The Duke’s Obsession Bundle (76 page)
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Authors: Grace Burrowes
“I suppose.” She didn’t sound convinced. “Winnie is what matters.”
“She is.” St. Just nodded, but in the part of his mind that processed tactical information even as he faced an opponent in battle, it was still sinking in that Emmie had turned Bothwell down—twice—and wasn’t engaged to anybody.
So now what? A lifetime of tea and apple tarts while they discussed the child? Would she allow that? If so, he could campaign again to win her affections…
Except she didn’t want him, as much as she might from time to time let herself enjoy his affections. No woman would want to lash her life to that of a man who jumped at thunderstorms, woke sweating with nightmares he couldn’t speak of, spent more time with horses than people, and cared nothing for society—nothing
whatsoever
.
“So what do we do?” Emmie asked, her gaze dodging his. “Winnie is growing comfortable here, but I am her mother and her guardian—aren’t I?”
“You are, and you control her funds.”
“But this has become her home,” Emmie pointed out. “You, Lord Val, the animals. She’s lived here for the past few years, but you’ve made it a home for her.”
“You should also know I tried to talk her into going to Cumbria with you and Bothwell. She wasn’t keen on it.”
“Did she give a reason?” Emmie asked, squaring her shoulders.
“She said I was a soldier, and I would not run away, and if she were with you in Cumbria, you would try your damnedest to make Cumbria work, even if you were unhappy there. She had some notion a married woman and a viscountess could just scamper home to my kitchen if she were unhappy.”
“Why would she think that?”
“Because”—St. Just did smile, a crooked, hopeless, self-mocking twist of his lips—“I would have welcomed you with open arms.”
Silence.
Ah, well, he thought. He was just being honest, and ridiculous, but his dignity wasn’t too high a price to pay if it meant Emmie understood what his feelings were. If they were going to have to deal with each other, Emmie couldn’t be teasing him nor flirting nor dallying.
His heart couldn’t take any more of that.
“I beg your pardon?” Emmie asked slowly. “You would have offered me refuge here if Bothwell and I found we did not suit?”
“I would have offered you refuge,” St. Just said, but he wasn’t willing to hide behind that fig leaf. “I would have offered you my adulterous bed, my coin, my home, my anything, Emmie. I know that now.”
Another silence, which left him thinking perhaps his heedless abandonment of dignity had gone quite far enough, because Emmie looked more confused than thrilled with his proclamations.
“I don’t understand, St. Just. I have lied to you and to my daughter. I was under your roof under false pretenses. I have taken advantage of your kindness, and I nearly succeeded in foisting my daughter off on you under the guise of my mendacity. Why would you want to have anything more to do with me?”
“Do you recall my telling you once upon a time that I love you?” St. Just asked, rising, and leaning against the counter, hands in his pockets.
“I do.” She stared at her hands. “It was not under circumstances where such declarations are made with a cool head.”
“We’re in the kitchen now, Emmie,” he said very clearly. “It is late in the afternoon, a pot of tea on the table, and I am of passably sound mind, and sound, if somewhat tired, body. I am also fully clothed, albeit to my regret, as are you: I love you.”
That was not an exercise in sacrificing dignity, he realized. It was an exercise in truth and honesty and regaining dignity. Perhaps for them both. As romantic declarations went, however, it was singularly unimpressive.
“I see.” Emmie got up, chafing her arms as if cold, though the kitchen was the coziest room in the house.
“You don’t believe me,” he said flatly. “You cannot believe me, more like.”
“I am…” Emmie met his eyes fleetingly. “I do not trust myself very far these days, St. Just. You mustn’t think I am attributing my own capacity for untruth to you.”
“I know how your mind works,” he said, advancing on her. “You think it a pity I believe myself to be in love with you, but you can’t help but notice that in some regards, we’d suit, and it would allow us both to have Winnie in our lives. That’s not good enough, Emmie Farnum.”
***
He was speaking very sternly, and for all the tumult inside her, Emmie could hardly focus on the sense of his words. He loved her.
He loved her, and he was rejecting her.
“It’s not good enough?” she asked, folding her arms over her waist.
“Not nearly,” he said, shifting to loom over her. “I know what I am. I left the better part of my sanity on battlefields all over France and Spain. I am a bastard, regardless of whose bastard, and I will fare best if I maintain a mundane little existence here in the most isolated reaches of society, where I can stink of horses and spend most of my day outdoors. I have setbacks, as you call them. I never know when a sound or a word or a memory will rise up and shoot me out of my saddle. Sometimes I drink too much, and often I want to drink too much. But I am human, Emmie. I will not shackle myself to a woman who feels only pity and gratitude and affectionate tolerance for me. I won’t.”
“So what do you want of me?” Emmie asked, bewildered.
He gave a bitter snort of laughter.
“A fairy tale. I wanted a goddamned fairy tale, where you love me and we have Winnie here with us and more children, and they tear all over the property on their ponies and the table is noisy with laughter and teasing and the house always smells wonderful because you are my wife and the genie in our kitchen. On the bad nights, you are there for me to love and to love me, and the bad nights gradually don’t come so often. I want—”
“What?” Emmie asked, her throat constricting with pain. “Devlin, what?”
“Just that,” he said tiredly. “I want that small, mundane, bucolic existence. A wife, children, love, and a shared life here at Rosecroft. That is my idea of what makes peace meaningful. It can’t be built on pity or convenience or simple affection, Em. Not with me. I’ll run you off in less than two years, but we’ll have a child by then, so you’ll stay, and next thing, we’ll have separate bedrooms, and the brandy decanter will seldom stay full for long. I won’t live that way, and I won’t let it happen to you or our children either.”
Another silence, while Emmie’s mind scrambled for what to say.
“But I do love you.”
“Of course you do.” He raised his gaze to the ceiling, a man reaching for the last of his patience, and Emmie felt a consuming fear that if she didn’t convince him of this
now
, then the brandy decanters were
never
going to be full, and he wouldn’t have even one single child to love and to give meaning to the peace he’d fought so hard to secure. “You love that I can keep a roof over your head and that I am attached to your child. Not enough, Em, but thanks for the gesture.” He turned to go, his eyes registering surprise when she stopped him.
“No,” she said, gathering the front of his shirt in her fist. She shook it to emphasize her point and glared up at him.
“No,” she said again. “You will not make such sweeping declarations then stomp off without giving me even a minute to recover. You will stay here in this kitchen and hear me out, Devlin St. Just. You will.” He nodded carefully, and she let his shirt go then smoothed it down with an incongruous little pat of her hand.
“Thank you,” she said, returning his nod. What to say? What on earth to say to make him believe her?
“I love you,” she said slowly, her hand returning to stroke down his chest again, “because you wrestle with stone walls when you’d rather drink yourself mindless. I love you because you take my recipes seriously and you gave me your apple tart recipe, asking nothing in return. I love you because it matters to you when I cry and when Winnie is scared and difficult and lost. I love you because you pray for dead horses and you bought that awful, stinky dog so Winnie wouldn’t be so lonely. You went to see Rose and you forgave your mother and you’ve fought and fought and fought…”
She leaned in against him, her arms around his waist, while his remained at his sides.
“You fought for Winnie,” she went on, voice breaking. “You fought my stupid, wrongheaded schemes for Winnie, so Winnie wouldn’t suffer what you did, so I wouldn’t die of a broken heart as your m-mother did. I love you because you fought so hard… I surrender, Devlin St. Just. I love you, and I surrender for all time.”
She wept against him, not even registering when his arms slowly crept around her nor when his chin rested against her temple.
“You surrender?” he murmured quietly, his hands rubbing slow circles on her back. “Unconditionally?”
“Not unconditionally,” Emmie replied through her tears. “I demand you take me prisoner.”
“It will be my pleasure,” St. Just replied. “But, Em? I surrender, too.”
And thus, for the first time in history, did all sides win the war, even as they were also captured—foot, horse, heart, and cannon—by their opponents for all time.
Thanks go to my editor, Deb Werksman, who spotted what needed polishing and made the rest of this story shine brighter as a result, and to the crew at Sourcebooks, Inc., who take straw and spin it into gold—Cat, Susie, Skye, my very skilled copy editor, the art, marketing and bookmaking departments, Danielle, and others who are the unsung heroes of the book you’re holding in your hands. A very particular thanks goes to author Robin Kaye, who—despite her own maniac schedule (three teenagers, enough said)—read the manuscript when I was in a dither and prevented me from doing Something Stupid to the ending when my courage was wavering (again).
And thanks to my readers. The pleasure you take in my books is small compared to how much it means to me that you enjoy them.
Copyright © 2011 by Grace Burrowes
Cover and internal design © 2011 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover illustration by Anne Cain
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
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Joer, we are in awe of you.
“My best advice is to give up playing the piano.”
Lord Valentine Windham neither moved nor changed his expression when he heard his friend—a skilled and experienced physician—pronounce sentence. Being the youngest of five boys and named Valentine—for God’s sake—had given him fast reflexes, abundant muscle, and an enviable poker face. Being called the baby boy any time he’d shown the least tender sentiment had fired his will to the strength of iron and given him the ability to withstand almost any blow without flinching.
But this… This was diabolical, this demand David made of him. To give up the one mistress Val loved, the one place he was happy and competent. To give up the home he’d forged for his soul despite his ducal father’s ridicule, his mother’s anxiety, and his siblings’ inability to understand what music had become to him.
He closed his eyes and drew breath into his lungs by act of will. “For how long am I to give up my music?”
Silence, until Val opened his eyes and glanced down at where his left hand, aching and swollen, lay uselessly on his thigh.
David sat beside him, making a polite pretense of surveying the surrounding paddocks and fields. “You are possibly done with music for the rest of your life, my friend. The hand might heal but only if you rest it until you’re ready to scream with frustration. Not just days, not just weeks, and by then you will have lost some of the dexterity you hone so keenly now. If you try too hard or too soon to regain it, you’ll make the hand worse than ever.”
“Months?” One month was forever when a man wanted only to do the single thing denied him.
“At least. And as long as I’m cheering you up, you need to watch for the condition to arise in the other hand. If you catch it early, it might need less extensive treatment.”
“Both hands?” Val closed his eyes again and hunched in on himself, though the urge to kick the stone wall where they sat—hard, repeatedly, like a man beset with murderous frustration—was nigh overwhelming.
“It’s possible both hands will be affected,” David went on. “Your left hand is more likely in worse condition because of the untreated fracture you suffered as a small boy. You’re right-handed, so it’s also possible the right hand is stronger out of habit.”
Val roused himself to gather as many facts from David as he could. “Is the left weak, then?”
“Not weak, so much.” David, Viscount Fairly, pursed his lips. “It seems to me you have something like gout or rheumatism in your hand. It’s inflamed, swollen, and painful without apparent cause. The test will be if you rest it and see improvement. That is not the signal to resume spending all hours on the piano bench, Valentine.”
“It’s the signal to what? All I do is spend hours on the piano bench and occasionally escort my sisters about Town.”
“It’s the signal you’re dealing with a simple inflammation from overuse, old son.” David slid a hand to Val’s nape and shook him gently. “Many people lead happy, productive lives without gluing their arses to the piano bench for twenty hours a day. Kiss some pretty girls; sniff a few roses; go see the Lakes.”
Val shoved off the wall, using only his right hand for balance. “I know you mean well, but I don’t
want
to do anything but play the piano.”
“And I know what you want.” David hopped down to fall in step beside Val. “What you want has gotten you a hand that can’t hold a teacup, and while that’s not fair and it’s not right, it’s also not yet permanent.”
“I’m whining.” Val stopped and gazed toward the manor house where David’s viscountess was no doubt tucking in their infant daughter for the evening. “I should be thanking you for bothering with me.”
“I am flattered to be of service. And you are not to let some idiot surgeon talk you into bleeding it.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am absolutely sure of that. No bleeding, no blisters, no surgery, and no peculiar nostrums. You tend it as you would any other inflammation.”
“Which would mean?” Val forced himself to ask. But what would it matter, really? He might get the use of his hand back in a year, but how much conditioning and skill would he have lost by then? He loved his mistress—his muse—but she was jealous and unforgiving as hell.
“Rest,” David said sternly as they approached the house. “Cold soaks, willow bark tea by the bucket, and at all costs, avoid the laudanum. If you can find a position where the hand is comfortable, you might consider sleeping with it splinted like that. Massage, if you can stand it.”
“As if I had some tired old man’s ailment. You’re sure about the laudanum? It’s the only thing that lets me keep playing.”
“Laudanum lets you continue to aggravate it,” David shot back. “It masks the pain, it cures nothing, and it can become addictive.”
A beat of silence went by. Val nodded once, as much of an admission as he would make.
“Christ.” David stopped in his tracks. “How long have you been using it?”
“Off and on for months. Not regularly. What it gives in ability to keep playing, it takes away in ability to focus on what I’m creating. The pain goes away, but so does both manual and mental dexterity. And I can still see my hand is swollen and the wrong color.”
“Get rid of the poppy. It has a place, but I don’t recommend it for you.”
“I comprehend.”
“You think your heart’s breaking,” David said, “but you still have that hand, Valentine, and you can do many, many things with it. If you treat it right now, someday you might be able to make music with it again.”
“Is there anything you’re not telling me?” Val asked, his tone flat.
“Well, yes,” David replied as they gained the back terraces of the manor house. “There’s another possibility regarding the onset of the symptoms.”
“More good news?”
“Perhaps.” David met his gaze steadily, which was slightly disconcerting. In addition to height and blond good looks, David Worthington, Viscount Fairly, had one blue eye and one green eye. “With a situation like this, where there is no immediate trauma, no exposure to disease, no clear cause for the symptoms, it can be beneficial to look at other aspects of well-being.”
“In the King’s English, David, please.” Much more of David’s learned medical prosing on, and Val was going to break a laudanum bottle over his friend’s head.
“Sickness can originate in the emotions,” David said quietly. “The term ‘broken heart’ can be literal, and you did say the sensations began just after you buried your brother Victor.”
“As we were burying Victor,” Val corrected him, not wanting to think of the pain he’d felt as he scooped up a symbolic fistful of cold earth to toss on Victor’s coffin. “What in the hell does that have to do with whether I can ever again thunder away at Herr Beethoven’s latest sonata?”
“That is for you to puzzle out, as you’ll have ample time to ponder on it, won’t you?”
“Suppose I will at that.”
Val felt David’s arm land across his shoulders and made no move to shrug it off, though the last thing he wanted was pity. The numbness in his hand was apparently spreading to the rest of him—just not quickly enough.
***
“You seem to be thriving here, Cousin.”
“I am quite comfortable.” Ellen FitzEngle smiled at Frederick Markham, Baron Roxbury, with determined pleasantness. The last thing she needed was to admit vulnerability to him or to let him see he had any impact on her existence at all. She smoothed her hair back with a steady hand and leveled a guileless gaze at her guest, enemy, and de facto landlord.
“Hmm.” Frederick glanced around the tidy little cottage, a condescending smile implying enormous satisfaction at Ellen’s comedown in the world. “Not quite like Roxbury House, is it? Nor in a league with Roxbury Hall.”
“But manageable for a widow of limited means. Would you like more tea?”
“’Fraid I can’t stay.” Frederick rose, his body at twenty-two still giving the impression of not having grown into his arms and legs, despite expensive clothing and fashionable dark curls. She knew he fancied himself something of a Corinthian, paid punctilious attention to his attire, boxed at Gentlemen Jackson’s, fenced at Alberto’s, and accepted any bet involving his racing curricle.
And still, to Ellen, he would always be the gangly, awkward adolescent whose malice she had sorely underestimated. Only five years difference separated their ages, but she felt decades his senior in sorrow and regret.
“I did want to let you know, though”—Frederick paused with his hand on the door latch—“I’ll likely be selling the place. A fellow has expenses, and the solicitors are deuced tightfisted with the Roxbury funds.”
“My thanks for the warning.” Ellen nodded, refusing to show any other reaction. Selling meant she could be homeless, of course, for she occupied a tenant cottage on the Markham estate. The new owner might allow her to stay on. Her property was profitable, but she didn’t have a signed lease—she’d not put it past Freddy to tamper with the deed—and so the new owner might also toss her out on her backside.
“Thought it only sporting to let you know.” Frederick opened the door and swung his gaze out to his waiting vehicle. A tiger held the reins of the restive bays, and Ellen had to wonder how such spirited horses navigated the little track leading to her door. “Oh, and I almost forgot.” Freddy’s smile turned positively gleeful. “I brought you a little something from the Hall.”
Dread seeped up from Ellen’s stomach, filling her throat with bile and foreboding. Any present from Frederick was bound to bring ill will, if not worse.
Frederick bent into his curricle and withdrew a small potted plant. “You being the gardener in the family, I thought you might like a little cutting from Roxbury. You needn’t thank me.”
“Most gracious of you, nonetheless.” Ellen offered him a cool smile as he put the clay pot into her hands and then climbed aboard. “Safe journey to Town, Frederick.”
He waited, clearly wishing she’d look at the little plant, but then gave up and yelled at his tiger to let the horses go. The child’s grasp hadn’t left the reins before Frederick was cracking the whip, the horses lunging forward and the curricle slewing around in Ellen’s front yard as the boy scrambled up onto his post behind the seat.
And ye gods, ye gods, was Ellen ever glad to see the last of the man. She glanced at the plant in her hand, rolled her eyes, and walked around to the back of her property to toss it, pot and all, on her compost heap.
How like Frederick to give her an herb often used to settle the stomach, while he intimated he’d be tearing the roof from over her head. He’d been threatening for several years now, as winters in Portugal, autumn at Melton, a lengthy stint in London each spring, and expensive friends all around did not permit a man to hold on to decrepit, unentailed estates for long.
She should be grateful she’d had five years to settle in, to grieve, and to heal. She had a few friends in nearby Little Weldon, some nice memories, and some satisfaction with what she’d been able to accomplish on this lovely little property.
And now all that accomplishment was to be taken from her.
She poured herself a cup of tea and took it to her back porch, where the vista was one of endless, riotous flowerbeds. They were her livelihood and her solace, her greatest joy and her most treasured necessity. Sachets and soaps, herbs for cooking, and bouquets for market, they all brought a fair penny, and the pennies added up. Fruits and vegetables created still more income, as did the preserves and pies made from them.
“And if we have to move”—Ellen addressed the fat-headed orange tom cat who strolled up the porch steps—“we have a bit put by now, don’t we, Marmalade?”
Himself squeezed up his eyes in feline inscrutability, which Ellen took for supportive agreement. The cat had been abandoned at the manor house through the wood and had gladly given up a diet of mice for the occasional dish of cream on Ellen’s porch.
His company, though, combined with Frederick’s visit and the threat to her livelihood, put Ellen in a wistful, even lonely mood. She sipped her tea in the waning afternoon light and brought forth the memories that pleased her most. She didn’t visit them often but saved them for low moments when she’d hug them around her like a favorite shawl, the one that always made a girl feel pretty and special.
She thought about her first pony, about the day she’d found Marmalade sitting king-of-all-he-surveyed in a tree near the cottage, like a welcoming committee from the fairy folk. She thought about the flowers she’d put together for all the village weddings, and the flowers on her own wedding day. And she thought about a chance visit from that handsome Mr. Windham, though it had been just a few moments stolen in the evening sunshine, and more than a year had passed since those moments.
Ellen set her chair to rocking, hugged the memory closer still, and banished all thoughts of Frederick, homelessness, and poverty from her mind.
***
A life devoted to any creative art did not develop in the artist an ability to appreciate idleness, much less vice. Val had run his errands, visited his friend Nicholas Haddonfield, paid his duty calls to family—and that had been particularly difficult, as family was spread all over the Home Counties—and tended to every detail of his business he could think to tend to. He’d taken several sessions guest-conducting the Philharmonic Society Orchestra, because he’d promised his friend Edward Kirkland he would, but they were painful afternoons.
And amid all this peripatetic activity, his head was full of music. Mozart’s
Requiem
figured prominently, but it was all he could do not to let his hands wander over any available keyboard, tapping out a little rendition of the simplest nursery rhyme.
He owned two manufactories that built, of course, pianos. One for grands, one for cottage pianos. They did a surprisingly brisk trade, and because the Americans in particular had decided snobbery required well-made English goods, many of the grands were shipped overseas at very significant cost to the buyers.
Val had been in the habit of personally playing each instrument before releasing it for sale. The temptation to sit down and dabble just a little…
Dabbling, for Val, could go on literally for days. Oh, he’d heed the calls of nature—to eat, sleep, and tend to bodily functions—but when a particular theme got into his brain, earthly concerns were so many intermissions in the ongoing concert that was his life.