Did this man, this paragon of restraint, this person carved out of stone, expect her to believe he was not himself? He knew exactly what he was doing. What he was starting. To then become conscience-stricken again, after he had her all but tearing off her clothes—It was inexcusable. Unforgivable. Churlish. Ignoble. Outrageous. It was a good thing he had left, because she wanted to give him the longest, sharpest scold he had ever received in his perfect, ducal, lordly life.
Fuming, her head close to exploding, she strode to the door, cast it open and stomped to the stairs. The footman sitting near the door snapped alert, then veered back when she stopped in front of him. “Where are Brentworth’s chambers?” she demanded.
* * *
The night air barely helped. He stood in front of the open window, breathing deeply, wondering just how he had allowed that to happen.
You ass. He could not claim any defense. He had not only hoped it would happen, he had planned much more. He had spent the day in anticipation. Oh, there had been a noble attempt to separate after dinner, but when she appeared on that terrace, the rest was a tale foretold.
You scoundrel. Wanting a woman did not excuse such behavior. He had insulted her in several ways, and no apology would do. He needed to accept that although he almost always got whatever he wanted, he would not get her. Unless—
Why not? It had been a solution from the start. One the king had proposed and wanted, and one that made more sense than he had admitted. He had to marry someone. Why not a woman he wanted, and also admired?
The reasons why not tried to line up in his head. He ignored all of them except one. She might not have him. He laughed to himself, not at that notion but at the likelihood of it being true. Davina MacCallum had been one of the few people who did not seem to give a damn that he was a duke, and the Duke of Brentworth no less. She might enjoy the luxury of this house and all the others he owned, but he did not think she could be bought by any of it.
He wished they were in London. He would not mind consulting with Stratton and Langford about this. Stratton could be very practical in his advice. Realistic. As for Langford, he rarely was wrong when it came to the way women reacted and thought. He had done a close study of them over the years.
Yet both had seen this eventuality long before he had. The interest. The fascination, as Langford said. Having both married inappropriate women, they no doubt considered it just fine if he did too.
The cool air had done its work, finally. He no longer battled the urge to go back down there, find her and drag her to a bed or even use the carpet there in the library. Of course, just thinking about it had him rumbling again. He took another deep breath.
A crash sounded nearby. Another. He turned, startled. There, just inside his bedchamber, stood Davina, her arm still out from where she had thrown open the door. She raked him from head to toe with a scorching gaze.
“You conceited, self-important, arrogant, spoiled, selfish toad.”
Toad?
“You despicable man.” She advanced toward him. “You coward.”
“I will accept toad and even despicable, but coward is going too far.”
“Give me another word for what just happened. Don’t say noble and gentlemanly or I may scratch your eyes out.”
Both words had been on the tip of his tongue. He swallowed them. “I can understand why you are angry.”
“I can understand why you are angry.” She imitated him rather too well, although he did not look down his nose like that, he was sure. “No, you can’t understand. The first kiss was an accident of the day. The last lovemaking was an impulse. This was deliberate, and it was cruel. Do you hear me? And do not tell me you suffered too. I don’t want to hear it. Men always whine about discomfort more than women, but I am telling you now that to do that to me was among the most thoughtless acts of casual cruelty. And you did it twice. Twice.”
She was right in front of him now, belligerent and damned magnificent, nailing him in place with her gaze. “Do not think to do it again. Ever. Never touch me. Never kiss me. I will die as I am at this moment before I ever allow you to treat me that way again.”
It would be an excellent moment to grab her and kiss her, only she really might kill him then. She looked as if she wanted to, badly. He kept watching for a blow to come.
“See here, Davina—”
“Miss MacCallum, if you don’t mind, Your Grace.”
“Here is the thing: I am deranged by desire for you. You are more than willing. We have a common interest in this property. It seems to me that all these problems can be solved simply by our marrying.”
She did not swoon with joy the way women were supposed to when dukes proposed. Her eyes narrowed. “Now you are mocking me. As if what happened down below was not humiliating enough, you now make a joke of me.”
“I am not mocking or making a joke. I am very serious. If you allow yourself to consider it, you will discover it is a clever idea.”
“Are you mad?”
“At least half so.”
She no longer looked crazed. Her expression softened and her brow furrowed. Her gaze drifted away from him, to nothing in particular.
“You would do this because you want me in bed and are too cowardly—I mean, gentlemanly—to do that otherwise? That is not a good reason.”
“It is a better one than that it is the right year and you are the least-boring girl on the marriage mart.”
“That girl will be appropriate. Remember? That would be her best quality.”
“Who is to say you won’t be appropriate too? If it is found that you are descended from the last baron, you could end up a baroness in your own right.”
She strolled around the edges of the chamber, thinking. “What of my claim here?”
Now they were down to it. “If proof is found, it would still be yours. If not, you would still be of the family that holds it.”
“Only if we are married, you would control it. You would decide how it is used, and everything else. If I have a son, the barony of this estate would be far down in his titles. We would be absorbed.”
He did not agree, even if that was the whole point. “Think of it as a compromise. As half a loaf.” He could not believe he was parroting Haversham and the king. He lit on his own brilliant argument. “And if we marry, everyone will assume that of course you were right and that is why.”
“I am right.” She gave him one of her direct, piercing looks. “But you still don’t think I am, do you? That is why this is too odd. If I believed you even suspected I am right, that you needed a compromise as much as I do, then there might be one small bit of logic in this proposal. Instead, I am left to conclude that you, the Duke of Brentworth, a man so soundly sane in reputation, are proposing to me because it is the only way to have what you want. Once you do, of course, the marriage will seem a horrible mistake made in a moment of inexplicable madness.”
“I want you, yes. I also admire you more than I expect to admire any other woman for a long time, if ever.”
“I thank you for that. It is nice if at least a modicum of affection is part of a marriage proposal. I realize that is not how your kind do it, however. Admiration is a worthy substitute, I suppose.” Her aimless stroll had brought her close to him. She looked at him wistfully. “I must decline.”
“You would be a duchess. I can understand your rejecting me. I am surprised you are rejecting that. Do you even know what it means?”
“I know some of it. I have seen the deference and the luxury and the standing in the world. I am told at major banquets a duchess has one of the best seats and enters before all the other peers’ wives. It is a rare privilege and status you offer me. The girl you choose next season will value it properly.”
That girl would probably also bore him to death. He had two choices at this moment. He could try to persuade her with pleasure, or lie and profess undying love.
She smiled. “I know what you are thinking. I am flattered you still debate how to win me over.
But I will know if you lie, and I will not allow you to touch me. I meant that. Now, I must leave before you compromise yourself because of this whim.”
“It is not a whim.”
“It is a whim. A sweet one. But that is exactly what it is.”
She left, then. He threw himself into a chair to accommodate that he had been rejected in a marriage proposal for the second time in his life, in the same house, by a woman who by all accounts should have fainted with delight at such good fortune.
He could be excused if he hated Scotland.
Chapter Nineteen
She walked ten steps away from the door before the fullness of their conversation exploded in her head. She had turned down the chance to be a duchess. If anyone learned of it, she would be labeled unbearably stupid and hopelessly mad.
Nonsense. The proposal had been insane, not her response. She repeated that all the way to her chamber, but she noticed every expensive appointment in the house on her path. It could all have been hers. And this was not even one of his good houses.
Oh, how rational she had sounded. How selfless. As if he would be the first man to make a foolish match due to sexual desire. Somehow—and she had absolutely no idea how—a duke had come to want her enough to actually marry her to get her, and she had turned him down. Even she began to doubt her sanity.
Who was she to lecture him on his duty to find an appropriate wife? Or the way passion passes? On anything to do with men and women? His experience exceeded hers. Vastly, because she possessed almost no experience at all.
Of course that had not been at the heart of her reaction. She had not been thinking about his choice at all. Only her own. How will this change my rights to this land? Not her use of the land, as duchess. Her right to it. He’d known the answer, hadn’t he? He’d thought all that out. It was one of the problems the marriage would solve, along with his inexplicable desire.
She found some contentment in remembering that part of their conversation. She concentrated on it, which was far better than thinking about the priceless Chinese vase set at the end of the corridor near her chamber, almost as an afterthought, as if it were not worthy enough to be downstairs in the library or drawing room with the truly precious items.
The whole episode distracted her enough that she was in the middle of her chamber before she realized someone else was there too. Miss Ingram sat in the chair set beside the fireplace, holding a book open, high and angled to the light of a candelabra she had set on the small table she had pulled over.
“Were you confused and found yourself in the wrong chamber, Miss Ingram?”
Miss Ingram peered at her book another few moments, then closed it and set it on her lap. She turned her attention on Davina. “I do not become confused about where I am. I know people think I have gone soft in my head, even my dear nephew, but I don’t miss much, Miss MacCallum.”
“That is good to know.”
“No indeed. I don’t miss much at all.” She raised one eyebrow. “Were you just with him?”
“We had a conversation, yes.”
“A chat, was it? How nice. I assumed by now he would have engaged in more than that.”
If the woman claimed she was not dotty, Davina was not going to play childish games. “If you thought that, you have been negligent as a chaperone in leaving us alone so much.”
“I told Cornelius to send someone else if he wanted you watched like a schoolgirl. His wife was there and dared to scold me about how the duke had nefarious plans for you so I had to be alert and aware. What nonsense.” She struggled to her feet. “I wish a duke had insulted me with nefarious plans forty years ago. I would be sitting pretty now, instead of depending on Cornelius. He is generous, Miss MacCallum, but even from a nephew it is charity.”
“Miss Ingram, are you saying you have deliberately been negligent in order to allow Brentworth to seduce me?”
“You do not sound nearly shocked enough.”
“As you implied, I am not a schoolgirl.”
“It was not the seduction I did not want to interfere with, although I assume that would have to be a first step. My thinking was that he might make a proposal to you. Not a proper one. The other kind that such men make to women they cannot marry.” She began walking to the door, but paused. “Has he?”
“Made an improper proposal? No.”
She sighed. “That is too bad. I really thought he might. I rather counted on your not coming back here tonight.”
Davina stepped back and opened the door. “You know, Miss Ingram, you do become a little confused sometimes.”
“Not when it matters, Miss MacCallum. Not when it matters.”
* * *
Davina seemed to be avoiding him. By the time he went down for breakfast, she had already eaten. He shared the table with Miss Ingram who, for some reason, chose not to read but instead looked at him long and hard while she drank tea and ate toasted bread. Perhaps she was trying to remember who he was.
“Do you know where Miss MacCallum is?” he asked when he had finished. “She is not in the library or the garden.”
“She said something about an attic. You should go and tell her to come down from there. It is probably dangerous.”
“It could become too warm on a sunny day, but there are windows she can open. She is looking for something, and I should let her see if she can find it.”
“If she is looking for something, you should help her. It is your house.”
“She doesn’t think so,” he muttered.
“As host, you really should help her. What is the world coming to if a duke does not know how to treat a houseguest?”
What was the world coming to when a chaperone pushed a man to be alone with her young lady? “She would not want my help, I am very sure. She would not trust it.”
He excused himself and took his leave. He trailed through the house to Roberts’s office and found him at his desk, working accounts. “Do you want to see them?” Roberts gestured to the ledger and papers in front of him.
“I suppose I should every five years or so.” He accepted the big ledger and scanned the pages, looking for signs of bad management or worse. His father had taught him how to do this, like so much else. Five out of ten servants on the lesser properties will steal from you if you are not careful, he had lectured.
“Your Grace, I am bound to ask, as I do every few years, whether you would consider having that ruin taken down. Not rebuilding, mind you. Just taking down the burned-out husk that is left. It is a scar on the land and clearly a recent destruction, not some ancient and charming old pile like the old tower house.”
He met Roberts’s gaze. The few other times Roberts had broached this subject had not gone well, and he could see his steward braced himself for loud, harsh expressions of displeasure.
“It may be time.” Past time.
Roberts’s expression brightened.
“I think I will go see just how bad it is. I will let you know my decision before I leave.”
“You are going into it?” Roberts spoke with studied evenness.
“I think so.”
“Would you like me to—”
“No, I will do it on my own.”
Roberts played with a letter opener on his desk, studying it while he rolled it in his fingers. “I go in fairly often. I need to, in order to drive out the animals that have taken residence.” He looked up. “There are no ghosts there, from what I can tell.”
“I never thought there might be.” No ghosts to confront there. Only his own stupidity. He handed over the ledger. “These appear in order, as I knew they would be. I appreciate your service to me, Roberts. The offer for you to come to the house in Kent still stands, should you ever want that. I could use you there.”
Roberts flushed. “You must think it odd I don’t take the opportunity. But—” He looked around, as if he could see beyond the four walls. “I like it here. Scotland is home. This house is home. Your father raised me up, from dog boy to this, step by step, an
d I’ve been here since I was ten. Besides, when you are not in residence, I am something of the laird, ain’t I?”
“I expect you are.” He laughed. “I will be leaving soon, so you can be laird again.”
He left the office and walked back to the front of the house. In the reception hall, he sat in a chair and looked at the heavy drape blocking entry to the burned wing. Then he stood and went over and slipped behind it. Sunlight glared down on him from between a few charred roof timbers high above.
No attic here anymore. No roof to speak of. In the good attic behind him, Davina searched for her past. He did not have to search at all. He knew exactly where his was. Right here, in this empty fortress of blackened stone in which a wilderness grew.
* * *
Davina sat on the plank floor in the middle of the trunks. She had opened all of them, looking for that Bible. She had peered under the rough fabric guarding furniture and tried every drawer she could find. The Bible was not here.
She discovered other family items besides furnishings. Clothing, a doll, an old musket, even a broach of some value. One trunk held some letters from over a hundred years before, their ink oxidized to a light brown but the parchment still supple. One of the barons wrote them to his son. They mostly contained instructions on behavior and comportment. In one, a scold had been given about a special friend, and a warning to avoid an entanglement. She suspected that friend had been an inappropriate woman.
She stood and looked around once more, hoping to spy one more place to search. She had enjoyed handling a few relics of her ancestors, but that was not her reason for being here. She could not ignore that there had been no remnants of the current owner’s life, nor of Brentworth’s past. Not one of those dukes had cared about this land or spent much time here. They had stewards and factors like Mr. Roberts manage the estate and send them their rents.
Giving up, she made her way down the stairs. Perhaps it had been left in the chapel that burned, as Brentworth had concluded. She preferred to believe a retainer had taken the Bible for safekeeping, much as her grandfather was sent away for that purpose. If so, she doubted she would ever find it again.
Never Deny a Duke Page 19