“You’re a duke,” Ben pointed out with a shrug. “Even though you’re our brother, we still have to bow and scrape a bit. We wouldn’t want you to grow totally despondent. You have important work to do.”
“Damnation,” he groaned, realizing just how right she was, and it was worse than getting popped on the jaw. “Please, God, don’t make that woman right again.”
Both of his brothers broke out laughing, a deep, booming sound.
“Lady Beatrice is a force to be reckoned with; there’s no question,” Ben proclaimed happily. “We think you should just yield to her right away.”
He jerked his chin back, astonished at this suggestion. “Dukes do not yield.”
“I have a handkerchief,” Ben declared, reaching into his coat beside him. “You could wave the white flag at her on your next meeting.”
“I already met her today,” he finally confessed, leaning against the ropes of the ring. “And I have no intention of admitting defeat.”
He’d promised her a boxing lesson, of course, but that didn’t have to be for the next few days.
He needed time away from her to gather himself, to fortify himself, to make sure he did not fall victim to her prowess in verbal battle again. No, when he saw her next, he’d be prepared. He would not fall under the mercy of her delicious argument, because that’s exactly what it was. Delicious.
Bloody hell, she loved to argue, and it was an incredible thing to behold.
He had not been lying yesterday when he’d said that she would make a wonderful lawyer. She would have been an excellent parliamentarian, too, if only she’d been born a man.
But she had not. And that was a great loss to them all.
“Oh my God,” Ben breathed.
Kit nodded, his brow furrowing with dramatic horror. “I see it, too.”
“See what?” Will demanded.
“You are besotted with Lady Beatrice,” Ben announced.
“I am not,” he said. “I will never fall in love. I will not be ruled by emotion.”
“Emotion is not bad, brother; it’s part of human nature,” Ben said earnestly.
He blew out a derisive sound. “I do not give in to human nature.”
He’d spent years ensuring it to be so. He couldn’t make the same mistakes his parents had made.
“You’re not a Stoic, no matter what you say,” Kit added. “You cannot convince me that you are a modern Cato.”
“I am.” In fact, his admiration of the Stoics was one of the reasons he rose so early, took cold baths, and worked so hard. Detachment from emotion was the only way to live. Otherwise…one was merely twisting in the wind.
Ben stood and tsked as he picked up his cravat, clearly deciding to give boxing a miss. “No matter how many cold baths you take, you have the soul of a lover.”
“A lover? No. A man of action,” he countered.
“Yes, you are indeed a man who makes the world turn,” Kit agreed. “But you are passionate, too.”
As if warming to this and loving his own current state of bliss, Kit continued on in the arrogance only a man in love could have. “And you shall fall to Beatrice. Make no mistake. I see it in your future. She shall conquer you, and you shall have to surrender to her and get down on one knee and—”
“Kit!” he said. “I should hate to make Margaret a widow before a wife, if only because Lady Beatrice would likely turn my guts into garters.”
“You must marry eventually,” Ben stated factually.
He did not meet his brothers’ gazes as he vaulted over the ropes and queried, “Must I?”
“Indeed,” Kit proclaimed cheekily as he pulled his waistcoat on, wincing slightly. “For you must people the world with a little duke and as many lords and ladies as possible to ensure our line stretches on to infinity.”