A Soulmate for the Heartbroken Duke
Page 30
But, he knew that his father would not approve of giving in to such instincts. It was better to walk away from it all, to slowly turn his back on the woman without explanation and never, ever renew his addresses to her.
Rufus realized that he had been marching hastily through the woodland, fueled by the old anger and resentment which had overcome him as he relived that dreadful, overheard conversation. He had made his way deeper into the woodland and, just as he had earlier predicted, darkness was already beginning to draw down. The weak sunshine seemed to have disappeared without warning, although he knew that could not possibly be true.
Rufus had been trapped in his own thoughts, the same wheel of remembered conversations and feelings that he seemed to have been stuck on for so many years.
As he turned and trudged back out towards the gravel driveway, judging it to be his safest route home in the fading light, Rufus knew that he had made his decision on that day so many years before that he would never entertain ambitious young ladies again. He had made it his business to study them, to know them for what they were and to see them coming at every turn. He had been firm in his resolve never to find himself so used in the future.
But now, as he marched along through the cold and damp of early evening, he realized that he was doing nothing more than instigating a competition between just so many women of that type. Surely any young lady who crossed his path now, if Henry Mercer had done his job and propagated his gossip as he had promised, would be cut from the very same cloth that the young Eleanor Camden had been.
Rufus let out a deep groan and watched with familiar fascination as his warm breath condensed in the cold air, creating a great misty plume around him.
Suddenly a thought struck him, a thought that was not necessarily one which would induce happiness, but one which gave him a certain amount of satisfaction, at any rate.
Things would be different this time, even if the young ladies presented to him were no more honest and real than Eleanor Camden had been. And the reason that things would be different this time would be because he would determinedly keep himself distant from whichever woman he finally married. He would not fall in love with her the way he had with Eleanor Camden. He would not make himself so vulnerable to it all again. After all, if he did not love the woman, what would it matter if she was choosing to marry him for nothing more than the title? It would surely be neither here nor there to him as long as she was a good mother to their children.
The Duke laughed to himself without any hint of real mirth as he strode back towards the myriad of lighted windows of Hillington Hall. All he really needed was a wife with whom to produce an heir, and that was it. He need not love her, nor ever find himself in a position to be hurt by her true opinions of him. Her opinions of him would never be sought, and they would not matter to him anyway.
Rufus realized that he was becoming a very different sort of man, one he was not at all sure he liked. But if that was what it took to go through with his plan, to sire an heir to the estate and title his fine father had left him, then that was what he would do.
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