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was precisely how long this walk would take if she allowed him to continue boasting.
    “Your Grace, I was wondering—”
    “Why I invited you here?”
    She had wondered precisely that. Glancing at his face, she found him staring at her with such intensity, with such complete concentration, she also wondered if she didn’t have a seed from a strawberry stuck to her teeth or a flake of skin peeling from the tip of her nose.
    “Well yes, I mean no.” Babbling was doubtless an attractive quality in any young lady. Perhaps she should not have spoken until seven, certainly not six, or perhaps even eight…
    “I was wondering if I might ask you for your assistance.”
    His expression hardened. “Was Lord Westbrook less than amiable, Miss Farrington?”
    What had the earl to do with her requiring the duke’s assistance? “He was a complete gentleman. What I mean to say, is that I was—”
    “Then he did not say something to which you might take offense?” the duke pressed, the lines on his forehead deepening as he stood watching her.
    “No, not that I am aware—”
    “And my mother’s guests?” the duke continued. “Are they agreeable, Miss Farrington? I’m afraid they can be a bit slow to welcome those outside their circle.”
    Would he never allow her to finish a statement before interrupting her with an officious inquiry? “I have found them to be…most welcoming.” For sharks.
    The duke laughed, a deep rich velvety laugh that made her want to join in with him. “Now I know you to be untruthful.”
    Untruthful. So that was how a duke described blatant mendacity. “I did not mean to give offense, Your Grace.”
    The duke placed a hand on top of hers. Despite her exasperation, his comforting palm warmed her. “No need to apologize, Miss Farrington. Tell me,” he said, no doubt attempting to spare her from further embarrassment, “how does London compare to Boston?”
    Daphne nearly rolled her eyes in exasperation. How in heaven’s name had the conversation veered from her original request to a debate about two unequal and incomparable cities?
    “It would not be fair to compare pearls with oysters, Your Grace.”
    “I’m pleased to hear London has captured your admiration, Miss Farrington. She has much to offer, does she not?”
    Daphne pictured the Mary Frances slipping into the Pool of London without her, and yet the image did no good to stave her retort. “I’m afraid you misunderstand. I far prefer Boston, with its tidy shipping yards, to the crude docks onto which I disembarked when I arrived at London’s shore.”
    The duke paused in mid-stride and stared at her. “London may be…rather…dilapidated, in places, but surely you cannot discredit her history. Why, Westminster has been the coronation site of every British monarch since 1066,” he stated, puffing out his chest.
    Daphne retracted her hand and took a step away, her arms brushing against the green leaves of the proper English privet hedge. Of all the things to take pride in, the duke would choose the monarchy. Did he not realize with whom he was speaking? Or where she was from?
    She’d swim home. “Boston has the merit of being free of the tyranny of a controlling and spoiled king.”
    The duke chuckled, his rich laughter eliciting an unexpected, and certainly unwanted, swirl of heat in her chest. “You may be right, Miss Farrington, that Prinny and his father are nothing to brag of. But the culture of Boston surely cannot compare to that of London. Have you visited the British Museum? The marble collection Lord Elgin presented is quite enthralling.”
    Marble? The man was proud of cold and hard stone? Of boring sculptures created by a civilization not even his own?
    “The open forests and vast wilderness surrounding my city are far more alluring to me than some ancient artifacts, Your Grace.” And they were. She could almost smell the fresh pine of the forest mingling with the salty mists swirling in from the