Duke of Sorrow

by Blake, Whitney

  He’d thought it over on his way here and concluded that where Copperweld was concerned, he might have to help the truth along. Though his case against Benedict, who still had not acknowledged his presence in the attic, was all but assured, he admitted that abuse was not always something that was dealt with.

  In anticipation of that, he decided that he would not mind resorting to less upstanding tactics to ensure Copperweld never cast a shadow in his daughter’s life again.

  Then again, he might not have to. He hoped not.

  Copperweld didn’t quite understand, but he covered his lack of comprehension with an impudent glare.

  “I will say this plainly. I love her, and I won’t have her come to harm.”

  “How noble,” said Copperweld with a chortle. “But your love will come to nothing. No one will care what she says. No bailiff, no magistrate.”

  Bile actually rose in Will’s throat as he recognized that Copperweld was not at all bothering to deny his culpability. He simply thought that he would be able to continue his woeful actions without any interference, convinced that he was protected by society’s indifference.

  “Perhaps they won’t,” said Will agreeably, hiding how disturbed he really was, “but money and standing are quite eloquent. It is regrettable that all of us are not treated with equal dignity. Yet in this instance, I am pleased to say I have the ability to keep you out of Augusta’s affairs forever.”

  “All that trouble over an ungrateful slip of a girl? You must be mad, Your Grace.”

  Taking a knee so that he could look Copperweld in the eye, but keeping vigilant as he did so, Will said in a low, steady voice, “My madness will lead directly to you being locked away for the rest of your natural life. Be careful what you say next, or I shall ensure it is somewhere truly horrendous. Then you’d better pray that you’ve poisoned yourself enough not to live for much longer.”

  *

  One morning about a fortnight later, Will had a long talk with his aunt, the subject of which was none other than Miss Copperweld.

  In contrast to what had kept Brookfield abuzz with gossip—Eggy Cooper and his rescue—Will found himself unable to sleep for an entirely different matter. After he had daringly placed a kiss upon Miss Copperweld’s lips, he could neither comprehend a future without her, nor move forward in the direction of winning her as his wife.

  When he knew his aunt would be awake, he knocked on her sitting room door. She admitted him readily and without surprise. “William,” she said, dressed simply in a becoming but unassuming day dress embroidered with light floral accents. “What brings you to me before you have even had your coffee?” Amusedly, she added, “Should I have some brought to us? I’ll admit that I may be of very little use to you without it.”

  “If you wish, Aunt.” Truth be told, Will did not care either way, for he was sure his thoughts would be equally unintelligible with or without the stimulant.

  She spoke quietly with Lucy, and the maid quit the room, presumably to venture down into the kitchens. “Shall we speak freely, then?”

  “I wish to speak about Miss Copperweld.”

  “I thought as much.”

  “It seems you understood before I did that I was… attracted to her.”

  “What an inadequate way to explain how you look at that young woman,” said Jane, settling back in a wicker chair that had belonged to his mother. She surveyed him knowingly.

  “Did you hope that I would come to have feelings for her when you advocated so soundly for her presence in the manor?”

  It was not an accusation because Will was not angry. He just wanted to know.

  “At first, I saw only a woman in need of help. Later, I did wonder if, perhaps, you might have started to harbor deeper affections for her.” Jane yawned from behind her long-fingered hand. “I did not presume to plan anything, specifically.”

  “And it does not matter to you that she is of humble birth?”

  Possibly even illegitimate birth, if her father is to be believed. He didn’t know if he should believe the man, or not. He didn’t dwell on it, as he knew he would probably never know if the assertion was baseless.

  “No. And I don’t think it should, either. Does it matter to you, a man who has seen so much of the world?”

  Thinking, Will paced across the plush, intricately patterned rug, another heirloom of his mother’s. She had been fond of carpets from the Far East. “No, it does not. I know that people will talk, but they do little else.”

  “You are thinking ahead to…” Jane let the question hang in the air. She knew quite well what he was insinuating.

  “If we marry, the fact is that the ton will be mercilessly curious.”

  “I fail to see how it is any different from the situation you find yourself in, now.” Jane snorted. “If anything, it would give things quite a storybook ending, wouldn’t it? And if you are worried about how she will behave, well, I don’t believe she will bring you or me any shame at all.”

  Picking up a tiny porcelain cat and studying it, Will kept silent for a few moments. The villagers commented far less on my face than I ever expected. Perhaps Jane has been right all along, and my friends will not allow any maliciousness to touch me.

  It was odd how “normal” he felt, even under the eyes of so many.

  “That is true. The public is already curious. And the villagers’ reactions to me were not as horrible as I imagined they would be.”

  “They were not horrible, at all.”

  “Do you think those of our station will be less forgiving?” He was not talking about his looks.

  Jane watched his fingers toy with the porcelain figurine. “The ones who matter will at least be open to the idea. All of it. Your face, your choice to hide, your wife. People can surprise you, William. And as for anyone else, well… the Ainsworth name still means something. I believe anyone who has something bad to say about Miss Copperweld shall stay well out of your way. Don’t forget that you hold a sizable fortune, and what good is it if it won’t grant you some distance from overt censure?”

  Will considered this. “I hope you have an accurate read on the ton.”

  “I very often do.”

  “I never thought far enough ahead to marriage,” murmured Will. “Not even with Diana. Then… after all of this… I just assumed it would never be for me. That I’d be the last Ainsworth.”

  It was a sobering thought. The death of a family line. He did not know of it happening within his lifetime.

  Will heard Lucy return with the coffee tray and set it on a table opposite Jane’s chair.

  “Perhaps you won’t be, if you get what you want, which I believe you will.”

  Vividly, he thought of raising a family, something that at first had never appealed and later became as fantastical to him as the concept of a unicorn.

  Wordlessly, Lucy walked out to leave them to their discussion. Jane never minded pouring her own coffee, Will remembered. She was a fiend for the drink and no maid or servant could ever serve it fast enough for her.

  In a very small voice, Will asked, “Do you think I will have disappointed Mother and Father?”

  Jane stood and went to him, taking both of his hands in her own. She gently took the cat from his palm and put it back on the mantel. “They were married because they loved each other. I cannot say if they would be immediately amenable to the idea of you being with a common woman, but I can say that they would come around to it. Miss Copperweld is unique.”

  “I fear she will not have me,” he confessed. “She is so… full of life. I have nothing to offer her but hideousness and my title. I do not think the latter outweighs the former enough.”

  “If you think that she cares most of all for your title or looks, then you have judged her poorly,” said Jane, as though her words were the end of it.

  “Wouldn’t it be natural for her to have done so?”

  “I cannot offer you any help that would soothe your mind. You should go directly to Miss Copperweld and
address her.” Jane stroked his palms with her thumbs. “You will be wrong in your estimation of her character, and find yourself pleasantly surprised.”

  “I hope you are right,” he murmured.

  Before he could lose his nerve, he sent word to Miss Copperweld that they should meet in the library. He waited near one of the open windows, thinking of what he might have missed if they’d never stumbled upon her next to the brook. It was impossible to say, that was true, but his soul shrunk at the thought.

  She was the reason why he’d crept back out of the shadows. It was as simple as that.

  Her footsteps sounded in the corridor and, upon hearing them, his confidence fled. When she entered with a pleasant smile on her oval face, striking brown eyes alight, all he could say was, “I trust that Eggy is getting on well?”

  With her father’s removal from Brookfield, Miss Copperweld had been into the village several times on her own. Mostly, she checked on her father’s farm and made sure the men he had nominally hired were still attending their duties—which they were, Will had been glad to hear. Miss Copperweld had confided in him that the men were not necessarily any more trustworthy than her father. She said they were merely more sober than he.

  But yesterday, she had also paid a visit to the Coopers.

  “He’s still sore, but Mr. Croft tended his stitches and there are no signs of infection.” She grinned happily. “I’m so pleased.”

  “No doubt, he’ll be running around and driving his parents mad soon enough.”

  “Perhaps. But he is a remarkably well-behaved child,” she said. “He seems to prefer spending his time alone. Though I do believe he will think twice before climbing another tree to seek solitude.” After a long and slightly awkward moment, she asked, “You wished to see me, Lord Ainsworth?”

  “I did.”

  “Have you made a choice about whether or not I shall be employed on the estate?”

  Neither of them mentioned the brief kiss they had shared. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “In a manner of speaking?” she repeated, the grin dropping from her lips.

  “Yes.”

  “You know…” she turned from him and studied one of the tall bookshelves. “Now that Father is in custody… I thought perhaps I might make my way in the world as a farmer. His farm is still in working shape.”

  I don’t have that in mind for you, thought Will.

  “I am glad that you feel you have options, now,” he said.

  “Will you resume treating the villagers?”

  “I expect I will do so more often, now. They will not let me keep to myself.”

  “You should,” she said. “It suits you, like you were born to do it.” It was hard for Will to read her tone, so he placed his hands softly on her shoulders and turned her back toward him. She allowed it, and she met his eyes searchingly.

  “I have not asked you here to discuss your employment, Miss Copperweld,” he said. He released his light grip on her. “Whether here or in the village.”

  “Why have you asked me to come, then?” She idly traced her lips with her right pointer finger. Will knew she was probably thinking about their kiss.

  In for a penny, in for a… Will took a breath.

  “I wish to lay my heart at your feet to see what you will do with it.” She went so still that she resembled a fine marble statue. “I, more than anyone, feel that I don’t deserve your spirit or your beauty. I am, quite frankly, hideous. My air is often melancholic.” Will was not worried about her silence or her stillness. He just needed to speak and let the chips fall where they would. He started to walk along the perimeter of the vast, burgundy-colored rug under their feet, engaging in a kind of meditative trance. “But I must say something or I shall go mad. These last few weeks, in particular, have been torturous. I see what could be and hope I am not overstepping my bounds in broaching the subject.”

  “You are not,” she said, in a voice barely above a whisper.

  Encouraged, he continued on, looking at the vaulted ceiling rather than her face as his feet still carried him aimlessly. “I don’t know when it truly began.”

  “Presumably sometime before you kissed me,” she said softly.

  “Yes,” he said with a low chuckle. “Indeed, before then. That was rash and I should not have done it, with even that small of an audience.”

  “No, it was a genuine act. You should act more on your feelings. You restrain yourself too often. Or you let fear restrain you, which I think amounts to the same effect.”

  This pronouncement halted his pacing and he gazed at her ruefully, softly. “You must be wondering if I have any ill-intent in telling you all of this.”

  She was near the fireplace, now, resting a hand against the complex carvings that his father had so loved. Inspired by a trip to Venice, he’d had the mantel specially commissioned. A range of emotions played out on her face, until at last, she said, “I will admit that I have wondered what you are thinking when you look at me.” She traced a flourished, curled place in the marble with one finger. “We are not of the same station at all, and the only things I could tell myself for certain were that you might want to bed me and, perhaps, you felt I was pretty.”

  Will blinked as she said this without shame. She has no reason to think otherwise.

  None of his family or friends had been with commoners in the ways she was insinuating, but they were often the exception. When he had spent more of his time in the London clubs and, indeed, working in the infirmaries for the poor, he had heard many tales about women who’d been ill-used.

  At best, they were willing participants. Some benefitted quite handsomely, and Will couldn’t judge them for that.

  However, not all of them did benefit.

  “You did not tell yourself that perhaps I had grown to love you?”

  Her eyes went very wide. “No, because you are a duke.”

  “I am,” he said mildly. “I didn’t think I would be. Life had other plans.”

  “Either way. Thinking that you might love me… that’s the stuff of tales,” she said helplessly. “Only children think that way.”

  “What about you loving me?”

  “That is something from a tale, too,” she insisted. “Dukes and your lot… you don’t love women like me.”

  He didn’t point out that she sidestepped his question, which gave him some hope that she might love him. “I was never supposed to be the duke,” said Will. “I was the youngest.”

  “Even if you weren’t, you’d still be—”

  He tried a different way of articulating his point. “If I were some lad you met…” Will thought about the most mundane circumstances he could. “In church, or in a…” What sort of decent fellows would she actually come into contact with, given her father’s overbearing nature? “Shop, who had a trade, or a profession, and you grew to love me, would you be so nervous to state it?”

  She all but rolled her eyes. “The point is, you are not some lad.”

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  “Lord Ainsworth,” she said, slowly, realizing that she could not dodge the discussion he was trying to have, “if you were a hostler, or a valet, or a butler, or a butcher, or almost anything other than what you are, I would easily admit my feelings for you.” She gazed at him with something almost like fear. “I may seem very inexperienced and, in most respects, I am, but I know enough of the world to understand the difference between…” her gaze darted and landed on anything that was not him. “Urges and love. Or affection. I also understand how society works. Enough to understand that I should never dream of you.”

  Will did not discount the significance of her saying “love” before “affection”.

  “Then pretend I am ordinary,” suggested Will with a smile. “It will be far easier than me trying to pretend you are.”

  She blushed a shade of deep rose. “I can’t, can I? Who in your circle will let me keep up the pretense?”

  “We won’t know until we meet them, will
we? But I would expect that not everyone will be horrid about it.”

  Miss Copperweld’s resolve was eroding. He could see it in the way her posture was slumping slightly. Minutely, like a flower opening itself to the sun, she was listing toward him. “Optimism, now, from you?”

  “As I said, I don’t know when it—love—happened for me, exactly. But I fully acknowledged it to myself when you and I spoke about your possible employment here.” Will smiled more broadly. “I found I could not consider such a thing, and wondered why it struck me as so… wrong.” Quickly, for he did not want to insult her, he added, “Not that there is anything wrong with work. But I realized that if I wanted you to stay, I wanted you to stay to be my wife.”

  “You thought it would be strange for me to work here because you wanted to marry me?” Miss Copperweld summarized, in somewhat of a daze.

  “Yes,” he said patiently. He went to her slowly, as though he were trying not to startle a doe.

  “But I am… nothing,” she said. “A nobody. You… you are a…” she trailed off. “A hero.”

  He tilted his head and brushed some of his hair back as it fell forward with the movement. “No, I’m not. I am always just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.

  She looked at him seriously, still taken aback, but now studying his face. “How did it happen? Lady Jane has only briefly said.”

  Tentatively, she brought her hand to his cheek. He did not flinch with nerves, even when her palm rested partially on his scar tissue. It was the first time another person apart from himself, not a physician, had touched it with their fingers. Only his aunt had kissed his cheek, at times.

  “I saw one of my comrades laying on the ground,” he said. “I went to him to see what I could do.”

  “Do you remember the blow?”

  “No,” said Will. “Not much. And I woke up in the dark. My eyes, my face, had all been wrapped.”

  She began to thumb his cheek. “Were you alone when you awoke?”

  He shook his head minutely, afraid that if he moved too much, she would stop touching him. “My good friend, Peter, was the one who explained everything to me. He is a physician, too.”