Darling Duke

by Scarlett Scott

  “Indeed, you are fortunate to now find your shelter here at Boswell Manor,” the dowager duchess said with a false smile. “King George IV was a guest here, as you should know.”

  Her mother-in-law spoke as if Bo was a stray hound who had been grudgingly allowed into the kitchens for some scraps. She feigned a smile in return. “Was the king an admirer of fish in all its forms as well?”

  The dowager’s lips tightened. Her small barb had found its mark. “Tell us, Daughter dearest, how did you find Ridgeley Castle? Perhaps, since it is smaller and far more eccentric than Boswell Manor, it was better suited to you than a grand structure such as this.”

  She wished that Spencer had not withdrawn. She had received only a vicarious notification earlier, passed from him, to his valet, to her lady’s maid, to her, that he had pressing matters to attend to with his broodmares. Some nonsense about an upcoming sale and a horse that had gone lame. Bo had been careful not to allow her disappointment and hurt to show upon hearing the news.

  Why had she imagined her entreaty yesterday would have made a difference to him? Clearly, it had meant nothing. He had not come to her chamber last night, and she was not even of enough import for him to see her once during the course of the day, let alone defend her against his domineering mother as he had on their wedding day.

  She pinned the dowager with a cutting gaze now. “I found Ridgeley Castle charming, thank you. The air was quite restorative. There were none of the snipe, for instance, that I find so prevalent here at Boswell Manor.”

  Her opponent lost a bit of her vigor at that, but she quickly redoubled her efforts. “Indeed? How comforting to know that you enjoyed your stay there. Bainbridge’s last honeymoon was so much more prolonged. I confess I was surprised that you both had kept to your schedule and returned within such an abbreviated span of time, but given the forced nature of your union, I suppose it is only to be expected.”

  Bo could not quite conceal the intake of breath caused by the mentioning of Spencer’s former wife and the suggestion that he had honeymooned with the woman for far longer than the fleeting week she had enjoyed with him.

  But she held herself still, using every ounce of her admittedly stubborn will for her expression to remain serene. “Indeed? How lovely that extended time must have been for them.”

  It was all she could manage to say, and of course she did not mean a word. Gone was her wit, her ability to parry the dowager’s rapier insults. One mentioning of Spencer’s dead wife—Millicent, as Harry had once so helpfully supplied—and she was reduced to a trembling, weakened mess.

  Through it all, Lord Harry remained silent, a troubled witness to his brother’s inability to relinquish the past and his mother’s shrewish nature. She drew her spoon to her lips without tasting and pretended to take a sip before lowering it carefully down.

  “Yes, quite.” The dowager’s smile did not reach her eyes, and Bo noticed that they were not warm and green like Spencer’s but instead a cool, faded blue. “Bainbridge was rather out of his head then, however. Like a green lad, he was, hopelessly in love.”

  Bo’s veins turned to ice. How fitting it was that she should feel as cold on the inside as her husband was on the outside.

  “Mother,” Harry intervened at last in a brazen attempt to change the subject. “Bo has begun an estimable cause in the Lady’s Suffrage Society. Have you told her about it yet, Bo?”

  Bo stared at her brother-in-law, wondering if he was attempting to help or hurt matters. It did not escape her that he referred to her familiarly, which not even Spencer allowed himself to do. She still wondered why. Maybe some day she would ask. Maybe by that time, it would no longer matter. As fiery as their passion was, they had drifted apart, and she was powerless to stop their slide.

  “Lady’s Suffrage?” The dowager’s lip curled. “I am sure you might find better methods of utilizing your time, now that you are the Duchess of Bainbridge. There are expectations to uphold. I realize it may be a novel concept for you, but having become a part of the Marlow family, you must learn to adapt.”

  Bo stared at her mother-in-law. “There is no better use of my time than the Lady’s Suffrage Society, Your Grace. It is my greatest hope to help in giving a voice to the voiceless, to my fellow sisters who have not been granted the right to choose how they are governed.”

  The servants whisked away their bowls, Bo’s untouched, and the next course arrived. Steaming tureens of filet de sole à la Gasconne were laid upon the table. More fish. Bo was not surprised in the least. Her stomach growled, feeling the effects of depravation.

  “What nonsense,” the dowager pronounced. “I can only imagine all the world would go to the dogs if inconstant women were given the vote. Even our queen cannot countenance such a travesty.”

  Bo could not hold her tongue, for egregious opinions such as the dowager’s were the sort that had kept women from their rights for far too long. “The only travesty is that women are still being denied their most basic right to this day.”

  The dowager stared at her, not bothering to conceal her disgust. “What is it that they say? From the pan to the flame? It seems we have traded one lunatic duchess for another.”

  “That is enough, Mother,” Lord Harry broke in at last, his tone forbidding. “It is hard of you indeed to insult the duchess in such fashion.”

  “Oh.” His mother blinked. “I did not mean to insult Millicent. May God rest her soul.”

  Silence descended upon the table. A wave of nausea stirred to life in her gut, prompted as much by the redolent aroma of fish as by the duchess’s pointed revelations about Spencer’s prolonged honeymoon and endless adoration for his former wife. Not to mention the matter of the dowager’s open aversion to Bo.

  Coming back to Boswell Manor had shifted everything out of place. Being here before had not felt so out of place. Now, fulfilling the role of duchess, and with Spencer clinging to the past, she was hopelessly mired in an untenable position. To hear the dowager wax on, it sounded as if Spencer had shared the love match with his former wife that he pointedly declared he did not have with Bo.

  He must have loved his wife deeply. What he had said to her long ago returned, mocking her, twisting her heart. Do you know what it’s like to watch someone you care for lose their mind, Lady Boadicea? And she had been the mother of his son, while Bo was the wife he would entertain with bed sport like any doxy. She stared at the sole on her plate, unwilling to eat it, feeling more hopeless than she had upon returning, when she had curled into a ball on the floor of the duchess’s apartments and cried into her skirts.

  “Mother,” Lord Harry bit out again, splintering the awkward silence. “I was not referring to Millicent, as you undoubtedly know, but to Bo.”

  “Oh dear.” The dowager’s expression resembled nothing so much as a feline who had just enjoyed a feast. It was rather fitting, given her boundless hunger for scaled, water-dwelling creatures. “Forgive me, will you not, Lady Boadicea? I’m afraid that the newness and suddenness of your marriage to Bainbridge combined has addled my wits.”

  “Yours are not the only wits that have been addled, judging from Bainbridge’s absence.” Bitterness laced Harry’s voice as he met Bo’s gaze across the splendidly turned out table. “Tell me, where is my sainted brother yet again this evening?”

  His question was pointed. Probing. He sensed that something was amiss, and she could not muster the ability to care about contriving a convincing denial. “Attending to his stables. He sends his regrets.”

  Harry’s brow spiked up. “His stables? I daresay I thought that was the duty of the head groomsman. Has my brother taken to shoveling shit?”

  The dowager gasped. “Lord Harry Marlow, I beg you to abstain from such uncouth language at the dinner table.”

  Bo smiled in spite of her best intentions regarding him. While she had counted him a friend, his treatment of Spencer following their wedding had been cruel and unjust. She had not forgotten, even if her husband had seemed to forget he ha
d a wife the moment his soles had connected with the cobbled drive of Boswell House.

  “Forgive me, Mother,” Harry said without a hint of contrition, “but I shouldn’t think one vulgar word outweighs the sins of an entire dinner marked by your insults directed at Bo.”

  “Lady Boadicea is your brother’s wife,” the dowager informed him coolly, “a fact which you seem to forget given your penchant for referring to her in such a familiar fashion.”

  “She is my sister now.” He stared his mother down, over the tureen still teeming with leftover sole. “Just as she is your daughter. This is her home, Mother.”

  Twin splotches of color mottled the dowager’s cheekbones, and here at least, Bo could admit that Spencer resembled his mother. Those high, angular blades were one and the same.

  “Yes,” the dowager said, her tone infused with false cheer, turning back to Bo with yet another manufactured smile. “It is your home now. Welcome back, Daughter. If you do not care for the sole, perhaps you will find the next course more to your liking.”

  Harry met Bo’s gaze, a glint of understanding passing between them. Gratitude trickled through her that she would have at least one ally within these imposing walls. The servants were called back in with another course, and when the Saumon au Vin Blanc arrived with its accompanying boat of shrimp sauce, the decision that had been reverberating through her mind finally was made.

  She was leaving in the morning for London, and Spencer and his townhouse could go rot. Earlier, she had sifted through her correspondence and had been heartened to see a lengthy note awaiting from her dear friend. Clara had demanded more information upon return from her honeymoon—apparently, she had garnered all the information she required from her stepmama, who also happened to be Cleo’s sister-in-law. And Clara was desperate for news. She wrote that she hoped she would see Bo soon, and that she and her husband were in residence at their townhome. The Duke and Duchess of Bainbridge would always be welcome.

  Bo intended to take her friend up on that offer.

  Sans the Duke of Bainbridge, of course. She would give him the space he required, and perhaps, in so doing, she would find a way to muddle through the emotions clouding her judgment. Maybe she would find a way to stop loving him.

  Spencer woke before dawn in a strange bed.

  He jolted awake, trapped in that odd purgatory between sleep and wakefulness, his mind sluggish, dredging up the nightmares that had claimed his slumber. A fine sheen of sweat coated his skin, locks of his hair plastered to his forehead. This time, the nightmare had been different.

  This time, he had been alone in his study, the pistol in his hand. A voice, sinuous and cloying, had woven its way into his consciousness. You are the devil. It is all your fault. End this. And he had taken the pistol, held it to his temple, finger poised on the trigger. He had been about to obey the voice, to send himself into oblivion where he belonged, but something else had stayed him.

  A presence. A scent.

  Jasmine. Boadicea.

  But it had been a nightmare, all of it, and now he was here, lying supine alone in a bed, coverlet pooled round his waist, chill morning air restoring his lucidity to him. As he shook the memories of the horrible dream from his brain, he scanned his surroundings. In the semi-darkness of pre-dawn glow through the window dressings, he thought for a moment that he was back at Ridgeley Castle. That he could roll over and nuzzle his face into the silken cloud of his wife’s hair, and that his hands would find the heavy weights of her breasts filling them, the erotic points of her hungry nipples stubbing into his palms.

  But this was not Ridgeley Castle, and the cavernous reaches of the chamber told him that. He was at Boswell Manor, and he had spent the majority of the day before alternately busying himself with an upcoming sale of some of his horses and avoiding the one woman he longed for most.

  He stared into the ceiling, finding the familiar molding and vaulting, the plasterwork shaped in the coat of arms, the ornamental roses and leaves, the details he had looked upon so many times that they had all but ceased to exist. How odd that a bed he had slept in for so many years should feel strange after only a week. That he should wake here, in his home, and feel bereft.

  But he did, and he did not like to think of the reason for any of those troubling matters. Because he knew the reason. The reason was too tall for a fashionable lady, with a mass of auburn curls, snapping blue eyes, the lushest lips he’d ever claimed. The reason smelled of jasmine and lily of the valley and had a marked tendency to trespass. She enjoyed reading bawdy books and liked acting them out even better. The reason was bold and desirable and brave and unflinching and the most beautiful, seductive woman he had ever bloody well seen.

  And he was terrified. So terrified that his mouth went dry even now, as he lay on his back and stared into the ceiling he had seen without truly seeing five thousand times before. How was it possible that he just realized, for the first time, that the plasterwork contained acanthus leaves and acorns? And how was it that everything he saw anew seemed to somehow be caused by her?

  Distancing himself from her had driven him yesterday. The necessity had been beneath his skin, an itch, a desperation that he couldn’t shake. Part self-preservation, the old demons returning to claim him. Because he had longed to go to her every moment he had been away. His inner beast had yearned for her, setting him aflame, and she was all he could think about, all he wanted, his confounded need for her consuming him.

  But he could not weaken now. He would not, any more than he already had during their honeymoon. Spencer should never have allowed his defenses to fall so easily. He should never have allowed her to wedge herself so firmly within his heart that he could not remove her no matter how hard he tried.

  He had been cool and aloof.

  He had kept her at arm’s length, not kissing or touching or otherwise making love to her.

  He had remained absent all day, leaving her to face dinner with his mother and brother on her own. Yes, he was a coward. An abject and pathetic piece of lowly pig shite. When he had found his chamber last night, there had been no light beneath her door, and he had forced himself to maintain his distance, for it was the only way he could keep himself from falling in love with her any more than he already had.

  Expelling a rush of air, he stared at the plaster some more, and Christ if he wasn’t still seeing new patterns and decorations as a subtle sound reached his ears. Movement. Footsteps. Doors closing. Shuffling. Muted voices. The music of it all rained together to create a cohesive sound that he recognized from his youth, from every time his parents had planned a journey and left he and Harry behind.

  The sounds could only mean one thing.

  His wife was leaving.

  He swallowed, gazing into the intricate arched ceiling overhead as if it could answer his queries. Pain and loss slammed into him. He could not let her go. He had to go to her, to fall on his knees, apologize for his mercurial mood.

  But what good would that do? Explanations would not make him whole. Revealing the ugliness of his inner scars to her would not free him. He would still be the man whose wife had killed herself before him. He would still be wracked by nightmares. He would still be unable to love her, to have children with her, to enjoy a true marriage with her the way she deserved.

  No.

  He could admit a truth to himself in this quiet moment with no one else about: he loved his wife. He loved Boadicea, the woman who was equal parts interloper, siren, and spitfire. He loved her so bloody much that his heart was a physical ache in his chest.

  He loved her so much that he would let her go.

  She deserved more than he could give her.

  She deserved everything.

  And he was not what she deserved. He was less. He was a broken man, too damaged by death and betrayal to ever be worthy of her love.

  The sounds of her leaving continued to linger in the air, all muted. Servants knew better than anyone to have a care for those around them. They were quiet in their
packing. Had he not already been awake, he would never have realized that his wife was leaving him.

  He should not feel the knife of loss in his gut now. Instead, he should feel relieved, for this was what he had wanted, what he required: time and space between them. Control. His ability to withstand the way she attacked his every defense. Perhaps distance would hinder the effect she had upon him, or at least grant him the strength he required to continue to keep her from scaling the walls he had so carefully built around himself.

  The door adjoining their chambers slid open in a hushed rush of sound over carpet. He closed his eyes and lay still, feigning sleep. Footfalls approached, soft and hesitant. Denied his vision, he became acutely aware of every sense, and he had no doubt of his visitor’s identity. Her silken skirts swished. The scent of jasmine trickled over him, just as it had in his nightmare. The hair on his nape prickled and he knew she stood near and silent, watching him.

  A touch, featherlight, smoothed through his hair. He almost jolted from the contact. From the tenderness. It took every bit of his willpower to keep his breathing steady and even, not to turn his face into her palm and kiss it, to dart his tongue over the lines intersecting its smooth perfection. Not to haul her into the bed atop him and beg her to stay before taking her so hard and fast and deep that they lost themselves.

  But he remained there, pretending he was lost to the bliss of unconsciousness, too much of a bloody coward to trust himself.

  “Goodbye, Spencer,” she whispered.

  He steeled himself against the stab of pain tunneling through him. He felt the loss of her touch, heard her quiet footsteps retreating once more. As she walked away, he told himself letting her go was the right decision—the only decision—he could make.

  o arrived in London a tired and bedraggled mess, not because her journey from Oxfordshire had been arduous or even long. The train ride from Oxford lasted not an hour and a half, but she had spent the duration of her trip alternately crying and glowering at the countryside.