Darling Duke

by Scarlett Scott

  A discreet look into the small mirror she kept in her reticule as the hired coach she had procured delivered her to the Earl of Ravenscroft’s townhome confirmed her sorry state. She bore red-rimmed eyes, tear-stained cheeks, and a pink nose. Clara would take one look at her and know.

  But wasn’t that why she had decided to accept her friend’s invitation? For support and distraction? For a respite from the daily reminder that her husband did not and would never love her, while she loved him more with each passing moment? Yes, for those reasons and more. Helplessness, for one. Companionship, for another. She could have gone to any of her sisters, of course, but she missed Clara. They had been thick as thieves during their finishing school days and best of friends ever since.

  In some ways, she wished she could return to those simpler times, when she’d had no concern more pressing than how she could get even with the odious Miss Caroline Stanley.

  Bo sighed, weariness sinking into her bones. She had left for the station terribly early, eager to leave the stultifying atmosphere of Boswell Manor behind. Leaving Spencer, however, had not been an easy decision or one made lightly. She had done it because her heart could not bear his icy withdrawal. She should not have gone to see him before departing.

  Watching his beautiful face in restful repose had torn her apart. Touching him had been even more foolish, for she had wanted, with everything in her, to cast her pride aside, strip away her traveling gown, and slide into bed beside him. In the place she had come to feel she belonged. She had lingered there, willing him to wake and tell her not to leave. But he had not moved, and her pride had won, and she had gone.

  The carriage slowed to a stop.

  She had reached her destination. Part of her wondered about Spencer back at Boswell Manor. He would have risen by now and discovered her gone. Would he care, or would he be relieved? Would he miss her at all?

  Bo swallowed lest she embarrass herself by bursting into tears on her way to the door and forced all thoughts of Spencer from her mind. Her heart was his, but her brain, at least, remained hers, if unruly. She descended from the conveyance, gripping her reticule, and took a moment to compose herself.

  A grim, silver-haired butler answered the door. She presented him her card, feeling somehow that he had passed judgment upon her and found her lacking, even though she was now a duchess. Perhaps it was the puffy eyes and the strawberry-hued nose?

  She awaited her fate while he checked to see if Lady Ravenscroft was at home.

  “Bo!”

  Her friend rushed to her in a whirl of navy satin skirts. Her golden hair was braided and pinned at her crown, a fringe of bangs adorning her forehead. She was as strikingly lovely as ever, but there was more to Clara’s appearance than normal. Bo’s gaze narrowed as she studied her. There was something she could not quite define, beyond the fact that she radiated sated happiness. She almost…glowed.

  Bo was denied further contemplation when her friend reached her and threw her arms about her in an unabashed embrace. Clara had been born and raised in Virginia, though she had come to England at fifteen, and she still possessed a vitality and warmth coupled with a sweet drawl that were not always appreciated amongst the ton.

  Bo loved her for being who she was, not to mention for daring to help hide a frog in the knickers of Miss Caroline Stanley during finishing school. The squeals of horror alone had been worth the effort, in Bo’s opinion. She hugged her friend and fellow finishing school hellion tightly. It had been so long since they had last seen each other. Too long.

  “My dear friend, you look positively wonderful,” Bo said as she stepped back. “Life as the Countess of Ravenscroft is happy, I trust?”

  Clara’s smile lit up her eyes. “More than happy. Our honeymoon was wonderful, Bo. I wish you could have seen Virginia—the lush green grass and the honeysuckle blossoms. My God, I can still smell them. And then New York, such a bustling, thriving metropolis! Why, I cannot believe you have never been to visit your sister and her husband there. I have Julian’s word that he will take me back to America at least once a year. I find that I do miss it after all.” She linked her arm’s through Bo’s. “Come, you mustn’t stand on ceremony. Will you stay, or is this a mere call?”

  “I…” Bo faltered, uncertain of how to explain. Uncertain if she wanted to explain. “I shall stay, if you will still have me.”

  “Of course!” Clara tugged at her arm. “Osgood will see to your trunks. Ravenscroft and I were just having breakfast with his sisters. Have you eaten?”

  “I do not wish to interrupt,” Bo protested, feeling awkward to have interrupted their family breakfast. “I shall go have a lie down while you finish, and then we can visit. I want to hear all about your honeymoon.”

  Her friend paused in the act of all but dragging her down the hall, giving her an assessing look. “But that is just it, isn’t it? You are married, Bo. To the Duke of Bainbridge, no less! What happened, and why isn’t he accompanying you? Darling, are you upset? You look as if you’ve been weeping.”

  “He…we…it is complicated,” she managed, not saying more when Clara’s husband, the handsome and rakish Earl of Ravenscroft appeared before them.

  With his dark hair, blue eyes, and arresting looks, he was the ideal foil for Clara’s light, spritely beauty. The frown marring his expression vanished when he saw the two of them, a smile replacing it.

  “Ah,” he drawled. “The troublesome friend returns.”

  Bo flushed. It was true that she had earned his opinion of her the hard way, namely through encouraging Clara to offer herself to him in marriage in return for a share of her dowry and her return to Virginia. At the time, it had been what Clara wanted most, and her protective father had been thwarting her at every turn. Ravenscroft had been notoriously pockets to let and in need of funds—it had seemed the perfect plan. But once Clara had married the earl, everything had changed.

  She had fallen in love.

  And Bo knew now how powerful and all-consuming that emotion was. How much it altered the landscape of one’s life. Fortunately for her friend, the man she’d married returned her love. Bo was not so lucky.

  “She is not troublesome,” Clara chastised her husband, breaking through Bo’s saturnine thoughts.

  Ravenscroft raised a brow, but humor danced in his eyes. “Need I remind you of the first night we met, my love?”

  Clara flushed, her eyes glued to her husband. “How can I forget it?”

  Bo cleared her throat, the open adoration bouncing back and forth between husband and wife making her uncomfortable. Not to mention envious. “I am troublesome,” she admitted.

  “And I am grateful.” Ravenscroft shared another private glance with Clara before turning back to Bo with a wink. “Your advice, while abominable, turned out quite wonderfully in the end, Duchess.”

  Duchess.

  Bo almost looked behind her to see who he addressed. Of course, it was she. She was the Duchess of Bainbridge, Spencer’s wife. But their marriage almost seemed as if it had been a dream, and that she had awoken, alone and cold and empty for knowing all she now missed.

  “Thank you,” she forced herself to say, painfully aware of both Clara’s and her husband’s searching gazes upon her.

  “Bainbridge did not accompany you?” Ravenscroft asked.

  “No.” She feigned a smile. “He is busy readying his Arabians for a sale, but he sends his regards.”

  It was a lie, and Bo knew that Clara and the earl were aware of her subterfuge in the name of pride. Oh, perhaps there was a sale, but Spencer had never deigned to mention it to her until it became his excuse for acting as if she had ceased to exist the moment they returned to Boswell Manor.

  “Breakfast,” Clara suggested brightly. “Join us. No lie down for you, not when you’ve just arrived, Bo. Come along and be entertained by the whirlwinds that are Julian’s sisters.”

  “Patience-trying minxes,” the earl muttered good-naturedly, “the lot of them.”

  Bo allowed
Clara to drag her into the breakfast room.

  She was gone.

  Spencer should feel the sweet breath of relief wafting through him, refreshing his mind and body both. He should certainly not feel as if someone had punched him in the gut. As if the best part of himself had been unceremoniously amputated.

  Six days had passed since the morning she had crept into his chamber at dawn, run her fingers through his hair, and bade him farewell.

  Spencer knew because he could account for each bloody day like a black mark on his soul. Oh, he carried on. He discussed the upcoming sale with his head groomsman. But as the auctioneer, Tattersall’s was well-prepared. The day of the sale would arrive, and a small selection of the impeccable horseflesh he had curated would be sold. Lords and American business tycoons alike were clamoring for the chance to own one of his Arabians. He had no doubt that the prices they fetched would be good.

  And he didn’t give a bloody goddamn about any of it.

  He was not a man often given to blasphemy, but if there was anything that made him feel like committing such a sin, it was the glaring absence of the fiery, bold, fiercely wonderful woman he had married. His duchess. Boadicea. The gentle-hearted hellion with a love of wicked books who had matched wits with him, who had presented herself to him without shame, who had brought him to his knees with the force of her passion.

  The woman he had pushed away so that the pain he’d suffered in the past would never again be inflicted upon him. She had gotten too close. He had let her. And now she was in his heart. Distance did not change the way he felt. The passing days only made him more certain.

  He loved her.

  It was morning, and a gentle mist fell from the sky, and his general mood matched that of the day: gray, unseasonably cold, dismal. He walked past the chapel where he had married both of his wives and where he had attended far too many funerals. Beyond, the gravestones stood from the grassy earth in stark relief. Some of them were weathered, the engraved stones and hewn marble worn by centuries. The Marlows had spent many generations within Boswell Manor’s manicured park. They had loved here, lived here, died here.

  He stopped before the grave that he sought this morning. Millicent’s, and just alongside hers, their son’s. As he had done many times over the years, he knelt, staring at the reminder of his former life, cold stone and smoothly planed angles. Names and dates. Nothing to suggest that they had once been something more than entries in the chapel register.

  A hand fell on his shoulder. He started, looking down to find it large and masculine, forcing the brief hope that flared to life inside him that it was Bo’s to sputter and die. He rose to his full height, turning to see Harry in the mists, a pained expression pinching his once carefree face.

  It hurt Spencer to think he was the source of his brother’s jadedness, that he alone had ruined all the people who cared for him: Millicent, Harry, his mother, and Boadicea most recently. But that was supposing she felt something for him beyond lust, which he could not be sure that she did. Especially not now that he had succeeded in sending her away.

  Perhaps she did not care at all, for she had left him and gone silent. No intention of returning, no word. He had learned that she had not even gone to his London home, nor had she made use of his carriage. She had gone to the station in Oxford, and from there, she had vanished. For all he knew, she was halfway across the globe at this moment, leaving him behind for good.

  The notion made him want to plow his fist into the nearest inanimate object.

  “You look like hell,” Harry observed unkindly.

  “What are you doing here?” He had not wanted anyone else to see him here at his lowest, humbly bending his knee before the grave of the woman who had almost killed him and the son who had never had the chance to live.

  “Looking for you.” His brother’s tone was grim. “I knew you would be here, trapped in the past, the last place you ought to be.”

  He stiffened, straightening his spine. He had an inch on Harry, and he always would. He also had age, if not wisdom. “I am mourning what I have lost,” he bit out.

  “Are you?” Skepticism tinged Harry’s voice. “I could have sworn you were wallowing in self-pity, mourning what you could have had with Bo. What you’re too bloody stubborn and stupid to fight for.”

  Bo. The shortened form of her name ate at his gut like acid. He disliked the reminder that his brother had shared something with her first. Regardless of her insistence that their friendship had been platonic on her side, it made him gnash his teeth.

  He stalked forward, primitive possession and rage soaring through him. “You will not speak of my wife with such familiarity,” he gritted. “Do you understand? Never again, damn you.”

  But Harry held his gaze and did not flinch or take one step in retreat. “Bo.”

  Spencer lunged forward, an animalistic roar emerging from his throat, and grabbed two fistfuls of his brother’s coat. “Say it one more time, and I will not be responsible for what I do.”

  “Is it my saying her name that displeases you, or is it the reminder that she exists?” Harry raised a brow, his expression smug. “I daresay you’ve been doing your best to forget the fact that you have a wife over the last week. She left you, and you go about as if it is business as usual. Dithering over your bloody horse sale. Poring over crop analyses. Looking down your pompous nose at anyone who crosses your path.”

  Spencer went cold. His brother’s accusation taunted him, repeating itself over and over in his mind. She left you. What in the hell? “She did not leave me. She went to visit her friend, Lady Ravenscroft.”

  Hadn’t she? It was what he had assumed, even if he could not be certain of her whereabouts.

  “Oh? Did she mention when she planned on returning?” his brother asked.

  Fuck. She had not even told him she was leaving, let alone where she was going or when she would return. If ever. His mouth went dry, and he felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. Icy tendrils of fear unfurled, closing over his heart and constricting.

  He refused to believe that she had left him. That she had no wish for their union to continue. If she left him, it would tear him apart piece by bloody piece. It would be a hundredfold worse than what he had endured before, because he loved Boadicea. He loved her more than he had ever believed possible.

  “I can surmise from your bilious expression that she did not deign to provide you with an idea of when she might come back to Boswell Manor.” Harry clapped his palms upon Spencer’s shoulders. “And I cannot blame her. From the moment you returned from your honeymoon, you hid yourself in the stables. Mother planned a full menu of fish in all its various forms, knowing Bo hates the stuff. The next morning, she was gone at dawn. I’m not a gambler, but if I had to make a wager, I would bet against you, brother.”

  Bloody, bloody hell.

  He absorbed Harry’s diatribe, and he had to admit it did not paint a pretty picture. He couldn’t even argue the facts, for his brother had provided an accurate summary. Spencer had returned from spending the best damn week of his life—full stop—and had been so consumed with fear that he’d closed himself off. Telling himself it was for the best, he had retreated, returning to his comfort of the last three years, his stable.

  In effect, he had abandoned her.

  He should have known his mother would not have warmed to Boadicea’s presence at Boswell Manor after a mere week. He should have been present at dinner, noting his wife’s distaste for the courses presented her. He should have demanded something better. He should have required his mother to treat her with the respect she was due.

  And most of all, he should have treated her with the respect she was due. He was her husband, after all. He was the man who loved her. But maybe he had been too caught up in his own selfish fears to realize that what he needed most was also what terrified him the most.

  “Have you nothing to say for yourself?” Harry gave him a shake. “Why did you insist on marrying her if you do not love her? Sh
e deserves to be loved, Spencer. If you cannot love her—”

  “I do love her,” he interrupted, the confession torn from him. “Of course I love her. What man could not fall in love with her? She is bold and beautiful, witty and wonderful. She is fearless and determined. I stand in awe of her. She is my better in every bloody fashion I can fathom. I do not deserve her.”

  “Of course you don’t deserve her, you miserable horse’s arse.” Harry’s mouth tightened into a thin, forbidding line. “You need to earn her. Bo is not like anyone else. She is a law unto herself. Cease looking at me as if you wish to poison my tea. I have accepted your marriage. You are my brother, and I love you enough to wish you happy. I am sick to death of watching you eke out an existence, cold and aloof, trapped in the misery of the misfortune that befell you in the past.”

  He didn’t wish to poison Harry’s tea. But he did want to make certain that his brother never again entertained a single, lascivious thought regarding her. That privilege was solely his.

  If she would still have him.

  If she had not left him.

  If he had not mucked up his marriage so badly after a fortnight that Boadicea would never wish to see or speak to him again. Not that he would blame her. His harridan of a mother had smothered her in fish, and he had been too cowardly to even appear at dinner so that Boadicea had a champion on her side.

  They had spent their honeymoon making love, losing themselves in each other, forgetting about anything and everything other than Spencer and Boadicea, husband and wife. Only for him to return and promptly revert to what was safe: distance, chill, not allowing anyone past his sky-high battlements. He had closed her out. What choice had she other than acceptance?

  “I love her so bloody much I ache with it. She is all I can think about, all I want, everything I need.” Once he uttered it aloud, he felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his chest.

  “Then go to her,” Harry advised quietly. “Tell her. She needs to know. You both deserve to be happy.”