“I apologize to your sisters for inferring they were concerned for themselves.” He drew his brows together in thought. “It can be difficult to discern the line between selfish and independent.” He gave a rueful sigh, and Della knew he had to be referring to Lord Arrogance.

“What happened?” Della asked in a quiet voice.

The duke shrugged again. “Griffith has always found himself on the other side of the usual opinion. His parents—my father’s brother and his wife—didn’t make it easy on him either. They wanted him to conform, and he wasn’t built that way.” He snorted. “Literally. I mean, it’s impossible for him to fit in anywhere, given his size.”

“And then he ran off to sea? He must have been so young.” Younger than she was, even, when she made her disastrous mistake. Although the mistake had brought Nora to her, and eventually Sarah. So perhaps not a mistake after all.

“He was sixteen.” The duke took a deep breath. “I helped him go. I gave him money, I kept his parents from discovering where he had gone until it was too late for them to fetch him. Even though I was terrified my own father would punish me.”

“Did he?” Della asked.

The duke shook his head. “No, he didn’t seem to care one way or the other. He had my two older brothers to worry about. I wasn’t even the spare.” He looked up past her head as though struck by a memory. “Griffith was the only one who cared about me.” A pause. “I wish he didn’t have to go through this.”

“Go through what? Return to Society?”

“Yes. Even when we were young, Griffith hated anything that had even the remotest whiff of privilege. It’s ironic that he ended up as a ship captain—in charge of all those people—”

“Capable people who presumably wanted to be aboard,” Della pointed out.

The duke nodded as though conceding her point. “True. He despised having to endure what he thought were pointless conversations.”

He’d said, but she hadn’t believed him, that he would hate it so much. But now, seeing how the duke spoke about him, she felt more sympathetic toward him. Yes, she had it harder. She was a ruined woman whom nobody wanted to see return to their midst. But given what the duke had said, it seemed as though perhaps Lord Arrogance’s attitude was bluster disguising something else. Shyness? Awkwardness? Self-consciousness?

And she wished she hadn’t had this revelation, because she hadn’t even had relations with him yet and she was already feeling softer toward him.