by Sophia Nash
Her eyes were huge.
“My steward wrote to me while I was in Cornwall, attending Kress’s house party, which was just as exciting as this one.” He shook his head. It seemed such a long time ago. “In any case, my steward informed me that Percy had called on me just after I left for Carleton House, but obviously missed me. And my butler informed him I was at Carleton House with the rest of the royal entourage.”
Still she said not a word.
“Percy told him, insisted really, that he had something to inform me. Was quite nasty about it. The butler informed him that I was away to Carleton House to attend Candover’s nuptials. Of course, all of this was lost on me at the time.” He shook his head at her and placed a finger on the tip of her nose. “Yes, I was completely preoccupied at the time due to someone, yes someone—Verity Fitzroy—who arrived to whisper in my ear that I was secretly married. To you, my lovely.”
She nodded. “And aren’t you glad how that turned out?” she whispered.
“But my cousin Percy has never bothered to visit or write to me since then. It’s not like him. I usually am forced to suffer his person at least three or four times a quarter. I have not heard from him in two months.”
She looked ready to keel over.
“He was the one you shot, wasn’t he? He went to Carleton House to find me and you shot him. I’m guessing in self-defense. He was a lecherous old fool, always bothering the house maids. But why were you too afraid to tell me? You didn’t think I would censure you because he was my cousin, did you?”
She looked away, misery flooding her lovely even features; even in the darkness he could see.
“No, Edward. It was not that.”
“Well, I know you don’t have his death on your conscience, since Barry told you he did not die by your hand in the end.”
She wrapped her arms about herself and looked at him mutely.
“Come here, my love,” he insisted. He wrapped his arms around her small frame and tried to stop the vision of his awful cousin’s hands reaching for her. He buried his nose in her hair and breathed deep her lovely rose scent. “Why did you tell me to go to Candover, to insist he should be the person I confide in when needed? And then you begged me to insist he confide in me. You said—”
She interrupted by finishing his thought. “That he needed you and you needed him.”
He pressed on. “And you mentioned that you owed a debt and that is why you shot Percy.”
It was the most frustrating feeling, Edward thought, when pieces of a puzzle could not be made to fit—even when there were only two pieces left, and two gaps remaining on the puzzle.
“Damn it all, woman. Tell me. Tell—” He stopped. “What has Candover got to do with Percy sodding Godwin? What would Candover confide to me?”
Her eyes were huge in her face as she pushed for more space between them.
“And why does bloody Candover always look at me in that stupid cow-eyed way when he doesn’t think I am looking at him? He just did it now when we all saw Barry with Isabelle.”
“It’s not cow-eyed, in any way. That’s completely undignified. The way he looks at you is with his whole heart exposed or—” She stopped and bit her lower lip.
He loved wheedling things from her. And clearly spouting wildly inappropriate lies was the way to goad her. “And there you have it,” he pressed. “It’s just as I thought, Candover’s in love with me.”
Her face crumpled.
His arms went numb at the sight of her expression. “I was making a joke, my love.”
She buried her face in his neck cloth and he tightened his arms about her. “May God have mercy on me, Edward, of course he loves you. You are his . . .”
When she wouldn’t continue, he supplied an answer. “Sinful, secret passion? Well, with God as my witness, I swear it’s unrequited.”
“Guess again,” she said in a very small voice.
He sighed in annoyance. “I am his relation twenty-five times removed?”
“Much closer,” she said in a whisper he had to lean down to hear.
“His cousin in some way? I am not Candover’s cousin. I do not have any cousins. Percy was the only one. And I am not his uncle either. So that leaves . . . Well, I would know if he was my brother, so surely—” He stopped.
She said not a word.
He shook her a bit. What in hell kind of madness was she suggesting? A growing ball of uncertainty filled his gut.
Still she made not a sound.
He muttered a curse so blue that his Scottish-soon-to-be-wife didn’t understand it. “James Fitzroy is not related to me.”
“All right,” she whispered.
“Oh, for God’s sake woman. Is he or isn’t he?” He paused, stricken. “Lord, help me. I’m a bloody love child, aren’t I? Just tell me please that my mother is my real mother. There is no possible way she is not.”
“Of course she is,” she whispered.
A wash of images and events in his life flew threw his mind as he desperately tried to make sense of all of this. “Well, I must admit that explains a lot. My father—”
She interrupted, her eyes full of concern. “Candover said he was a kind man.”
“He was a devoted father,” Sussex assured her. “I loved him. But he hated something I loved.” He tapped his finger to her nose again at her concerned expression. “Bacon, for one thing. All meat, really. When I think of all the meals consisting of only vegetables and fruits . . . it’s a wonder I don’t raze this entire garden.”
She relaxed in his arms. “You’re taking the news very well. Are you certain you don’t feel the need to lie down, have a bit of a crisis to ponder your place in the world?”
He smiled hugely and waggled his brows. “Not at all, my sweet. I’ve just been elevated leaps and bounds above all of humanity, don’t you know? I’m a duke twice over, the Secret Love Child Premier Duke of Candover and Sussex. Why I’m nearly as exalted as a prince of the realm and—”
Amelia interrupted, “A tad full of oneself. Please tell me when your canonization is complete. I have some stockings I need to mend.”
“You may kiss my hand,” he said, smiling. He enfolded her even deeper into his arms and took over the job of raining kisses down on her—clearly the only living saint who would ever walk the halls of the abbey.
“I have one favor to ask,” she murmured finally between kisses.
He could not get enough of the scent of her, and nosed the nape of her neck. “Yes?”
“Please don’t tell him I told you.”
“My darling, I refuse to play childish games like that. Gentlemen don’t do that—and dukes have an even more strict protocol. I will tell him I know I’m a duke twice over at the most appropriate moment.”
“And when is that?” she asked with dry skepticism.
“When he needs to be shocked out of his cool-headed, arrogant senses. Extra points if it’s in public.”
“Oh, Edward . . . don’t you dare.”
Chapter 19
“Keep your voice down. You’re scaring the horses,” Calliope whispered more loudly than an offstage prompter at Drury Lane Theatre.
The audacity of this draconian matron in the form of a fourteen-year-old girl was astounding, James thought as he stood in the older of two tack rooms in Sussex’s stables. The dusty chamber, which had quite obviously fallen into disuse, was filled with two hundred years of leather, metal, stuffing, and stitching, and smelled like a thousand years of horse sweat and manure.
“I have not said three words,” James replied.
“Yes, you have. You just said six more.”
“You are again avoiding the question,” he ground out.
“And you are using that tone that Miss Primrose tells me is very unhelpful and does not encourage someone to do what you would like,” Calliope stated.
James bit back a retort. He was the premier duke of England, damnation. He could demand respect.
She glanced around the edge of the door and then wrinkled her nose as she readjusted her spectacles. “The driver has just snapped the ribbons and the carriage is on the way to the servants’ entrance to take up our affairs. Isabelle will be here in a trice. But you won’t have much time.”
“Calliope Little, what in hell are you suggesting?”
Her eyes widened in false horror. “You are not supposed to curse in front of children. It fosters fear and uncertainty.”
“Exactly what I intended,” he returned, shuttering his eyes. “I’m leaving.”
She gripped his arm with the tenacity of a female who would not be denied. “You promised,” she wheedled.
“I agreed to take the air with you before you took your leave for London,” he reminded her. “And you said you had something of great importance to confide, something which you still have not endeavored to impart. A fantastic secret, in short.” The last he said with all the grace and hauteur for which he was famous. “Now, out with it, minx.”
Something caused Calliope to dart a glance back around the door. Grinning, she gashed a great tide of words: “She’s coming. Here is your chance. Don’t you dare let me down, Sober—I mean, um— Oh, there’s no time. The secret is . . . that I’ve decided these plans regarding the Duke of Barry are just entirely unacceptable. Oh, he’s a nice enough man. Very nice, actually. You could learn a few . . .” She looked away, only moderately chastened. “But he won’t do. Only you will do.”
He snorted with annoyance. “These ‘plans,’ as you call them, are a bit more than that. They are promises they have made—and a promise is a bond never to be broken. And they will suit very well. I am happy for them,” he said.
“Liar,” she announced. “Why must you be so pigheaded? You love her and she loves you. Don’t look at me like you’ve got an icicle stuck up your . . .”
He gave her a look.
“Ummm . . . Well, you understand, I’m sure. Look, please don’t let this happen . . . do something. Surely there must be some royal right to trump Barry since you’re the premier duke, not just some everyday, run of the mill duke?” She blinked her enlarged eyes behind her spectacles. “Honestly, sometimes gentlemen are so thick-headed. Why must I do all the thinking?”
He wished he could say he had been completely innocent of Calliope’s motive behind her demand to take a tour of the park before she left for Town with Isabelle. He could not say it. “It’s discomforting to know that four years from now I will have to play the innocent bystander to the complete havoc you will wreak on that Season’s crop of ill-prepared bachelors.”
“Oh, don’t worry, you won’t see any of it. By then you’ll be ancient and toothless and Isabelle will be feeding you porridge.”
The image was the very same one the old Duke of March had voiced all those years ago as he looked into a half-eaten bowl of mush. Coldness invaded his extremities and he shook his head to rid himself of the memories.
Calliope tugged him from the doorway and they entered the hard-packed dirt aisle of the large stable just as Isabelle left the sunshine beyond the entrance in front of them. She was carrying a hatbox and a book, and as she approached, Candover’s gut felt hollow and bottomless as he drank in the beauty of her. She was so full of life and promise. So confident and ready for all that fate would throw at her. He desperately wanted to protect her from the future.
Isabelle stopped short a dozen steps from them. “Calliope?”
“Oh, Isabelle. I’ve been waiting, just as you asked,” she chirped, and tugged him to walk forward to meet Isabelle. “His Grace insisted on accompanying me to have a word. Oh dear,” the deceiver of gigantesque proportions continued, “I do believe I’ve forgotten my—uh—my book. The one the archbishop suggested would be good for—”
“Miss Little?” he interrupted quietly.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“First, I prefer that if you are going to refer to me as Old Sobersides to everyone else, you will have the courage to say it to my face.”
She gulped.
“And second,” he continued, “quit while you’re ahead. Be back here in a quarter hour.”
She nodded with the first sign of deference James had ever seen her exhibit, and then she darted away.
The silence that ensued was so great that the everyday sounds of the stable magnified tenfold. The whine of a mosquito, an unseen horse munching his feed while another stomped a hoof.
He finally breached the distance between them by grasping the strings of the hatbox. “May I?”
“Yes, of course,” she said quietly and released her grip.
He placed the white round box on a nearby shelf and offered his arm. After a small hesitation she accepted it and they walked in silence toward the sunshine.
“Isabelle,” he finally murmured, “I apologize for—”
“Why are you here?” she interrupted, halting.
He faced her. “I won’t insult either of us by suggesting this was Calliope’s doing. I am glad for the chance to have a word. I promised your father I would always watch over you, and I’m here in that service.”
“More service? Service is a pretty word for duty, is it not? I released you from that office long ago. You are not my keeper, James Fitzroy. I don’t need your protection. I never did, and I certainly do not now, and my future husband will consider it a grave insult if it is ever assumed in the future.”
“You are correct, Isabelle, of course. Will you accept my apology?”
She hesitated.
“Please,” he murmured.
“Why are you really here?”
“Because I wanted to privately offer my very good wishes for your new life. Barry is an immensely fine young gentleman of great character. He will make you a very good husband.”
“Of that there is little doubt,” she said, lifting her determined chin. “It will be a marriage of kindness and respect. A life of respectability, fulfilling our duties to our forefathers and those who depend on us, and preparing the next generation. That is all we can expect in life, no? It is a very good life, and I shall embrace it wholeheartedly.”
“Don’t, Isabelle,” he said gently.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t erect a wall between us, please. I cannot bear it.”
She snorted with disdain. “A wall? Me? I am the person erecting a wall? You’ve built an unscalable mountain between yourself and everyone.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “In the never-ending absurdities of my long life, the only person who refuses to see the impossibility of the challenge is a fourteen-year-old child with reformation on her mind.”
She ignored his jaded humor, intent now that she had been roused. “Oh, I know why it’s there. You are certain it will keep out all pain. But it won’t, you know.”
“So we are sharing views after all?”
“No!” she ground out, and then paused. “Oh, all right, go ahead. There won’t be any peace until you get on your pedestal. Do you admit that’s what you’re doing?”
“I’ll admit whatever you like if you’ll listen with an open mind.”
She impatiently waved her hand in a small circle, indicating he should proceed.
“Loss and change is the great toll in life. And it is inevitable. You must prepare for it. So many are crushed by it. Isabelle?”
“Yes,” she said with sadness, but compassion in her eyes.
“Well, I don’t want you to feel it. You lose almost everyone in the end. What you see in me is not a mountain as you suggest. It is armor, yes. Ugly battle scars of experience, certainly. But there is also a determined perseverance to carry on no matter what the cost.”
“And what is the worst of it?”
“You trust, you give your heart, and then it breaks.”
“You’re talking about your first fiancée, aren’t you?”
“Catharine was merely the first. The loss of friendship with Abshire, someone I trusted with my whole heart
, second. Then my mother and father, and along with it the destruction of everything I held true about my parents. My father’s life was a living, breathing lie, and through no fault of his own. And again, it was all due to loss.”
A scudding cloud in the sky cast a shadow on her delicately beautiful face. “But he was happy living this lie, despite his loss.”
“Of course not. But he ensured everyone else’s happiness.”
“Except yours in the end,” she nearly shouted. “Yours. He destroyed you. And do you know why? He could not live out his entire life behind a facade. A mountain. Because everyone has an innate need for at least one person on this earth to know them. He needed someone to know the real him—not the one he showed the rest of the world, James. His denial of who he was made him selfish, and in the end he took it out on the one person who most revered this false self he presented to the world. You.”
His shoulder became limp, and he nearly toppled over.
“Don’t be like him, James. I know enough of you to know that you have nothing to hide. You must find someone who you feel at ease with to let them love all of you. The best of you and the slightly impossible parts.” She smiled the smallest bit. “Like this stubborn streak of yours. Your refusal to accept that you can’t always be right. And that you cannot control everything as you would like.”
She was correct. He knew it. He was very willing to tell her. “Of course, you are correct, my Isabelle.” He studied her beautiful face. But she had forgotten the one part of him that was his identity. He would not break his word. Ever. Everyone might need to be known by at least one other person trodding along the godforsaken corridors of life, but one had to also have at least one core value. One facet of character that could not be shattered. He would not break his promise to the two gentlemen who had raised him—one with lies and unkindness, and the other with respect, and love. “Isabelle, my dear. I shall promise to do your bidding.”
Her brow furrowed and she looked away.
He grasped her arm to get her attention. “No, let me explain. I admit I am stubborn. But I can see reason. As soon as you are wed to Barry, and Sussex to Amelia, I shall begin to consider—only consider, mind you—a marriage to produce an heir. If you can be so selfless, then so must I, if only to ease my sisters’ fears for the future. And I will attempt to do as you say—form a deep true bond without hiding behind a facade of ill will. I will even get respectfully but sincerely angry from time to time since I know you and Calliope think it impossible. I shall do it all because you’ve asked me to do it. I know you’ve asked me because you truly wish for my happiness despite everything.”