The duke and I julia Quinn

Whistledown.
" 
"Really?" Simon asked with great interest. 
"Really. So now you'd better call tomorrow or everyone will start to wonder." 
"I'd like to know who that woman's spies are," Simon murmured, "and then I'd like to hire them 
for myself." 
"What do you need spies for?" 
"Nothing. But it seems a shame to let such stellar talent go to waste." 
Daphne rather doubted that the fictitious Lady Whistledown would agree that any talents were 
being wasted, but she didn't particularly want to get into a discussion of the merits and evils of 
that newspaper, so she just shrugged off his comment. "And then," she continued, "once my 
mother was through with me, everyone else set in, and they were even worse." 
"Heaven forbid." 
She turned an acerbic look on him. "All but one of the questioners were female, and although 
they all vehemently professed their happiness on my behalf, they were clearly trying to deduce 
the probability of our not becoming betrothed." 
"You told them all I was desperately in love with you, I assume?" 
Daphne felt something lurch in her chest. "Yes," she lied, offering him a too-sweet smile. "I 
have a reputation to maintain, after all." 
Simon laughed. "So then, who was the lone male doing the questioning?" 
Daphne pulled a face. "It was another duke, actually. A bizarre old man who claimed to have 
been friends with your father." 
Simon's face went suddenly tight. 
She just shrugged, not having seen the change in his expression. "He went on and on about what 
a 
good duke
your father was." She let out a little laugh as she tried to imitate the old man's voice. 
"I had no idea you dukes had to look out for one another so much. We don't want an incompetent 

---

duke making the title look bad, after all." 
Simon said nothing. 
Daphne tapped her finger against her cheek in thought. "Do you know, I've never heard you 
mention your father, actually." 
"That is because I don't choose to discuss him," Simon said curtly. 
She blinked with concern. "Is something wrong?" 
"Not at all," he said, his voice clipped. 
"Oh." She caught herself chewing on her lower lip and forced herself to stop. "I won't mention it 
then." 
"I said there is 
nothing wrong.
" 
Daphne kept her expression impassive. "Of course." 
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Daphne picked awkwardly at the fabric of her skirts 
before finally saying, "Lovely flowers Lady Trowbridge used for decoration, don't you think?" 
Simon followed the motion of her hand toward a large arrangement of pink and white roses. 
"Yes." 
"I wonder if she grew them." 
"I haven't the faintest." 
Another awkward silence. 
"Roses are so difficult to grow." 
This time his reply was just a grunt. 
Daphne cleared her throat, and then, when he didn't even so much as look at her, asked, "Have 
you tried the lemonade?" 
"I don't drink lemonade." 
"Well, I do," she snapped, deciding she'd had enough. "And I'm thirsty. So if you will excuse 
me, I'm going to fetch myself a glass and leave you to your black mood. I'm certain you can find 
someone more entertaining than I." 
She turned to leave, but before she could take a step, she felt a heavy hand on her arm. She 

---

looked down, momentarily mesmerized by the sight of his white-gloved hand resting against the 
peach silk of her gown. She stared at it, almost waiting for it to move, to travel down the length 
of her arm until it reached the bare skin of her elbow. 
But of course he wouldn't do that. He only did such things in her dreams. 
"Daphne, please," he said, "turnaround." 
His voice was low, and there was an intensity to it that made her shiver. 
She turned, and as soon as her eyes met his, he said, "Please accept my apologies." 
She nodded. 
But he clearly felt the need to explain further. "I did not..." He stopped and coughed quietly into 
his hand. "I was not on good terms with my father. I—I don't like to talk about him." 
Daphne stared at him in fascination. She'd never seen him at such a loss for words. 
Simon let out an irritated exhale. It was strange, Daphne thought, because it seemed as if he 
were irritated with himself. 
"When you brought him up..." He shook his head, as if deciding to try a different avenue of 
conversation. "It grabs at my mind. I can't stop thinking about him. It—it—it makes me 
extremely angry." 
"I'm sorry," she said, knowing her confusion must show on her face. She thought she should say 
more, but she didn't know what words to use. 
"Not at you," he said quickly, and as his pale blue eyes focused on hers, something seemed to 
clear in them. His face seemed to relax as well, especially the tight lines that had formed around 
his mouth. He swallowed uncomfortably. "I'm angry at myself." 
"And apparently at your father as well," she said softly. 
He said nothing. She hadn't expected him to, she realized. His hand was still on her arm, and she 
covered it with her own. "Would you like to get a bit of air?" she asked gently. "You look as if 
you might need it." 
He nodded. "You stay. Anthony will have my head if I take you out onto the terrace." 
"Anthony can hang for all I care." Daphne's mouth tightened with irritation. "I'm sick of his 
constant hovering, anyway." 
"He is only trying to be a good brother to you." 

---

Her lips parted in consternation. "Whose side are you on, anyway?" 
Deftly ignoring her question, he said, "Very well. But just a short walk. Anthony I can take on, 
but if he enlists the aid of your brothers, I'm a dead man." 
There was a door leading out to the terrace a few yards away. Daphne nodded toward it, and 
Simon's hand slid down her arm and around the crook of her elbow. 
"There are probably dozens of couples out on the terrace, anyway," she said. "He'll have nothing 
about which to complain." 
But before they could make their way outside, a loud male voice sounded from behind them. 
"Hastings!" 
Simon halted and turned around, grimly realizing that he had grown used to the name. In no 
time, he'd be thinking of it as his own. 
Somehow that concept made him ill. 
An older man leaning on a cane hobbled his way toward them. "That's the duke I told you 
about," Daphne said. "Of Middlethorpe, I believe." 
Simon nodded curtly, having no desire to speak. 
"Hastings!" the old man said, patting him on the arm. "I have wanted to make your acquaintance 
for so very long. I am Middlethorpe. Your father was a good friend of mine." 
Simon just nodded again, the motion almost military in its precision. 
"He missed you, you know. While you were off traveling." 
A rage began to build in his mouth, a rage that rendered his tongue swollen and his cheeks tight 
and rigid. He knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if he tried to speak, he would sound just as 
he'd done when he was a lad of eight. 
And there was no way he'd shame himself in such a way in front of Daphne. 
Somehow—he'd never know how, maybe it was because he'd never had much trouble with 
vowels aside from "I'—he managed to say, "Oh?" He was pleased that his voice came out sharp 
and condescending. 
But if the old man heard the rancor in his tone, he made no reaction to it. "I was with him when 
he died," Middlethorpe said. 
Simon said nothing. 

---

Daphne—bless her—leapt into the fray with a sympathetic, "My goodness." 
"He asked me to pass along some messages to you. I have several letters in my house." 
"Burn them." 
Daphne gasped and grabbed Middlethorpe by the arm. "Oh, no, don't do that. He might not want 
to see them now, but surely he will change his mind in the future." 
Simon blasted her with an icy glare before turning back to Middlethorpe. "I said burn them." 
"I—ah—" Middlethorpe looked hopelessly confused. He must have been aware that the Basset 
father and son were not on good terms, but clearly the late duke had not revealed to him the true 
depth of the estrangement. He looked to Daphne, sensing a possible ally, and said to her, "In 
addition to the letters, there were things he asked me to tell him. I could tell them to him now." 
But Simon had already dropped Daphne's arm and stalked outside. 
"I'm so sorry," Daphne said to Middlethorpe, feeling the need to apologize for Simon's atrocious 
behavior. "I'm sure he doesn't mean to be rude." 
Middlethorpe's expression told her that he 
knew
Simon meant to be rude. 
But Daphne still said, "He's a bit sensitive about his father." 
Middlethorpe nodded. "The duke warned me he'd react this way. But he laughed as he said it, 
then made a joke about the Basset pride. I must confess I didn't think he was completely serious." 
Daphne looked nervously through the open door to the terrace. "Apparently he was," she 
murmured. "I had best see to him." 
Middlethorpe nodded. 
"Please don't burn those letters," she said. 
"I would never dream of it. But—" 
Daphne had already taken a step toward the terrace door and turned around at the halting tone of 
the old man's voice. "What is it?"she asked. 
"I'm not a well man," Middlethorpe said. "I—The doctor says it could be anytime now. May I 
trust the letters into your safekeeping?" 
Daphne stared at the duke with a mix of shock and horror. Shock because she could not believe 
he would trust such personal correspondence to a young woman he'd known for barely an hour. 
Horror because she knew that if she accepted them, Simon might never forgive her. 

---

"I don't know," she said in a strained voice. "I'm not sure I'm the right person." 
Middlethorpe's ancient eyes crinkled with wisdom. "I think you might be exactly the right 
person," he said softly. "And I believe you'll know when the time is right to give him the letters. 
May I have them delivered to you?" Mutely, she nodded. She didn't know what else to do. 
Middlethorpe lifted his cane and pointed it out toward the terrace. "You'd best go to him." 
Daphne caught his gaze, nodded, and scurried outside. The terrace was lit by only a few wall 
sconces, so the night air was dim, and it was only with the aid of the moon that she saw Simon 
off in the corner. His stance was wide and angry, and his arms were crossed across his chest. He 
was facing the endless lawn that stretched out past the terrace, but Daphne sincerely doubted he 
saw anything aside from his own raging emotions. 
She moved silently toward him, the cool breeze a welcome change from the stagnant air in the 
overcrowded ballroom. Light murmurs of voices drifted through the night, indicating that they 
were not alone on the terrace, but Daphne saw no one else in the dim light. Clearly the other 
guests had elected to sequester themselves in dark corners. Or maybe they had descended the 
steps to the garden and were sitting on the benches below. 
As she walked to him, she thought about saying something like, "You were very rude to the 
duke," or "Why are you so angry at your father?" but in the end she decided this was not the time 
to probe into Simon's feelings, and so when she reached his side, she just leaned against the 
balustrade, and said, "I wish I could see the stars." 
Simon looked at her, first with surprise, then with curiosity. 
"You can never see them in London," she continued, keeping her voice purposefully light. 
"Either the lights are too bright, or the fog has rolled in. Or sometimes the air is just too filthy to 
see through it." She shrugged and glanced back up at the sky, which was overcast. "I'd hoped that 
I'd be able to see them here in Hampstead Heath. But alas, the clouds do not cooperate." 
There was a very long moment of silence. Then Simon cleared his throat, and asked, "Did you 
know that the stars are completely different in the southern hemisphere?" 
Daphne hadn't realized how tense she was until she felt her entire body relax at his query. 
Clearly, he was trying to force their evening back into normal patterns, and she was happy to let 
him. She looked at him quizzically, and said, "You're joking." 
"I'm not. Look it up in any astronomy book." 
"Hmmm." 
"The interesting thing," Simon continued, his voice sounding less strained as he moved further 
into the conversation, "is that even if you're not a scholar of astronomy—and I'm not—" 

---

"And obviously," Daphne interrupted with a self-deprecating smile, "neither am I." 
He patted her hand, and smiled, and Daphne noticed with relief that his happiness reached his 
eyes. Then her relief turned into something a little more precious—joy. Because she had been the 
one to chase the shadows from his eyes. She wanted to banish them forever, she realized. 
If only he would let her... 
"You'd notice the difference anyway," he said. "That's what's so strange. I never cared to learn 
the constellations and yet when I was in Africa, I looked up into the sky—and the night was so 
clear. You've never seen a night like that." 
Daphne stared at him, fascinated. 
"I looked up into the sky," he said with a bewildered shake of his head, "and it looked wrong." 
"How can a sky look wrong?" 
He shrugged, lifting one of his hands in an unknowing gesture. "It just did. All the stars were in 
the wrong place." 
"I suppose I should want to see the southern sky," Daphne mused. "If I were exotic and dashing, 
and the sort of female men write poetry about, I suppose I should want to travel." 
"You 
are
the sort of female men write poetry about," Simon reminded her with a slightly 
sarcastic tilt to his head. "It was just bad poetry." 
Daphne laughed. "Oh, don't tease. It was exciting. My first day with six callers and Neville 
Binsby actually wrote poetry." 
"Seven callers," Simon corrected, "including me." 
"Seven including you. But you don't really count." 
"You wound me," he teased, doing a fair imitation of Colin. "Oh, how you wound me." 
"Perhaps you should consider a career in the theater as well." 
"Perhaps not," he replied. 
She smiled gently. "Perhaps not. But what I was going to say is that, boring English girl that I 
am, I have no desire to go anywhere else. I'm happy here." 
Simon shook his head, a strange, almost electric light appearing in his eyes. "You're not boring. 
And"—his voice dropped down to an emotional whisper—"I'm glad you're happy. I haven't 

---

known many truly happy people." 
Daphne looked up at him, and it slowly dawned on her that he had moved closer. Somehow she 
doubted he even realized it, but his body was swaying toward hers, and she was finding it nigh 
near impossible to pull her eyes from his. 
"Simon?" she whispered. 
"There are people here," he said, his voice oddly strangled. 
Daphne turned her head to the corners of the terrace. The murmuring voices she'd heard earlier 
were gone, but that just might mean that their erstwhile neighbors were eavesdropping. 
In front of her the garden beckoned. If this were a London ball, there would have been no place 
to go past the terrace, but Lady Trowbridge prided herself on being different, and thus always 
hosted her annual ball at her second residence in Hampstead Heath. It was less than ten miles 
from Mayfair, but it might as well have been in another world. Elegant homes dotted wide 
patches of green, and in Lady Trowbridge's garden, there were trees and flowers, shrubs and 
hedges—dark corners where a couple could lose themselves. 
Daphne felt something wild and wicked take hold. "Let's walk in the garden," she said softly. 
"We can't." 
"We must." 
"We can't." 
The desperation in Simon's voice told her everything she needed to know. He wanted her. He 
desired her. He was