An Earl for the Broken-Hearted Duchess

by Lucinda Nelson

  The hopeful part of herself that had once believed life was fair.

  She’d learnt the hard way that that was not true, but couldn’t summon her realism at this moment. All she could muster was a breathless, “Yes.”

  ***

  Lord Nathaniel Sterling, Earl of Comptonshire

  Yes.

  She’d said yes.

  Nathaniel had promised himself that if she ever gave him the chance to kiss her again, he’d do the gentlemanly thing and ask it of her. Yet, just as before, he was entirely overcome.

  With her hands still held clutched between them, he kissed her. Her lips were as soft as spilt cream and they parted like a lily pad opening in the sunlight.

  It had been delirious joy that had commanded him to kiss her, but that joy soon morphed into something with a darker sweetness to it.

  He felt her fingers sliding free of his own. For an instance, he gripped her anew. He didn’t want to ever let go of her hands.

  But Margaret was resolved. They were bound together like threads in a rope, made stronger by one another, in a constant tussle to take and give in equal measure. Pushing and pulling to keep the balance from tipping off-center.

  Her hands came free of his and rose up the column of his throat. He knew what she’d feel there. His heart slamming against his skin.

  It did so with such vicious force that his chest started to ache. He felt like he was sprinting. Endlessly. It was a queer feeling, because he’d never felt such physical strain and not wanted it to cease.

  He hoped this would never end.

  Margaret’s fingers were vines hunting out something to nourish them. They plunged through his hair and tangled through his curls.

  Passion was a ravenous thing. He had not felt it for so long, nor so intensely, that it frightened him. It did not creep up on him. It struck him.

  As it seemed to strike her. He felt her take a breath, but his need was too ripe to allow her lips to part from his for long. He caught the breath upon his own lips and took hold of her cheeks. He felt all of her. The curve of her jaw, the highness of her cheekbones, the regal glide from hairline to chin.

  There was a noise. The sound of wheels and hooves. They came away from one another with a sudden and audible intake of breath.

  They stood apart, looking foolish as rebellious adolescents caught red-handed. A carriage passed, though the driver’s features were disinterested.

  He had not seen.

  Nathaniel cleared his throat and tipped his hat in greeting, while Margaret held a shaking hand over her mouth. As if the driver might be able to see Nathaniel’s kiss still there, fixed upon her lips.

  They did not look at one another until the carriage rumbled out of sight.

  In its absence, birds chirped out of their nests again, as relieved by the renewed solitude as Nathaniel was. When he looked at Margaret, there was a smile quirking up the corners of his lips. “I am sorry,” he murmured. His voice was hoarse.

  She shook her head as her fingertips fell away from her lips. They looked plumper in the midst of his kiss. “Do not say that.” She spoke in no more than a whisper.

  Nathaniel turned to face her, while she placed her palm across her midriff. “Are you well?” He asked, as he took her hands in his own.

  She nodded again. “Yes,” she assured him. “Only I have this queer feeling, here.” She gestured to her stomach and took a deep, steadying breath.

  “An unpleasant feeling?”

  She looked up at him and graced him with such a tender smile that he forgot the world about them. “No,” she murmured. “Not an unpleasant feeling.”

  His smile grew and he offered his hand to her so that they could walk together.

  She glanced about her, but did not turn his hand away. Their fingers twined, shyly at first, and they began to walk. After some time of enjoying the quietness, and the tingle left by her kiss, Nathaniel spoke.

  “I hope you do not question my intentions.”

  Margaret did not answer for a second. A second that worried him awfully. At length, she shook her head. “I do not question them.” Her answer felt unfinished, but Nathaniel did not press her any further.

  He had pressed her a great deal already. “And you? Do you question mine?”

  Nathaniel did not hesitate in his reply. “Your Grace, you are the sincerest woman I’ve ever known,” he said, with a smile.

  This did not seem to please her. She was silent for a time, with a faint furrow between her brows. “I think your impression of me is warped by kindness, Nathaniel.”

  Nathaniel frowned. “Whatever could prompt you to say such a thing?”

  There was a gentleman ahead of them, walking the same path. Margaret released his hand abruptly and looked momentarily panicked, as though the man would look upon them and see some terrible sin.

  He missed the warmth of her hand.

  “I can be secretive,” she admitted, without coyness, only open self-deprecation that he was not accustomed to hearing from a lady.

  “All of us may be secretive, from time to time.” They were approaching the town now. “We have a right to our own private mind, do you not think?”

  This idea seemed to worry her. “I suppose,” she said. “What a frightening thought.”

  “Frightening?”

  She glanced up at him. When she spoke, he wondered if she had her late husband in mind. “If we are entitled to our own private minds, I wonder if we can ever truly know someone.”

  A frightening thought indeed. He blinked. How he wished he was still holding her hand. With these words between them, he felt terribly far away from her.

  He wanted to renew that feeling of closeness they’d shared when he’d kissed her.

  That was the trouble with feeling as he did for Margaret. Every moment of closeness he shared with her made his moments of solitude feel extremely lonely.

  He supposed that was the plight of wanting someone. They reminded you how awful it was to be alone.

  As they walked into the town’s center, he wondered how he’d survived so long alone. Now that he was coming to know Margaret, he could not imagine being without her.

  He wished he could tell his heart to slow down, but it would not take heed. It was rushing towards Margaret as foolishly and rapidly as if it had never been hurt before. That petrified him. Hadn’t he learnt a thing since Tessa?

  “Mother,” Ezra called, as they entered the archery grounds. “What has kept you?”

  Margaret visibly colored, but managed a smile. “It was such a beautiful walk,” she said, as she kissed him upon the head. “We lingered to enjoy it.”

  He accepted this, in his keenness to show the pair of them what he’d learnt. “Look,” he said, as he stretched a bow taut. “You see how I hold my elbow.”

  “Soon you will be firing an arrow, my Lord,” the marksman who’d been teaching Ezra said, with a broad smile.

  “Will I truly, mother?” Ezra looked to Margaret, beaming like a Cheshire Cat.

  “You certainly will,” she answered. She played with a curl of his hair that was springing beside his cheek and pushed it back over his ear.

  She did it with such an abundance of love in her countenance that the picture of the pair held Nathaniel mesmerized.

  Of course, it hadn’t escaped him that he couldn’t take Margaret alone, if anything came of them. Beyond all that they had to contend with, she came with a son. As Nathaniel watched them, he realized that he wouldn’t have it any other way. He’d come to love Ezra over the past few weeks. Dearly.

  He could see a great deal of himself in the boy and wanted to be there for him, as his father couldn’t be.

  “You might try, mother,” Ezra suggested. “If you’d like? I will show you how to hold it.” As he spoke, he eagerly pushed the bow into her hands. She blinked down at him, clearly surprised, but did take the bow.

  “Here,” Ezra bent his arms into the shape he wanted her to copy. “Like this.”

  Margaret smil
ed. The sort of smile he’d never seen on her face before. It was secretive, but amused. “Like this?”

  Just like that, her arms took up perfect form.

  She strung the bow tight, as well as any gentleman, and looked more like an Amazonian Goddess than an English duchess.

  Nathaniel’s brows lifted.

  “Yes! Yes, like that!” Ezra exclaimed happily.

  Margaret’s arms slackened and she smiled down at him fondly. “You are a wonderful teacher, my love.”

  His cheeks warmed with pleasure when she praised him. Now that Ezra was beginning to feel truly well again, Nathaniel saw how dearly the boy loved his mother.

  How much he treasured her praise and her attention, though there seemed to be no limit to it. Margaret was, perhaps, the best mother Nathaniel had ever known.

  And she was more than what she seemed. Far more. As she put aside the bow, he wished he’d seen her fire it.

  They spent a while longer on the archery grounds, because Ezra wanted to try out each and every bow, to find the perfect one. Once he’d decided, he asked the marksman everything under the sun.

  What was this part called?

  How far could an arrow fly?

  Were these bows used at war?

  By the time his questions ran dry, even the marksman looked tired.

  Miss Wilde bid them a good day as the sun was beginning to set and Nathaniel and Margaret joined Ezra in the carriage, where Ezra promptly fell asleep.

  He slept ever so quietly, without a single snore, with his head lolling against his mother’s shoulder. Nathaniel sat beside them.

  He glanced down to see that Ezra had twined his fingers with his mother’s and was holding her hand in his lap.

  “You have done that before,” Nathaniel remarked, quietly and with a smile in his voice.

  Margaret smiled, with a twinkle of mischief in her eye. “I do not know what you mean.”

  They shared a long, heated look. Smiling at one another like smitten fools. He wondered who had taught her to shoot and wanted, more than anything, to see her feeling free enough to display her talents proudly.

  He hoped that, with him, she might be able to.

  Chapter 17

  Lady Margaret Abigail Baxter, Duchess of Lowe

  Once Ezra had gotten a taste for archery, he became quickly obsessed with it and begged to be taken to the archery grounds each and every day. Margaret was all too happy to agree.

  It had been too long since her son had seemed truly happy and the archery allowed him to feel like himself without putting his injured leg at risk.

  As time passed, Ezra became better able to walk and occasionally left the crutches behind, unless he was feeling sore and tired.

  Without them, he appeared a great deal more content, but would sometimes move a little too quickly and give himself a twinge.

  This always worried Margaret terribly. The prospect of him being bedridden again, and sinking into despair as he surely would, was too much for her.

  She was glad to take him to archery each day and she allowed him to relay all that he’d learnt to her. She did not tell him that she knew how to shoot very well indeed, having taken a keen interest in it as a child… to her mother’s dismay.

  But her father hadn’t cared much for the rules and had taken her out from time to time to teach her. Margaret imagined that her parents must have argued a great deal about that particular subject.

  In the end, her mother must have won, because her father stopped taking her out to practice when she turned fourteen.

  But she’d never forgotten and even felt rather envious when she watched Ezra handle the bow.

  Yes, she enjoyed watching him, but more than anything she enjoyed the opportunity to walk with Nathaniel.

  Miss Wilde came to the house with him every day and would go ahead with Ezra in the carriage, leaving Nathaniel and Margaret to walk.

  And every day, they would stop and kiss one another. At first, they would only indulge for a few moments, but as the days passed their kisses grew.

  By the sixth day, they could scarcely walk two steps without kissing one another. It wasn’t until they’d nearly been caught by a family picking berries in the woods that they’d thought better of themselves.

  They’d pulled away from each other suddenly and become aware of the ragged sound of their own breaths. “What am I doing?” She whispered to herself, with shuddering breaths. Her skin felt so warm.

  Her hands were clammy. And she realized that she’d been gripping him like a woman entirely without regard for common decency.

  “Do you regret it?” Nathaniel asked, with a desperate look in his eye. Since they’d been taking their walks, she was seeing a new side of him. A ravenous side.

  No, she thought, but her mouth said, “Yes, I am beginning to.” She sounded nothing like herself. All breathless and trembling.

  “Do not say that,” he begged and took her by the hands. “I cannot bear to hear that.”

  Margaret touched his face to comfort him and put her forehead against his, but shook her head gently. “We are being foolish and you know it as well as I do. We cannot continue to hide out as we do. I am a duchess and you an earl.”

  “Then we will not hide,” he said. “I would take you anywhere and be seen with you proudly.”

  “Then you are foolish,” she said, without callousness, but with a sad smile. “Would you have my scandal tarnish your good name?”

  “I would bear anything, Margaret.”

  “And what of your family? You would do such a thing to them?” She was becoming upset, as he could no doubt see. She took a step away from him so that his touch could not distract her from her thoughts.

  But they ran in circles, round and round. The truth remained that she could not turn him away, nor could she continue to hide and risk discovery; and she could not go public with him.

  She was stuck.

  “Margaret,” he murmured and attempted to draw closer again. But she raised her palm to him and shook her head quickly.

  “No,” she interjected. “You mustn’t touch me. I cannot think when you touch me.”

  That seemed to make him want to touch her all the more, because he did not want her to think. Enamored as he was, he wanted this to go on forever, in secret though it must be.

  After many moments, she lowered her hand and opened her eyes. She looked upon his face, fearful and strained.

  It was clear to her that he did not want to risk losing what they had any more than she did. “Would you give me a couple of days to think?”

  Nathaniel was silent. She wondered what he was thinking. “What of Ezra?” He asked.

  “You may come see him as usual, if it pleases you.”

  “And not see you?”

  “I will tell him that I am not well and that I wish to rest…”

  The Adam’s apple in Nathaniel’s throat bobbed. She wondered if he might beg her, or if his worry would get the better of him.

  But he was a gentleman, through and through. He nodded, at last, making an obvious effort to disguise all that he was feeling. His face became a blank canvas to be painted on by the coming days. “Very well,” he said.

  ***

  Lord Nathaniel Sterling, Earl of Comptonshire

  Very well, he’d said, like a damned fool, because there had been nothing else he could say. He’d stood there a moment, searching for the words that might lend her some of his conviction.

  Yes, they were walking a fine line, but was it not one worth walking? The time he’d spent with her in those past days had been the best times of his life.

  He could not fathom losing her now.

  But Margaret had asked for time and he could not deny her that. If she chose that being with him was too much, then he would have to bear it, as much as it would break his heart to do so.

  Still, in the two days spent without her, he felt as though he might go mad. He walked to the estate with Miss Wilde, as was usual, though he was less cheery
and a great deal more anxious.

  Noticeably so, apparently, because Miss Wilde asked him several times if he was quite well.

  When he arrived, he did not see the Duchess. Miss Hallow, Ezra’s governess, would escort the boy down to the drawing room and Ezra would politely inform them that his mother wasn’t well and that she’d like to rest.