He’d convinced her to go on a walk with him and she’d agreed, which had made him feel optimistic. He’d been twenty—he had thought himself so very mature—and young and full of humor; she had walked beside him, letting him twine his hand with hers. He’d gathered up all his courage. He’d made sure they were hidden from prying eyes, and he’d stopped and leaned in, because he’d known her for almost a decade and he’d adored her for approximately the same length of time.
Perhaps it had been a mistake, but the moonlight had lit the light brown of her skin with silver, and nobody had ever accused Jeremy of engaging in lengthy deliberations prior to action. He had tried to kiss her.
She’d set a hand on his chest and said exactly this: “Jeremy, don’t do this unless you can be serious.”
Be serious. He had known precisely what she meant. It hadn’t been a plea for him to stop joking for good; such a thing would have been impossible, and besides, she liked his jokes. She had wanted him to be serious about her. About them. For three minutes, not all of eternity.
If Jeremy had been a farmer in Wedgeford, on the strength of such encouragement, he would have bought a ring and proposed the next day.
But Jeremy was not a farmer. At the time, it had seemed like a fair price to pay for a prize like Chloe—figuring out how to fit her in his life without destroying what he loved best about her. Too bad he’d never succeeded.
So here they were, together again. Jeremy had never been one for plans; he just seized the moments that he found. So he did what he did best: he smiled at her. “That is precisely what you told me. I remember it well. It turns out, that is your list for me, and we have already established that we don’t usually get to make each other’s lists.”
She rolled her eyes and started to turn away. “I wish I could. If I could make your list, I would—”
“I said usually for a reason.” He spread his arms wide, grinning at her. “Congratulations! Here I am to grant your wish!”
The look she gave him would have proven fatal at a slightly lesser distance than the three paces between them.
“Miss Fong,” Jeremy said, thinking as swiftly as he could, “as you know, I am a gentleman of some small amount of property.”
“Yes,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “You’re very wealthy. We all know that; it’s why everyone calls you ‘Posh Jim’ around here.” Her nose wrinkled. “Congratulations. All your riches must be very nice for you.”
Jeremy tried not to grimace. He had actually never said that he was very wealthy. He had tried to avoid the topic altogether. But very wealthy was a horrific understatement, and the misunderstanding on the topic was entirely Jeremy’s fault.
Not that he had ever precisely lied; he had just misled. A little. The first year, he had come to the village unaccompanied at the age of twelve. At the time, it had not seemed prudent to announce to a group of complete strangers that the child who had appeared with no guardian in sight was in fact the very wealthy Duke of Lansing. He’d read books, after all. That was how wealthy dukes who were also children got abducted and held for ransom.
So he had introduced himself as Jeremy Yu. It was not exactly a lie. Yu had been his mother’s name, after all, and it was one of his six names…just not his father’s family name. Selectively editing out all his other names? A slip of the tongue. Neglecting to mention his title? It wasn’t a lie; he left off all his titles but the one during most of his introductions anyway. Deleting that one was just…being selective in his speech. Or something.
The or something had grown. The second year he’d visited, he had been having too much fun to ruin it by forcing everyone to become stuffy and bow to him and call him “Your Grace.” It had been impossible to hide the fact that he had means. His clothing, his accent, his manners, his ability to patronize businesses in Wedgeford… these were all too indicative of his class. But it was easy enough to misdirect. Nobody saw a half-Chinese boy of thirteen and thought, “By George, that child must be a duke.”
By the time the ninth year had rolled around, the information he was withholding had become an increasingly awkward weight. He had friends who knew nothing about him. He was in love with a woman who had no idea who he actually was.
She had told him to be serious; he had realized he was in love with her and wanted to marry her. Then he had recollected that he was the Duke of Lansing and she had absolutely no idea. Finally, he’d remembered that his mother had so hated her life as duchess that she had fled the country with Jeremy in tow the week his father had been put in his grave.
Was that what he was going to offer Chloe? A life she hated? How could he be serious about her under those circumstances?
“I am twenty-three,” he told the woman he was in love with. “Do you know what gentlemen of my age and means are expected to do around the age of twenty-three?”
Her nose wrinkled. “Get in drunken brawls?”
“No, that’s nineteen. At twenty-three, I’m expected to start thinking of marriage. My aunt will not stop bothering me.”
In point of fact, Jeremy was going to have to figure out what, precisely, he would tell his aunt Grace. His aunt always wanted the best for him…but her conception of what was best for her half-Chinese nephew lacked both imagination and experience.
“She insists that I will have to do almost no work in the matter; she’ll find me a few good girls—her words, not mine—and all I must do is give her a list of my criteria.”
Chloe audibly scoffed at this. “My felicitations on your pending nuptials. How lovely for you. You get to pick among the ladies as if you were shopping for apples.”
Jeremy had never actually shopped for apples; he was nonetheless fairly certain that the analogy was inapt on several points, the most prominent being that he had his eye on only one apple, and it was her. “As I said. I have some means available to me.”
Chloe’s eyes narrowed. “You see? This is how you always worm your way in. You’re setting up an interesting story, not telling me all the relevant information, and tricking me so that I end up listening to you when I have no intention of doing so. None of this has anything to do with me, and I am excessively busy. So if you don’t mind, I will—”
“It has four things to do with you.”
“It has zero things to do with me.”
“Three, as a compromise.” Jeremy beamed at her.
She let out a pained breath. “You may recite two. But only two, and then we are finished. Utterly finished.”
“Thank you,” Jeremy said solemnly. “Here is what it has to do with you: I am bad at making lists, and you are exceptionally good at them.”
She tilted her head. “True. I do not, however, see the relevance. We are done. Farewell forever.”
“Second—”
“Absolutely not.” Chloe shook her head. “That was already two things: your ineptitude at list-making and my competence. You don’t get a third. We agreed.”
“That was a single thing: our relative capacity at list making.”
She let out a huff. “You are such a cheat. You have not changed one iota.”
“I do like winning,” Jeremy said. “It is, as you have noted, an ongoing talent of mine. Stop interrupting. Second, if you were to ask me what qualities I wanted on my list for an ideal spouse—if I wanted a list that best reflected my desires—that list would be a list of your qualities.”