do you mean, no?” “What the hell do you think I mean?” she countered. Simon wasn’t sure what shocked and angered him more—that she was defying him or that she was cursing aloud.
“You are not your own man,” she said simply. “Your father is still ruling you from the grave.”
“Your actions, your choices—” she continued, her eyes growing very sad, “They have nothing to do with you, with what you want, or what you need. Everything you do, Simon, every move you make, every word you speak—it’s all just to thwart him.” Her voice broke as she finished with, “And he’s not even alive.”
“Daphneeeeeeeeeeee!” he yelled, trying to hide the slight note of desperation in his voice. He didn’t need to sound pathetic.
“You’re drunk!” she accused. He nodded solemnly. “’Fraid so.”
He looked her way and grinned. “Love me? You said you loved me, you know.” He frowned. “I don’t think you can take that back.”
Besides, with three brothers, she’d had some experience with drunken nitwits.
Simon cocked his head to the side and regarded her with a surprisingly steady gaze. “He would have approved of you.” “Oh,” Daphne said, not sure how to interpret that. “But”—he shrugged and gave her a secret, mischievous smile—“I married you anyway.”
Simon clamped his mouth shut. There was little more humiliating than being bested by a butler.
Simon wondered what the penalty was for strangling a butler.
Besides, he needed to hold her.
“We have a few demands before we’ll let you keep Daphne,” Colin said.
“And if you say that’s because you lot barged into her home like a herd of mentally deficient sheep, I’m disowning all three of you.”
it is a truth universally acknowledged that a married man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of an heir.
“Is it so very unfashionable to love one’s wife, then?” Daphne teased.
Simon kissed him on the nose, and whispered, “Don’t you worry, my little man. I shall love you always. I’ll teach you your letters and your numbers, and how to sit on a horse. And I shall protect you from all the awful people in this world, especially that Whistledown woman . . .”
