Mr. Cavendish, I Presume (15 page)

“Do your parents like each other?” he asked quite suddenly.

She blinked several times in rapid succession, obviously surprised by the change of topic. “My parents?”

“Do they get on?”

“Yes, I suppose.” She paused, and her brow wrinkled adorably as she considered it. “They don’t
do
very much together—their interests really don’t mesh—but I do think they hold each other in some affection. I haven’t given it much thought, to be honest.”

It was not exactly a description of a grand passion, but still, it was so entirely different from his own experience that Thomas could not help but be intrigued.

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She must have noticed the interest on his face, because she continued, “I suppose they must get on.

If they didn’t, I probably
would
have given it much thought, wouldn’t you think?”

He thought about the endless hours he’d wasted thinking about his own parents. He nodded. For all her innocence and guileless speech, she could be extraor-dinarily astute.

“My mother can nag a bit,” she said. “Well, more than a bit. But my father seems not to mind. He knows it is only because she feels it her duty to see all of her daughters settled. Which is of course his wish as well. He just doesn’t wish to be involved in the details of it.”

Thomas found himself nodding approvingly. Daughters had to be an incredible amount of work.

“He humors her for a few minutes,” Amelia continued, “because he knows how much she likes an audience, but then he most often just shakes his head and walks away. I think he is happiest when out of doors, mucking about with his hounds.”

“Hounds?”

“He has twenty-five of them.”

“Gad.”

She grimaced. “We keep trying to convince him it’s got a bit excessive, but he insists that any man with five daughters deserves five times as many hounds.”

He tried to suppress the image in his mind. “Please tell me none are included in your dowry.”

“You should verify,” she said, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “
I’ve
never seen the betrothal papers.”

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His eyes held hers for a long, steady moment, then he said, “That means no.” But she held her blank expression for long enough to make him add, “I hope.”

She laughed. “He could not bear to part with them.

Me, I think he will be happy to get off his hands, but his dogs . . . Never.” And then: “Did your parents get on well?”

He felt himself go grim, and his head began to pound anew. “No.”

She watched his face for a moment, and he was not sure he wanted to know what she saw there, because she looked almost pitying when she said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said briskly. “It is done, and they are dead, and there is nothing to be done about it now.”

“But—” She stopped, her eyes a little sad. “Never mind.”

He didn’t mean to tell her anything. He had never discussed his parents with anyone, not even Harry, and he’d been witness to it all. But Amelia was sitting there so silently, with an expression of such understanding on her face—even though . . . well, she couldn’t possibly understand, not with her gloriously boring and traditional family. But there was something in her eyes, something warm and willing, and it felt as if she
knew
him already, as if she’d known him forever and was merely waiting for him to know her.

“My father hated my mother.” The words fell from his lips before he even realized he was saying them.

Her eyes widened, but she did not speak.

“He hated everything she stood for. She was a cit, you know.”

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She nodded. Of course she knew. Everyone knew. No one seemed to care much anymore, but everyone knew that the most recent duchess had been born without even a connection to a title.

The title. Now that was rich. His father had spent his entire life worshipping at the altar of his own aristoc-racy, and now it seemed he’d never really been the duke at all. Not if Mr. Audley’s parents had had the sense to marry.

“Wyndham?” she said softly.

His head jerked toward her. He must have drifted off in his own thoughts. “Thomas,” he reminded her.

A faint blush spread across her cheeks. Not of embarrassment, he realized, but of delight. The thought warmed him, deep in his belly and then deeper still, to some little corner of his heart that had lain dormant for years.

“Thomas,” she said softly.

It was enough to make him want to say more. “He married her before he gained the title,” he explained.

“Back when he was the third son.”

“One of his brothers drowned, did he not?”

Ah yes, the beloved John, who might or might not have sired a legitimate son of his own.

“The second son, was it not?” Amelia asked quietly.

Thomas nodded, because there was nothing else he could do. He was not about to tell her what had transpired the day before. Good God, it was madness. Less than twenty-four hours earlier he’d been happily kissing her in the garden, thinking it was finally time to Mr. Cavendish, I Presume

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make her his duchess, and now he didn’t even know who he was.

“John,” he forced himself to say. “He was my grandmother’s favorite. His ship went down in the Irish Sea.

And then a year later a fever took the old duke and the heir—both within a week—and suddenly my father had inherited.”

“It must have been a surprise,” she murmured.

“Indeed. No one thought he’d be the duke. He had three choices: the military, the clergy, or marriage to an heiress.” Thomas let out a harsh chuckle. “I cannot imagine anyone was surprised that he chose as he did.

And as for my mother—now here’s the funny part.
Her
family was disappointed as well. More so.”

She drew back, faint surprise coloring her face. “Even marrying into the house of Wyndham?”

“They were wildly rich,” Thomas explained. “Her father owned factories all across the North. She was his only child. They thought for certain they could buy her a title. At the time, my father had none. With little hope of inheriting.”

“What happened?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea. My mother was pretty enough. And she was certainly wealthy enough. But she did not take. And so they had to settle for my father.”

“Who thought he was settling for her,” Amelia guessed.

Thomas nodded grimly. “He disliked her from the moment he married her, but when his two older broth-146 Julia

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ers died and he became duke, he
loathed
her. And he never bothered to hide it. Not in front of me, not in front of anyone.”

“Did she return the sentiment?”

“I don’t know,” Thomas replied, and he realized that it was odd, but he had never asked himself the same question. “She never retaliated, if that is what you are wondering.” He saw his mother in his mind’s eye—

her perpetually stricken face, the constant exhaustion behind her pale blue eyes. “She just . . . accepted it.

Listened to his insults, said nothing in return, and walked away. No. No,” he said, remembering it correctly. “That’s not how it happened. She never walked away. She always waited for him to leave. She would never have presumed to quit a room before he did. She would never have dared.”

“What did she do?” Amelia asked softly.

“She liked the garden,” Thomas recalled. “And when it rained, she spent a great deal of time looking out the window. She didn’t really have many friends. I don’t think . . . ”

He’d been about to say that he could not recall her ever smiling, but then a memory fluttered through his head. He’d been seven, perhaps eight. He’d gathered a small posy of flowers for her. His father was enraged; the blooms had been part of an elaborately planned garden and were not for picking. But his mother had smiled. Right there in front of his father, her face lit up and she smiled.

Strange how he had not thought about that for so many years.

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“She rarely smiled,” he said softly. “Almost never.”

She’d died when he was twenty, just a week before her husband. They’d been taken by the same lung fever.

It had been a terrible, violent way to go, their bodies wracked by coughs, their eyes glazed with exhaustion and pain. The doctor, never one to speak delicately, said they were drowning in their own fluids. Thomas had always thought it bitterly ironic that his parents, who spent their lives avoiding each other, had died, es-sentially, together.

And his father had one last thing to blame her for.

His final words, in fact, were, “She did this.”

“It is why we are here now,” he said suddenly, offering Amelia a dry smile. “Together.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He shrugged, as if none of it mattered. “Your mother was supposed to marry Charles Cavendish, did you know that?”

She nodded.

“He died four months before the wedding,” he said softly and without emotion, almost as if recounting a bit of news from the newspaper. “My father always felt that your mother should have been
his
wife.”

Amelia started with surprise. “Your father loved my mother?”

Thomas chuckled bitterly. “My father loved no one.

But your mother’s family was as old and noble as his own.”

“Older,” Amelia said with a smile, “but not as noble.”

“If my father had known he was to be duke, he would 148 Julia

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never have married my mother.” He looked at her with an unreadable expression. “He would have married yours.”

Amelia’s lips parted, and she started to say something utterly deep and incisive, like, “Oh,” but he continued with:

“At any rate, it was why he was so quick to arrange my betrothal to you.”

“It would have been Elizabeth,” Amelia said softly,

“except that my father wished his eldest to marry the son of his closest friend. He died, though, so Elizabeth had to go to London to look for a match.”

“My father was determined to join the families in the next generation.” Thomas laughed then, but there was an uncomfortable, exasperated note to it. “To rectify the unfortunate mongrelization caused by my mother’s entrance into the bloodlines.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Amelia said, even though she had a feeling he was not being silly at all. Still, she ached for the boy he must have been, growing up in such an unhappy household.

“Oh, no,” he assured her, “he said it quite often. I must marry a noble bride, and I must make certain my sons did the same. It was going to take generations to get the bloodlines back to where they should be.” He grinned at her then, but it was an utterly awful expression. “You, my dear, were meant to be our savior, even at the ripe old age of six months.”

Amelia looked away from him, trying to take this all in. No wonder he had been so uneager to set a date for Mr. Cavendish, I Presume

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the marriage. Who would
want
to marry her, when it was put in such terms?

“Don’t look so somber,” he said, and when she turned back to face him, he reached out and touched her cheek.

“It isn’t
your
fault.”

“It isn’t yours, either,” she said, trying to resist the urge to turn and nuzzle his hand.

“No,” he murmured. “It isn’t.”

And then he leaned forward, and she leaned forward

. . . because she couldn’t
not
lean forward, and even then, as the carriage rocked gently beneath them, he brushed his lips against hers.

She tingled. She sighed. And she would have gladly melted into another kiss, except that they hit an excep-tionally vicious rut in the road, which sent both of them back to their respective seats.

Amelia let out a frustrated snort. Next time she’d figure out how to adjust her balance so she’d land on his seat. It would be so lovely, and even if she happened to find herself in a scandalous position, she’d be (almost) completely blameless.

Except that Thomas looked dreadful. Quite beyond green. The poor man was puce.

“Are you all right?” she asked, very carefully scoot-ing across the carriage so she was not sitting directly across from him.

He said something, but she must have misheard, because it
sounded
like, “I need a radish.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’d kiss you again,” he said, sounding very droll and 150 Julia

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perhaps a bit queasy at the same time, “except that I’m quite certain you would not appreciate it.”

While she was trying to formulate a reply to that, he added, “The next kiss—”

(Brief moment of silence, followed by a grunt, both brought on by another rut.)

He cleared his throat. “The next kiss, you will appreciate.
That
, Amelia, is a vow.”

She was quite sure he was right, because the statement alone made her shiver.

Hugging her arms to her chest, she peered out the window. She’d noticed they were slowing down, and indeed, the carriage had wound into the small court-yard in front of the posting inn. The Happy Hare dated from Tudor times, and its black and white exterior was well-kept and inviting, each window adorned with a flower box, blooming all shades of red and gold. From the jettied upper story hung a rectangular sign featur-ing a toothsome rabbit, standing upright in his Elizabe-than doublet and ruff.

Amelia found it all rather charming and intended to comment, but Thomas was already making for the door.

“Shouldn’t you wait for the carriage to come to a complete stop?” she asked mildly.

His hand went still upon the door handle, and he did not say a word until they had halted completely.

“I’ll be but a moment,” he said, barely looking at her.

“I believe I will accompany you,” she replied.

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He froze, then his head turned slowly toward her.

“Wouldn’t you prefer to remain in the comfort of the carriage?”

If he had been trying to douse her curiosity, he was going about it the wrong way.

“I would like to stretch my legs,” she said, affixing her favorite bland smile onto her face. She’d used it with him a hundred times at least, but not since they had got to know each other a bit. She was no longer sure how well it would work.