The Arrogant Duke of Ashforde Came to Her Family’s Dinner — and It Was Love at First Fight

You will forgive me, your grace, but you are wrong about the river, and you are wrong about my father, and if you continue to be wrong with quite so much confidence, I shall be obliged to correct you in front of the soup. The Duke of Ashford set down his spoon. He had come to this modest country house upon a matter of business, a question of water rights, and an old wear that his steward had bungled, expecting an evening of dull deference, and an early departure.

He had not expected to be contradicted before the second course by a sharp-eyed young woman seated halfway down the table, who had been watching him through the whole of the first, with an expression he could only describe as amused. I beg your pardon, said Sebastian in the tone that generally ended conversations.

You needn’t beg it, said Beatrice Hail pleasantly. I give it freely. I only meant to spare you the embarrassment of laying out your argument at length before discovering it has a hole in the middle large enough enough to float a barge through, which incidentally is rather the trouble with the wear. Her father, a mild gentleman at the head of the table, made a faint strangled noise into his wine.

Her mother had gone the color of the tablecloth. The Duke of Ashford was aware of all of it, and aware, too, that the young woman herself appeared entirely untroubled, buttering a piece of bread, as she had not just told a duke he was a fool in his own borrowed dining room. and the whole Miss Hail, he said, since you are so certain of it, enlighten me.

You claim the weir diverts water that is rightfully yours, said Beatatrice. But the weir has stood for 60 years, which under the doctrine of ancient use makes the flow my fathers by long custom, whatever your map says. Your steward has shown you the deed and not the calendar. Men so often forget that time is a kind of law.

She looked up at him, her chin lifting, candle light catching the spark in her eyes. I should have thought a duke would know that better than anyone. You are, after all, mostly made of inherited things. There was a silence of the sort that prec is either a storm or a duel. And the Duke of Ashford, who had not been genuinely surprised by another human being in a great many years, discovered that he wanted very much to laugh.

He did not, of course. He had a reputation to consider, and a wear, and a great deal of pride that had never once in his life been pricricked at a country dinner table by a gentleman’s daughter in a dress that had been turned at least once. But something in him came suddenly and unexpectedly awake, the way a man wakes when cold water is thrown over a long and tedious sleep.

Mostly made of inherited things, he repeated. You have a tongue, Miss Hail. I have two ears and a working memory besides your grace, which between them make a tongue almost unnecessary, though I confess I am fond of mine,” she smiled at him, and it was not a meek smile. “Shall I be silent now? I find I usually ought to have been about 10 minutes ago.

” “No,” said Sebastian, before he had quite decided to say it. “No, go on. You are the first interesting thing to happen to me in a month, and I am reluctant to see it end before the fish. What followed was not at all the dinner he had intended to have. They argued. They argued about the wear and then about the law and then the wear we quite forgotten.

About whether a man owed anything to tenants he had never met, about books she had read and he had only pretended to. About whether ambition was a virtue or merely vanity that had got out of bed early. Her family watched in mounting horror, certain their daughter was destroying them with every sentence. But the Duke of Asheford leaned forward over his untouched plate and gave back as good as he got.

and felt for the first time in longer than he could name, that he was speaking to a person, rather than to his own reflection in the polished manners of the world. She was wrong about a great many things. He told her so. She was infuriatingly right about rather more and she told him so. And he found that being told so by Beatrice Hail was an experience entirely unlike told anything by anyone else.

Because she did not do it to flatter him or to fear him or to gain anything at all. She did it because she believed it, and because she had decided plainly and from the first course that a duke was just a man with more land and fewer people willing to disagree with him, and that this lost was a deficiency she was happy to remedy.

“You are the most exasperating woman I have ever had the misfortune to dine with,” he informed her somewhere past the pudding. and you, your grace, are the most exasperating man, which makes us very well matched in exactly one respect, and that respect is exasperation.” She rose with the ladies, for the meal had ended, and he had not noticed.

At the door she paused and looked back at him. “Thank you for not having me thrown into the river. I was nearly certain you would for the first quarter hour.” The thought said Sebastian had a brief and pleasant life. She laughed and was gone. And the Duke of Ashford sat among the gentlemen in the port and did not hear a single word any of them said.

He should have settled the matter of the wear and left the next morning. He stayed awake. He told himself it was the dispute which was complicated, though in truth he had decided to concede it before he had finished his second glass of port. Having realized she was correct about the calendar, he found reasons to call.

He walked in the hail gardens and Beatatrice walked with him because she said someone had to ensure he did not trample the roses out of sheer duke carelessness, and they argued the length of every gravel path. He brought up subjects he knew would provoke her simply to watch her chin come up and her eyes catch fire.

He had spent his whole guarded life surrounded by people who agreed with everything he said, and he had grown to despise it. And here was a woman who agreed with almost nothing and respected him more for the fight than any of them had for their bowing. You provoke me on purpose, she accused him on the fifth such walk, stopping beneath an arch of late roses.

You say things you cannot possibly believe, only to see me rise to them like a trout to a fly. It is a very low sort of sport, your grace. It is, he admitted, it is the best sport I have had in years. I have no defense. I have given up looking for one. She studied him, and for once she did not have a reply ready, and the Duke of Ashford, who had been guarded so long he had half forgotten there was anything beneath the guard, took a breath and set the guard down.

“Miss Hail,” he said, “Beatrice, I came here certain of myself, as I am certain of everything, and you have spent a week proving to me that certainty is the cheapest thing a man can own. I do not know when it happened.” Somewhere between the soup and the roses, I stopped wishing to win the argument and began wishing only that it would never end.

I find I cannot abide the thought of a dinner table without you across it telling me I am wrong. Her cheeks had gone pink, but her chin stayed level because she was beatress hail and would not have lowered it for the king himself. You are a duke, she said. You might have anyone, a clever, biddable creature who would never contradict you and would make your life smooth as glass.

I should rather be dashed against the rocks daily, said Sebastian, than live one hour of a life smooth as glass. I do not want a creature who never contradicts me. I want the only woman in England who told me I was wrong before the fish, and meant it, and was right. He took her hand. She let him marry me, Beatatrice.

Argue with me for the rest of my life. I promise you shall win at least half the time, which is more than any other man would dare offer, and very much more than I deserve. For a long moment she only looked at him, and he braced himself, because she was perfectly capable of refusing a duke on principle, and informing him of his faults while she did it.

half the time, she said at last slowly. I shall hold you to it in writing. In writing, he agreed gravely. Witnessed and sealed. And you concede the wear. I conceded the wear on the first night. You maddening woman. I simply enjoyed the argument too much to say so. And then Beatrice Hail laughed, the real unguarded laugh he had been provoking her toward for a week, and she did not pull her hand from his, and the Duke of Ashford understood that he had not lost a single argument that mattered, but had, in losing all the small ones, won

the only thing he had ever truly wanted. They were married in the spring in the small gray church near her father’s modest house, and the great families who had spent years presenting their flawless daughters to the Duke of Asheford could not for the life of them understand it, that he should choose a sharp tonged country girl of no fortune, who by every account contradict him in public, and appeared to enjoy it.

They did not understand it because they had never once in all their boeing given him anything he could not have bought and Beatrice had given him on the very first night. The one thing his rank had stolen from him long ago which was an honest fight and an honest voice and the certainty that when this woman said she admired him, she meant it, having considered all the evidence and found him against her own better judgment worth admiring.

On the evening of their wedding, when the small church had emptied and the candles gutted, he found his wife in the garden of his great house, regarding his roses with a critical eye. “They are pruned all wrong,” she said without turning. “Your gardener is a fool. We shall have to take him in hand.” We, said the Duke of Ashford, coming to stand beside her, shall argue about it for the next 40 years, and I shall lose, and I shall be glad.

” She turned then, and looked up at him in the last of the light, and the spark was still there, but there was something gentler beneath it now, something that had grown in the spaces between all their quarrels. I told you that you were wrong about a great many things. She said softly on the very first night. You did, he said.

You were right about every one of them, but the last. He drew her close, and she came willingly, which from Beatress Hail was a confession worth more than any other woman’s vows. You said a duke was only a man with more land and fewer people willing to disagree with him. But you disagreed with me, Beatatrice.

From the soup to the roses and beyond, you saw the man and not the land. And so I am not only a man with more land at all. I am a man who is loved by the one person in the world who never once let him get away with anything. And I would not trade that for every smooth and silent kingdom under heaven.

The Arrogant Duke of Ashforde Came to Her Family’s Dinner — and It Was Love at First Fight

You will forgive me, your grace, but you are wrong about the river, and you are wrong about my father, and if you continue to be wrong with quite so much confidence, I shall be obliged to correct you in front of the soup. The Duke of Ashford set down his spoon. He had come to this modest country house upon a matter of business, a question of water rights, and an old wear that his steward had bungled, expecting an evening of dull deference, and an early departure.

He had not expected to be contradicted before the second course by a sharp-eyed young woman seated halfway down the table, who had been watching him through the whole of the first, with an expression he could only describe as amused. I beg your pardon, said Sebastian in the tone that generally ended conversations.

You needn’t beg it, said Beatrice Hail pleasantly. I give it freely. I only meant to spare you the embarrassment of laying out your argument at length before discovering it has a hole in the middle large enough enough to float a barge through, which incidentally is rather the trouble with the wear. Her father, a mild gentleman at the head of the table, made a faint strangled noise into his wine.

Her mother had gone the color of the tablecloth. The Duke of Ashford was aware of all of it, and aware, too, that the young woman herself appeared entirely untroubled, buttering a piece of bread, as she had not just told a duke he was a fool in his own borrowed dining room. and the whole Miss Hail, he said, since you are so certain of it, enlighten me.

You claim the weir diverts water that is rightfully yours, said Beatatrice. But the weir has stood for 60 years, which under the doctrine of ancient use makes the flow my fathers by long custom, whatever your map says. Your steward has shown you the deed and not the calendar. Men so often forget that time is a kind of law.

She looked up at him, her chin lifting, candle light catching the spark in her eyes. I should have thought a duke would know that better than anyone. You are, after all, mostly made of inherited things. There was a silence of the sort that prec is either a storm or a duel. And the Duke of Ashford, who had not been genuinely surprised by another human being in a great many years, discovered that he wanted very much to laugh.

He did not, of course. He had a reputation to consider, and a wear, and a great deal of pride that had never once in his life been pricricked at a country dinner table by a gentleman’s daughter in a dress that had been turned at least once. But something in him came suddenly and unexpectedly awake, the way a man wakes when cold water is thrown over a long and tedious sleep.

Mostly made of inherited things, he repeated. You have a tongue, Miss Hail. I have two ears and a working memory besides your grace, which between them make a tongue almost unnecessary, though I confess I am fond of mine,” she smiled at him, and it was not a meek smile. “Shall I be silent now? I find I usually ought to have been about 10 minutes ago.

” “No,” said Sebastian, before he had quite decided to say it. “No, go on. You are the first interesting thing to happen to me in a month, and I am reluctant to see it end before the fish. What followed was not at all the dinner he had intended to have. They argued. They argued about the wear and then about the law and then the wear we quite forgotten.

About whether a man owed anything to tenants he had never met, about books she had read and he had only pretended to. About whether ambition was a virtue or merely vanity that had got out of bed early. Her family watched in mounting horror, certain their daughter was destroying them with every sentence. But the Duke of Asheford leaned forward over his untouched plate and gave back as good as he got.

and felt for the first time in longer than he could name, that he was speaking to a person, rather than to his own reflection in the polished manners of the world. She was wrong about a great many things. He told her so. She was infuriatingly right about rather more and she told him so. And he found that being told so by Beatrice Hail was an experience entirely unlike told anything by anyone else.

Because she did not do it to flatter him or to fear him or to gain anything at all. She did it because she believed it, and because she had decided plainly and from the first course that a duke was just a man with more land and fewer people willing to disagree with him, and that this lost was a deficiency she was happy to remedy.

“You are the most exasperating woman I have ever had the misfortune to dine with,” he informed her somewhere past the pudding. and you, your grace, are the most exasperating man, which makes us very well matched in exactly one respect, and that respect is exasperation.” She rose with the ladies, for the meal had ended, and he had not noticed.

At the door she paused and looked back at him. “Thank you for not having me thrown into the river. I was nearly certain you would for the first quarter hour.” The thought said Sebastian had a brief and pleasant life. She laughed and was gone. And the Duke of Ashford sat among the gentlemen in the port and did not hear a single word any of them said.

He should have settled the matter of the wear and left the next morning. He stayed awake. He told himself it was the dispute which was complicated, though in truth he had decided to concede it before he had finished his second glass of port. Having realized she was correct about the calendar, he found reasons to call.

He walked in the hail gardens and Beatatrice walked with him because she said someone had to ensure he did not trample the roses out of sheer duke carelessness, and they argued the length of every gravel path. He brought up subjects he knew would provoke her simply to watch her chin come up and her eyes catch fire.

He had spent his whole guarded life surrounded by people who agreed with everything he said, and he had grown to despise it. And here was a woman who agreed with almost nothing and respected him more for the fight than any of them had for their bowing. You provoke me on purpose, she accused him on the fifth such walk, stopping beneath an arch of late roses.

You say things you cannot possibly believe, only to see me rise to them like a trout to a fly. It is a very low sort of sport, your grace. It is, he admitted, it is the best sport I have had in years. I have no defense. I have given up looking for one. She studied him, and for once she did not have a reply ready, and the Duke of Ashford, who had been guarded so long he had half forgotten there was anything beneath the guard, took a breath and set the guard down.

“Miss Hail,” he said, “Beatrice, I came here certain of myself, as I am certain of everything, and you have spent a week proving to me that certainty is the cheapest thing a man can own. I do not know when it happened.” Somewhere between the soup and the roses, I stopped wishing to win the argument and began wishing only that it would never end.

I find I cannot abide the thought of a dinner table without you across it telling me I am wrong. Her cheeks had gone pink, but her chin stayed level because she was beatress hail and would not have lowered it for the king himself. You are a duke, she said. You might have anyone, a clever, biddable creature who would never contradict you and would make your life smooth as glass.

I should rather be dashed against the rocks daily, said Sebastian, than live one hour of a life smooth as glass. I do not want a creature who never contradicts me. I want the only woman in England who told me I was wrong before the fish, and meant it, and was right. He took her hand. She let him marry me, Beatatrice.

Argue with me for the rest of my life. I promise you shall win at least half the time, which is more than any other man would dare offer, and very much more than I deserve. For a long moment she only looked at him, and he braced himself, because she was perfectly capable of refusing a duke on principle, and informing him of his faults while she did it.

half the time, she said at last slowly. I shall hold you to it in writing. In writing, he agreed gravely. Witnessed and sealed. And you concede the wear. I conceded the wear on the first night. You maddening woman. I simply enjoyed the argument too much to say so. And then Beatrice Hail laughed, the real unguarded laugh he had been provoking her toward for a week, and she did not pull her hand from his, and the Duke of Ashford understood that he had not lost a single argument that mattered, but had, in losing all the small ones, won

the only thing he had ever truly wanted. They were married in the spring in the small gray church near her father’s modest house, and the great families who had spent years presenting their flawless daughters to the Duke of Asheford could not for the life of them understand it, that he should choose a sharp tonged country girl of no fortune, who by every account contradict him in public, and appeared to enjoy it.

They did not understand it because they had never once in all their boeing given him anything he could not have bought and Beatrice had given him on the very first night. The one thing his rank had stolen from him long ago which was an honest fight and an honest voice and the certainty that when this woman said she admired him, she meant it, having considered all the evidence and found him against her own better judgment worth admiring.

On the evening of their wedding, when the small church had emptied and the candles gutted, he found his wife in the garden of his great house, regarding his roses with a critical eye. “They are pruned all wrong,” she said without turning. “Your gardener is a fool. We shall have to take him in hand.” We, said the Duke of Ashford, coming to stand beside her, shall argue about it for the next 40 years, and I shall lose, and I shall be glad.

” She turned then, and looked up at him in the last of the light, and the spark was still there, but there was something gentler beneath it now, something that had grown in the spaces between all their quarrels. I told you that you were wrong about a great many things. She said softly on the very first night. You did, he said.

You were right about every one of them, but the last. He drew her close, and she came willingly, which from Beatress Hail was a confession worth more than any other woman’s vows. You said a duke was only a man with more land and fewer people willing to disagree with him. But you disagreed with me, Beatatrice.

From the soup to the roses and beyond, you saw the man and not the land. And so I am not only a man with more land at all. I am a man who is loved by the one person in the world who never once let him get away with anything. And I would not trade that for every smooth and silent kingdom under heaven.