The Bridgertons Happily Ever After - By Julia Quinn Page 0,10

chair and sat, tugging at the ribbon until the bow fell loose. “Are these in order?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. He sat back down behind his desk. It was far enough away that he couldn’t see the pages.

She gave an acknowledging nod, then carefully broke the seal on the first envelope. Her eyes moved along the lines—or at least he thought they did. The light was too dim to see her expression clearly, but he had seen her reading letters enough times to know exactly what she must look like.

“He had terrible penmanship,” Daphne murmured.

“Did he?” Now that he thought about it, Simon wasn’t sure he’d ever seen his father’s handwriting. He must have done, at some point. But it wasn’t anything he recalled.

He waited a bit longer, trying not to hold his breath as she turned the page.

“He didn’t write on the back,” she said with some surprise.

“He wouldn’t,” Simon said. “He would never do anything that smacked of economization.”

She looked up, her brows arched.

“The Duke of Hastings does not need to economize,” Simon said dryly.

“Really?” She turned to the next page, murmuring, “I shall have to remember that the next time I go to the dressmaker.”

He smiled. He loved that she could make him smile at such a moment.

After another few moments, she refolded the papers and looked up. She paused briefly, perhaps in case he wanted to say anything, and then when he did not, said, “It’s rather dull, actually.”

“Dull?” He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but not this.

Daphne gave a little shrug. “It’s about the harvest, and an improvement to the east wing of the house, and several tenants he suspects of cheating him.” She pressed her lips together disapprovingly. “They weren’t, of course. It is Mr. Miller and Mr. Bethum. They would never cheat anyone.”

Simon blinked. He’d thought his father’s letters might include an apology. Or if not that, then more accusations of inadequacy. It had never occurred to him that his father might have simply sent him an accounting of the estate.

“Your father was a very suspicious man,” Daphne muttered.

“Oh, yes.”

“Shall I read the next?”

“Please do.”

She did, and it was much the same, except this time it was about a bridge that needed repairing and a window that had not been made to his specifications.

And on it went. Rents, accounts, repairs, complaints . . . There was the occasional overture, but nothing more personal than I am considering hosting a shooting party next month, do let me know if you are interested in attending. It was astounding. His father had not only denied his existence when he’d thought him a stuttering idiot, he’d managed to deny his own denial once Simon was speaking clearly and up to snuff. He acted as if it had never happened, as if he had never wished his own son were dead.

“Good God,” Simon said, because something had to be said.

Daphne looked up. “Hmmm?”

“Nothing,” he muttered.

“It’s the last one,” she said, holding the letter up.

He sighed.

“Do you want me to read it?”

“Of course,” he said sarcastically. “It might be about rents. Or accounts.”

“Or a bad harvest,” Daphne quipped, obviously trying not to smile.

“Or that,” he replied.

“Rents,” she said once she’d finished reading. “And accounts.”

“The harvest?”

She smiled slightly. “It was good that season.”

Simon closed his eyes for a moment, as a strange tension eased from his body.

“It’s odd,” Daphne said. “I wonder why he never mailed these to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he didn’t. Don’t you recall? He held on to all of them, then gave them to Lord Middlethorpe before he died.”

“I suppose it was because I was out of the country. He wouldn’t have known where to send them.”

“Oh yes, of course.” She frowned. “Still, I find it interesting that he would take the time to write you letters with no hope of sending them to you. If I were going to write letters to someone I couldn’t send them to, it would be because I had something to say, something meaningful that I would want them to know, even after I was gone.”

“One of the many ways in which you are unlike my father,” Simon said.

She smiled ruefully. “Well, yes. I suppose.” She stood, setting the letters down on a small table. “Shall we go to bed?”

He nodded and walked to her side. But before he took her arm, he reached down, scooped up the letters, and tossed them into the fire. Daphne let out a little gasp as she turned in time