The Duke and I (Bridgertons, #1)(41)

Simon decided he had a great deal of respect for Violet Bridgerton.

But even still, she managed to completely confuse him with a question and a smile. "Tell me, your grace," she said, "are you busy tomorrow?"

Despite her blond and blue-eyed coloring, she looked so like Daphne as she asked him this question that he was momentarily befuddled. Which had to be the only reason he didn't bother to think before he stammered, "N-no. Not that I recall."

"Excellent!" Violet exclaimed, beaming. "Then you must join us on our outing to Greenwich."

"Greenwich?" Simon echoed.

"Yes, we've been planning a family outing for several weeks now. We thought we'd take a boat, then perhaps have a picnic on the shores of the Thames." Violet smiled at him confidently.

"You'll come, won't you?"

"Mother," Daphne interjected, "I'm certain the duke has any number of commitments."

Violet gave Daphne a look so frigid Simon was surprised that neither one of them turned to ice.

"Nonsense," Violet replied. "He just said himself that he wasn't busy." She turned back to Simon.

"And we shall be visiting the Royal Observatory as well, so you needn't worry that this will be a mindless jaunt. It's not open to the public, of course, but my late husband was a great patron, so we are assured entry."

Simon looked at Daphne. She just shrugged and apologized with her eyes. He turned back to Violet. "I'd be delighted."

Violet beamed and patted him on the arm.



And Simon had the sinking sensation that his fate had just been sealed.





Chapter 8


It has reached This Author's ears that the entire Bridgerton family (plus one duke!) embarked upon a journey to Greenwich on Saturday .

It has also reached This Author's ears that the aforementioned duke, along with a certain member of the Bridgerton family, returned to London very wet indeed .

Lady Whistledown's Society Papers, 3 May 1813



If you apologize to me one more time," Simon said, leaning his head back against his hands, "I may have to kill you."

Daphne shot him an irritated look from her position in her deck chair on the small yacht her mother had commissioned to take the entire family—and the duke, of course—to Greenwich.

"Pardon me," she said, "if I am polite enough to apologize for my mother's quite obvious manipulations. I thought that the purpose of our little charade was to shield you from the tender mercies of matchmaking mothers."

Simon waved off her comment, as he settled deeper into his own chair. "It would only be a problem if I were not enjoying myself."

Daphne's chin lurched backward slightly in surprise.

"Oh," she said (stupidly, in her opinion). "That's nice."

He laughed. "I am inordinately fond of boat travel, even if it is just down to Greenwich, and besides, after spending so much time at sea, I rather fancy a visit to the Royal Observatory to see the Greenwich Meridian." He cocked his head in her direction. "Do you know much about navigation and longitude?"

She shook her head. "Very little, I'm afraid. I must confess I'm not even certain what this meridian here at Greenwich is. "

"It's the point from which all longitude is measured. It used to be that sailors and navigators measured longitudinal distance from their point of departure, but in the last century, the astronomer royal decided to make Greenwich the starting point."

Daphne raised her brows. "That seems rather self-important of us, don't you think, positioning



ourselves at the center of the world?"

"Actually, it's quite convenient to have a universal reference point when one is attempting to navigate the high seas."

She still looked doubtful. "So everyone simply agreed on Greenwich? I find it difficult to believe that the French wouldn't have insisted upon Paris, and the Pope, I'm sure, would have preferred Rome..."

"Well, it wasn't an agreement, precisely," he allowed with a laugh. "There was no official treaty, if that is what you mean. But the Royal Observatory publishes an excellent set of charts and tables each year—it's called the Nautical Almanac. And a sailor would have to be insane to attempt to navigate the ocean without one on board. And since the Nautical Almanac measures longitude with Greenwich as zero ... well, everyone else has adopted it as well."

"You seem to know quite a bit about this."

He shrugged. "If you spend enough time on a ship, you learn."

"Well, I'm afraid it wasn't the sort of thing one learned in the Bridgerton nursery." She cocked her head to the side in a somewhat self-deprecating manner. "Most of my learning was restricted to what my governess knew."

"Pity," he murmured. Then he asked, "Only most?"

"If there was something that interested me, I could usually find several books to read on the topic in our library."

"I would wager then, that your interests did not lie in abstract mathematics."

Daphne laughed. "Like you, you mean? Hardly, I'm afraid. My mother always said that it was a wonder I could add high enough to put shoes on my feet."

Simon winced.