“Is that all you see when you look at me?” he demanded, trapping her in place as he braced both palms against the rough bark of the tree. “Is it?”
“N-no,” she whispered, eyes going wide as her pulse began to race. “No it is not.”
For some reason her admission seemed to cause Doyle immeasurable relief. His entire body relaxed and he even took a step back, although it was only to put enough space between him so he could offer his arm. “Walk with me. Please,” he said quietly when she hesitated.
“All right.” Wrapping her fingers around his firm forearm, she allowed him to lead her further away from the hedgerow. They walked into the gardens which, under Dianna’s tender care, had blossomed into a labyrinth of sweet smelling flowers and plants of all sizes and shapes. “What would you care to discuss?” she queried, peering at him beneath the brim of her bonnet when he remained silent.
With his mouth held in a firm, straight line and his eyes carefully guarded it was impossible to tell what he was thinking or what he was feeling, causing Harper a sharp twinge of apprehension. What if he wanted to call off their engagement? What if he no longer wanted to marry her? What if their courtship - what little there was of it - had been nothing more than a farce? Wouldn’t that be a good thing? But if that was truly the case, why did she suddenly feel sick to her stomach? “Doyle, I-”
Before she could get another word out, however, he suddenly stopped and pivoted so they were standing face to face, chest to chest, hip to hip. He took both of her hands in his and gazed down at her, brandy eyes bright with an emotion she’d never seen before. “I always knew I would have to marry,” he began in a deep, husky voice that sent delicious shivers racing down her spine. “As you love to point out I am a duke, after all, and one of my unspoken duties is to marry well and produce a male heir. I thought of it as a responsibility. An obligation I needed to fulfill.”
A tiny line appeared between Harper’s winged brows as she stared up at him. “What are you trying to say? That you are only marrying me because of a sense of - of duty?”
“No,” he said solemnly. “I am saying I always considered marriage as a burden I would have to bare…until I met you and I realized it wasn’t a burden at all, but a gift. The greatest gift I could ever receive. I did not ask you to marry me out of a sense of duty, Harper.” He squeezed her hands tight, drawing her against his hard chest. Beneath his shirt she felt his heart pounding, and her throat tightened with emotions she couldn’t define, let alone express. “I asked you to marry me because I knew you were the woman I was meant for. You are the woman I am meant for.”
She tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Wetting her lips, she tried again. “You asked me to marry you the first night we met. How could you know all that after one night?”
“Not one night,” he corrected softly. “One minute.”
Harper never knew one could feel the moment they fell in love, but she did. It was like a candle being lit inside of her. The wick caught slowly and sputtered before it burst into flame, filling her with a sense of light and wonder and possibility. It chased away all of her doubts. Her insecurities and her fears. Gazing into the eyes of the man she loved, she couldn’t help but smile. It stretched across her entire mouth, crinkling the corners of her eyes. I’ve fallen in love with you, her smile said. I don’t know how to tell you yet, but I will. I promise. And we are going to be so happy together. So very, very happy. Even though we will, on occasion, most likely disagree. Which truly can’t be helped, given that you are arrogant and I can, very rarely, be somewhat ornery and disagreeable. But we shall work it out. We shall work everything-
“Which is why I cannot marry you.”
“Doyle, I - what?” She jerked out of his embrace and wrapped her arms around herself as goose pimples rose on her pale flesh. “What do you mean, you cannot marry me? We are engaged.”
“Only because my sister saw us together. You must admit, had she not we wouldn’t be standing here now. If we married, I wouldn’t be doing it out a sense of obligation…but you would, Harper. And I could not live with myself knowing I had forced you into something you never wanted.” He reached for her but she flinched away, guarding her body as she should have been guarding her heart.
Stupid, she thought as her eyes burned with tears she refused to let fall. You should have known better.
This was the feeling she’d been trying to avoid. This was the hurt she’d kept hidden beneath layers of sarcasm and witty quips. It washed over her in a dark, ruthless wave, dimming the light inside of her until all that was left was anger and outrage and fury. Had she truly thought, even for a second, that Doyle would be different? That he was somehow special? That he wouldn’t leave her?
“Call it off then,” she spat with a wide sweep of her arm. “The engagement. The wedding. Call it all off.”
“Harper, I meant what I said.” He reached for her again and again she twisted to the side, remaining just out of reach, knowing that if he touched her now her grief would overwhelm her anger and right now her anger was the only thing she wanted. The only thing she understand.
“Oh yes,” she said with a high, mocking laugh that tasted bitter on her tongue. “You want to marry me so much you do not want to marry me. It all makes perfect sense.
Doyle’s jaw tightened. “That is not what I meant. If you would let me explain-”
“I believe I have had my fill of explanations, thank you very much. I would like you to leave now.”
“Harper-”
“Leave,” she hissed, pointing towards the road. “And it is Lady Harper to you. After all, we are no longer engaged.”
CHAPTER NINE
Three Weeks Later
Winfield Manor
“Are you going to be like this for very much longer?” Charlotte queried as she walked into the library with her daughter cradled in her arms. Cooing to the baby, she sat beside Harper without waiting for an invitation, forcing Harper to set aside her tattered copy of Pride and Prejudice she’d been re-reading for the twenty-seventh time.
“Am I going to be like what?” she said, keeping her voice low as she saw Charlotte’s daughter was fast asleep. Wrapped in a light yellow blanket, only her round little pink face and her tiny little pink fingers were visible.
“All melancholy and glum.” Shifting her daughter up to her right shoulder, Charlotte pressed a fond kiss to the top of the infant’s fuzzy head. “Is she not the most beautiful baby you have ever seen?”
“She is quite lovely,” Harper agreed, for it was the truth. Rose was beautiful…and very, very loud when she wasn’t sleeping. “And I am not feeling glum.”
“Morose?” Charlotte suggested.
“No.”
“Depressed?”
“No.”
“Sad?”
“No,” Harper said in exasperation. “Charlotte, I do not mean to be rude, but what do you want? I came to the library to read, which is rather difficult to do when I am having a conversation.”
The redhead lifted a brow. “And here I thought you’d come here to lick your wounds.”
“I do not have wounds.” Harper wrinkled her nose. “And even if I did, I certainly would not lick them. That is disgusting.”
“Of course it is, which is why it is only a saying. Unless you are a dog or a cat, I suppose. Anyways,” she said with an absent wave of her hand, “that is not what I came here to say.”
“Whatever it is, you needn’t waste your breath. I am sure my mother and Dianna have already said it.” Since announcing her broken engagement, Harper had been hounded mercilessly with questions she didn’t have the answers to. Her mother was at the forefront, with Mary and Edna right on her heels. Even Dianna had peppered her with questions, although she’d at least done so with some amount of consideration and kindness.
“That very well may be, but they are not me. Do you know the real reason Mr. Graystone and I were married at Gretna Green?” At Harper’s blank stare, Charlotte smiled and sa
id, “I was betrothed - very much against my will, I might add - to the Duke of Tarrow. He is dead now, you know, but when he was alive he was a horrible old man. Cruel and sadistic not to mention a murderer, although it was never proven.”
“Why were you engaged to him if he was so awful?” Harper asked in bewilderment.
“Because he was a duke and my mother - well, she is quite similar to yours, actually.”
“You needn’t say any more.”
Charlotte pursed her lips. “I thought not. As I was saying, I found myself engaged to a man I loathed and stuck with a mother who refused to listen to reason. So I took the matter into my own hands and did the only thing I could think of: I picked the first man who would have me and ran off to Gretna Green.”
“You were married at Gretna Green twice?” Harper asked with a frown.
“Why would you ask that?”
“Because now you are married to Mr. Graystone and it is quite clear you are both very much in love.” And how could you love someone without hardly knowing them? she added silently, a question she’d been asking herself nearly every day for the past two weeks straight.
“I have always been married to Gavin, although I shall be the first to admit we were not always very fond of one another. Our courtship - and our marriage - has not been without its pitfalls, but I rather like to think you cannot have the highs without the lows.” Charlotte sighed and grasped Harper’s hand. Giving it a firm squeeze, she said sternly, “I am telling you this to show you love does not always come when we expect it, or where we expect it, or who we expect it from. Committing yourself to someone after you’ve known each other for a day or a month or a year doesn’t make the marriage. Never giving up on them does.”
Harper’s spine stiffened. “I did not give up on the Duke of Greenwood. He was the one who ended our engagement.”
“Did he?” Charlotte said cryptically.
Which is why I cannot marry you.
Swallowing the painful lump in her throat the memory of Doyle’s words invoked, Harper nodded “Yes. Yes, he did. I should know as I was standing right there.”
“And what other choice did you give him? I am not saying you are meant to be together,” Charlotte said quickly before Harper would interrupt. Gaze softening, she slowly released Harper’s hand and stood up. “All I am saying, sweetling, is if you never tell him how you truly feel how do you know you are not?”
“Please do not go.” Visibly upset, Aurelia paced to the end of the drawing room and stopped short at the window overlooking the side lawn. Turning, she crossed her arms over her chest and delivered to Doyle her most beseeching stare. “He is not worth the trouble and I would rather have you here safe than worry about you in London.”
“My mind is made up.” Adjusting his cravat, Doyle crossed the room in three large strides and rested his hands on his sister’s slender shoulders. “I cannot allow Chesterfield to continue to besmirch your good name. He is the one who deserves to be punished, not you, and I shall not have your reputation tarnished.”
“I do not care about my reputation!” she cried. “I only care about you.”
“Remain here with the boys.” Jaw clenched, he squeezed her shoulders before stepping back. “I will be back within a fortnight.”
“Two weeks?” she whispered, blinking back tears. “Why so long?”
Because I cannot be in this bloody house and not think of Harper.
“A fortnight,” he repeated, forcing any wayward thoughts of a fairy princess with laughing green eyes and a captivating smile to the back of his mind. “I will be back in a fortnight, and we need never speak of your husband again.”
Cheeks turning pale with alarm, Aurelia followed him out of the drawing room and through the foyer. “Doyle, what are you going to do? Doyle? Doyle!”
But he was already gone.
CHAPTER TEN
Two days later, with Charlotte’s words of wisdom still ringing in her ears, Harper rode to Longmeadow Park. She’d waited until Dianna and Miles had gone to visit a friend to ride out by herself, desperately needing time and distance away from her family to think about what she was going to say to Doyle and how she was going to say it.
She only hoped it wasn’t too late and her foolish pride hadn’t ruined everything.
For she knew now that it had been her pride that had kept her from saying what Doyle had needed to hear. She hadn’t been the only one who needed a bit of reassurance about their relationship. He’d needed some as well, but instead of giving it - instead of telling him he was no longer forcing her into anything she didn’t want to do - she’d allowed anger to overpower reason and she had acted like a petulant, moody child.
Dismounting from Jewel with a grimace, she handed the lathered mare over to a short, thin footman who had hurried up from the stables when he heard hoofbeats on the stone drive.
“Is His Grace at home?” Harper asked, glancing at the front door. “He is not expecting me, but-”
“He isn’t here,” the footman said nervously, “but another man rode up not ten minutes ago. Lady Aurelia admitted him inside, but she looked frightened, she did.”
“Another man?” Harper repeated, her brow creasing in confusion beneath the bonnet she’d tied haphazardly over her hair before leaving Winfield. Wanting to impress Doyle, she had come dressed in her best riding habit: a tight-fitting emerald green jacket over a long matching skirt that had forced her - much to her general annoyance - to use a proper sidesaddle. “And Lady Aurelia allowed him in? But who - oh no,” she gasped as realization dawned. Harper didn’t know all the details surrounding Aurelia’s estrangement from her husband, but she’d coaxed enough out of her to know Chesterfield was unpredictable, dangerous….and quite possibly unstable.
The footman’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “One of the maid’s said they went into the library and locked the door. None of the staff has seen or heard from them since.”
“And Doyle?” Harper demanded. “Where is he?”
“He left for London two days ago. There’s no telling when he’ll be back.”
Then it is up to me, she thought with a surge of determination. Slipping off her gloves, she shoved them into the pocket of her skirt and rolled back the sleeves of her jacket. “Show me the way to the library.”
It only took Doyle a day of travel to admit to himself he wasn’t running to London…he was running away from Longmeadow and all of the emotions he’d been struggling to suppress ever since he’d made such a bloody mess out of everything with Harper.
With all the words he should have said banging around inside his head, he spent a restless night at an inn, woke up before dawn the next morning, and headed straight back for Longmeadow Park.
Aurelia had been right. Short of calling Chesterfield out for a duel which could end with them both being arrested or worse, he couldn’t stop the lord from running his mouth. The fat witted git wasn’t worth the trouble…but Harper was.
Doyle’s place was with his sister and his nephews and the woman he loved. The only woman he would ever love, something he probably should have told her before he let his tongue run away with him and blurted out ‘which is why I cannot marry you’. It was rather unfortunate he’d put his foot so firmly in his mouth, for he’d been doing well up until that moment. Quite well, if Harper’s dazed expression had been any indication.
He’d hurt her with his carelessness, and in her hurt she had hurt him. But for better or for worse, it was past time for them both to apologize and say what they truly felt deep in their hearts. If Harper still did not want to marry him he would force himself, once and for all, to let her go. But if she did…if she was willing to give him another chance…
I’ll drag her to the closest church there is and have her in my bed before nightfall, he thought as he spied Longmeadow’s gabled roof through a thick wedge of trees and spurred his horse from a canter into a gallop.
“Let me in this very moment,” Harper threatened in a low, o
minous tone, “or I shall not rest until I kick this bloody door in!” Pressing her ear to the door, she heard a low rumble of voices - one male, one female - before the door opened with such suddenness she stumbled into the library and would have fallen had a strong pair of arms not grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Who are you?” the man - presumably Chesterfield - who had caught her demanded in a hard, flat voice. He was shorter than she’d been expecting, with a long nose, sharp cheekbones, and dark, restless blue eyes. “And what the hell do you want?”
Drawing herself up to her full height - which, she was pleased to see, put them exactly eye to eye - Harper tilted her chin and said, “Who are you and what the hell do you want?”
She could tell her bluntness caught him off guard by the he way he took a short, quick step back, pale eyebrows gathering over the bridge of his nose. Unfortunately, it did not take him very long to recover his composure. “Why you defiant little-”
“L-Lloyd has come to see the children,” Aurelia interrupted in a strangled voice that betrayed just how terrified she truly was. Sitting ramrod straight in a chair pushed back against the far wall, she glanced at her husband and managed a tight, frightened smile. “Isn’t that right, dear?”
“Who is this bitch?” he asked, glaring at Harper.
“Are you referring to me?” she said sweetly, batting her lashes.
“Lady Harper.” Aurelia bit her lip. “She - she is a family friend. Lloyd, please do not-”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” he bellowed, whipping around and causing Aurelia to flinch and cower even though a good ten feet of space separated them.
Seeing the fear on her friend’s face, Harper felt a deluge of hot, burning anger directed solely at the coward standing in front of her. The bastard, she fumed. How could a person be so evil that they took pleasure in tormenting those weaker than themselves? “Aurelia can say whatever she likes,” she said loudly, once again earning herself Chesterfield’s unwavering glare. “This is her home, not yours. In fact, I believe you have more than worn out your welcome. Isn’t that right, Aurelia?”
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