The Duke’s Obsession Bundle

by Grace Burrowes

  “How’s Winnie?” She asked, chin tipping up minutely. He was not required to tell her, of course, but then, legally, she was still Winnie’s guardian—she hoped.

  “Winnie is managing,” St. Just said, putting the kettle on the stove. “Let me put us together a tea tray, and we can discuss that, if you’ve the time?”

  All right, Emmie thought, in the kitchen, then.

  “Shall we investigate these tarts?” he asked, his voice even. “Or did you intend them for dessert tonight?”

  “Why don’t we split one?” Emmie suggested, slightly mollified. “I’ll get the plates.” At least he wasn’t going to refuse her baking.

  They assembled their fare and sat on opposite benches at the table.

  “Winnie is managing?”

  “She is.” St. Just was frowning again. “I don’t wish to give offense, Emmie, but shall you pour, or shall I?”

  “You pour,” Emmie said, schooling herself to patience. “You like your tea just so, and I am not as likely to get it right.”

  He did the honors and passed her hers. “I never had any complaints when you fixed me tea, Emmie.” She let him savor the first sip of his tea then prepared to grill him again on Winnie’s situation. He spiked her guns, however, by tossing a question at her while she was still stirring her tea.

  “So how are you, Emmie?” he asked, regarding her through hooded eyes. “You look pale and not particularly hearty.”

  “I’ve had a cold,” Emmie said, seeing no harm in the truth, “and I was tired. I’m doing better now. And you?” She realized the question was genuine. She was concerned for him and wanted him to be well and happy. He didn’t look particularly hearty himself, but weary and a little rumpled.

  “Like Winnie.” He didn’t quite smile. “I am managing.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Winnie,” Emmie said, setting her teacup down a little too loudly.

  “What did you want to say?” he asked, staring at his tea.

  “I miss her. I really, really miss her.”

  “She misses you, as well.”

  “If the offer to assume the rearing of her is still open,” Emmie said, heart abruptly pounding, “then I would like to discuss it further.”

  “It is still open, on certain terms.”

  “What are your terms?”

  “Shall we negotiate over an apple tart?”

  “I won’t taste it,” Emmie said in a low, miserable voice.

  “I beg your pardon?” He took a knife and cleanly divided a warm, steaming tart.

  “I hope they taste good,” Emmie improvised, but St. Just kept his focus on the task of shifting one half of the tart to each of two plates, adding a fork to each, and passing one plate to Emmie.

  “Emmie.” He sat back, his expression suggesting he’d heard her perfectly well, “don’t be anxious.” He glanced around the kitchen as if he might spy just the right words sitting on the spice rack or the hearth. In the end, his words were simple and devastating. “I would not keep you from your daughter.”

  She could not catalog the emotions prompted by his weary disclosure, did not even try, but both grief and relief figured among them. “How long have you known?”

  “I still can’t say I know,” St. Just said, studying her. “I drew some pointed conclusions when I began to learn more about your aunt. Neither she nor Helmsley look like Winnie, but you do. You were here, and then you weren’t, which might allow for a pregnancy to be covered up, but I don’t have the details. For some reason, your aunt wanted you to have the raising of the child, not the late earl—that was odd, too. Mostly, Emmie, I recognized in you the same desperation I’d sensed in my own mother when she tossed me into the ducal miscellany at the age of five.”

  “She didn’t toss you anywhere!” Emmie retorted in horror. “Didn’t you read her letters?”

  “I can recite each of her letters to you word for word,” St. Just said evenly, “though they didn’t come into my possession until I traveled south this fall. I wish I’d had them earlier.”

  Emmie raised her gaze to his and saw only a kind of tired acceptance, or relief maybe, to have the truth out between them.

  Without her choosing to open her mouth and speak, words began to flow from her, her own relief colored by the sadness that comes from having to admit a lie.

  “I was sixteen when I really met Helmsley. Oh, he’d been about the property before, but I was home from school for only a few weeks here, a few weeks there. That summer, he took an interest in me, probably because he knew it would aggravate the old earl to do so. My aunt saw what was happening and before Helmsley could do any real harm, whisked me back to Scotland for the rest of the summer to stay with friends.”

  She paused, glanced around the table, then met St. Just’s eyes again. His gaze held no discernible emotion except for a kind of sad acceptance, but his hand slid across the table and squeezed her fingers before retreating to his teacup.

  Fortified by that surprising gesture, Emmie went on.

  “The next summer, I was a year more determined to thwart my elders, a year more foolish and stubborn. Helmsley was a year more lost to propriety, and I allowed myself to become entangled with him. He was going to marry me, of course, as soon as I was of age, and we were going to banish the earl to a dower property and live like king and queen of Rosecroft. I was a selfish, stupid young girl, with no sense of my station nor of the many kindnesses my aunt, the earl, and his countess had done me, and Helmsley was a selfish, unprincipled man.”

  “Were you… willing?” St. Just asked quietly.

  “I was willing to do what it took to prove my aunt was wrong, to prove I was worldly enough to make my own decisions. Helmsley wasn’t entirely inconsiderate, but he had not dealt with many virgins, I don’t think.”

  “I am sorry,” St. Just said. Just that, and Emmie felt tears welling. She swallowed them down, finding that having the ear of a compassionate listener, she did want to relate her story. She’d thought it had died for all time with her aunt’s passing, but now, years later, it was time to speak these words aloud.

  “I was sorry, too,” she said. “After the first time, I began to have doubts, to avoid him, to become disenchanted and look for a way out. It had all been a game to him, of course. The pursuit far more interesting than the capture. And he’d wanted to thumb his nose at our elders. I was a means to that end. When it was time to go back for my final year of school, I confessed to my aunt I was glad to be leaving and why. She asked me some very pointed questions and delayed my departure for another week while she conferred with the old earl.”

  Emmie paused again, the details of that very difficult year rising up from their resting places in her imagination. She’d been so endlessly upset that year. With Helmsley, herself, her body, her future…

  “I was sent back to friends in Scotland,” Emmie said very quietly. “I had no idea what my aunt planned, but in those months, she must have contracted a liaison with Helmsley, at least enough so he wouldn’t doubt she could bear him a child. After the holidays, it was put about she was journeying to Scotland for my final semester at school. Winnie was born in early February, but she was small. When my aunt and I came back from Scotland that summer, we kept Winnie away from prying eyes, and Helmsley would not have known if he were looking at a newborn or a six-months babe anyway. He never questioned my aunt’s story that Winnie was the bastard he’d gotten on her, and I was seldom home after that. I had six months with my child…”

  She looked away then, the pain of that long-ago parting threatening to break her heart again.

  “You can have the rest of your life with her,” St. Just said gently.

  “What if she won’t have me?” Emmie asked softly. “What if she can’t understand? She’s six years old, St. Just. I’ve let her think she’s had no mother for half her years on earth, and I was ready to turn my back on her completely.”

  His fingers closed over hers, and this time he didn’t simply pat her hand and let g
o. “You were trying to do the best you could in difficult circumstances. You wanted what was best for Winnie, and she will eventually understand that. It will work out. I know it will.”

  “I can only hope so, and I can only continue to try my best.”

  “Winnie is reasonably tolerant of her new governess.” St. Just sat back and let her hand go. “If you want to leave the child with us, she is loved and safe here and can go to Cumbria when you’ve settled in with Bothwell.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Emmie blinked and straightened her spine.

  “Bothwell’s brother is not well,” St. Just replied, “and I thought you might want to give Winnie a few more months here, as she’s settling in fairly well. Then, too…”

  “Yes?”

  “I will miss her,” he said, looking uncomfortable.

  “You will?”

  “She watches me ride and has a surprisingly good eye. She has taught that dog of hers to do practically everything a dog can do, except perhaps how not to stink. Her letters to Rose are delightful and let me know exactly what mischief she’s up to. Val dotes on her and says she’s a musical prodigy—she’s very, very smart, you know, for her age—and I… what?”

  “You are attached to her,” Emmie said softly, a warmth uncurling in her chest.

  “Of course I am attached to her. Anybody would be. I just can’t imagine not bringing her south to meet her new cousin in the spring, never hearing her giggle with Rose over little girl secrets, never seeing her drag Douglas up into the trees again—”

  “Oh, Devlin, I am so sorry. She should have those things, too, but I am not going to Cumbria.”

  “Bothwell is keeping this backward little living?” St. Just frowned. “I took the man for a saint not a martyr.”

  “I don’t know what he’s doing, and beyond wishing him well, I don’t particularly care.”

  “You’re marrying Bothwell,” St. Just said, his frown becoming a thunderous scowl. “Aren’t you?”

  ***

  He was having trouble discerning the meaning of Emmie’s words, so fascinated was he by simply drinking in the sight of her, the sound of her voice, the scent of her. She was here in his kitchen, she was confiding in him, and she was admitting her error where Winnie was concerned.

  He should be content with that, but he had to ask her one question for himself: “You’re marrying Bothwell, aren’t you?”

  She would not meet his eyes, and in his chest, Devlin’s heart began a slow, painful tattoo.

  Then she looked up, the most hesitant of smiles on her lips.

  “I am not marrying him. I have figured out he knew Winnie was my child.”

  “He might have.” St. Just had come to the same conclusion, but he was having trouble wrapping his mind around Emmie’s decision not to accept Bothwell. “I surmise your aunt told him when she became so ill.”

  “Perhaps. Hadrian proposed a couple years ago, in part to fortify me against Helmsley. Helmsley knew I was powerless and poor and so didn’t interfere with my attempts to befriend Winnie. It could not have hurt, though, that I was well thought of by the heir to a viscountcy.”

  “I would not put such thinking beyond Bothwell.” St. Just nodded, willing to be generous, seeing as Emmie had rejected the man and his title twice. Bothwell, whom she was not marrying, was a decent, perceptive man.

  “I was hardly going to drag Hadrian into Helmsley’s sphere, though.” Emmie grimaced. “Helmsley had a way of turning all he touched to dross and disappointment.”

  “He’s gone, Emmie.”

  “Thanks to you.” She hunched forward, and he saw a shudder pass through her. “You have no idea… Of all the men I could have chosen to be father to my child, he was about the worst imaginable.”

  “Not the worst.” His heart broke to think she’d place this burden on her conscience, as well. “There are men selling their young daughters on London street corners, Emmie. Men drinking away the little funds available to feed their children. Men beating their children for crying at the cold or the hunger or the pain of the last beating. You bedded down with a miserable specimen, but as far as Winnie is concerned, he was merely uninterested, not the devil.”

  “I suppose.” She didn’t sound convinced. “Winnie is what matters.”

  “She is.” St. Just nodded, but in the part of his mind that processed tactical information even as he faced an opponent in battle, it was still sinking in that Emmie had turned Bothwell down—twice—and wasn’t engaged to anybody.

  So now what? A lifetime of tea and apple tarts while they discussed the child? Would she allow that? If so, he could campaign again to win her affections…

  Except she didn’t want him, as much as she might from time to time let herself enjoy his affections. No woman would want to lash her life to that of a man who jumped at thunderstorms, woke sweating with nightmares he couldn’t speak of, spent more time with horses than people, and cared nothing for society—nothing whatsoever.

  “So what do we do?” Emmie asked, her gaze dodging his. “Winnie is growing comfortable here, but I am her mother and her guardian—aren’t I?”

  “You are, and you control her funds.”

  “But this has become her home,” Emmie pointed out. “You, Lord Val, the animals. She’s lived here for the past few years, but you’ve made it a home for her.”

  “You should also know I tried to talk her into going to Cumbria with you and Bothwell. She wasn’t keen on it.”

  “Did she give a reason?” Emmie asked, squaring her shoulders.

  “She said I was a soldier, and I would not run away, and if she were with you in Cumbria, you would try your damnedest to make Cumbria work, even if you were unhappy there. She had some notion a married woman and a viscountess could just scamper home to my kitchen if she were unhappy.”

  “Why would she think that?”

  “Because”—St. Just did smile, a crooked, hopeless, self-mocking twist of his lips—“I would have welcomed you with open arms.”

  Silence.

  Ah, well, he thought. He was just being honest, and ridiculous, but his dignity wasn’t too high a price to pay if it meant Emmie understood what his feelings were. If they were going to have to deal with each other, Emmie couldn’t be teasing him nor flirting nor dallying.

  His heart couldn’t take any more of that.

  “I beg your pardon?” Emmie asked slowly. “You would have offered me refuge here if Bothwell and I found we did not suit?”

  “I would have offered you refuge,” St. Just said, but he wasn’t willing to hide behind that fig leaf. “I would have offered you my adulterous bed, my coin, my home, my anything, Emmie. I know that now.”

  Another silence, which left him thinking perhaps his heedless abandonment of dignity had gone quite far enough, because Emmie looked more confused than thrilled with his proclamations.

  “I don’t understand, St. Just. I have lied to you and to my daughter. I was under your roof under false pretenses. I have taken advantage of your kindness, and I nearly succeeded in foisting my daughter off on you under the guise of my mendacity. Why would you want to have anything more to do with me?”

  “Do you recall my telling you once upon a time that I love you?” St. Just asked, rising, and leaning against the counter, hands in his pockets.

  “I do.” She stared at her hands. “It was not under circumstances where such declarations are made with a cool head.”

  “We’re in the kitchen now, Emmie,” he said very clearly. “It is late in the afternoon, a pot of tea on the table, and I am of passably sound mind, and sound, if somewhat tired, body. I am also fully clothed, albeit to my regret, as are you: I love you.”

  That was not an exercise in sacrificing dignity, he realized. It was an exercise in truth and honesty and regaining dignity. Perhaps for them both. As romantic declarations went, however, it was singularly unimpressive.

  “I see.” Emmie got up, chafing her arms as if cold, though the kitchen was the coziest room in the
house.

  “You don’t believe me,” he said flatly. “You cannot believe me, more like.”

  “I am…” Emmie met his eyes fleetingly. “I do not trust myself very far these days, St. Just. You mustn’t think I am attributing my own capacity for untruth to you.”

  “I know how your mind works,” he said, advancing on her. “You think it a pity I believe myself to be in love with you, but you can’t help but notice that in some regards, we’d suit, and it would allow us both to have Winnie in our lives. That’s not good enough, Emmie Farnum.”

  ***

  He was speaking very sternly, and for all the tumult inside her, Emmie could hardly focus on the sense of his words. He loved her. He loved her, and he was rejecting her.

  “It’s not good enough?” she asked, folding her arms over her waist.

  “Not nearly,” he said, shifting to loom over her. “I know what I am. I left the better part of my sanity on battlefields all over France and Spain. I am a bastard, regardless of whose bastard, and I will fare best if I maintain a mundane little existence here in the most isolated reaches of society, where I can stink of horses and spend most of my day outdoors. I have setbacks, as you call them. I never know when a sound or a word or a memory will rise up and shoot me out of my saddle. Sometimes I drink too much, and often I want to drink too much. But I am human, Emmie. I will not shackle myself to a woman who feels only pity and gratitude and affectionate tolerance for me. I won’t.”

  “So what do you want of me?” Emmie asked, bewildered.

  He gave a bitter snort of laughter.

  “A fairy tale. I wanted a goddamned fairy tale, where you love me and we have Winnie here with us and more children, and they tear all over the property on their ponies and the table is noisy with laughter and teasing and the house always smells wonderful because you are my wife and the genie in our kitchen. On the bad nights, you are there for me to love and to love me, and the bad nights gradually don’t come so often. I want—”

  “What?” Emmie asked, her throat constricting with pain. “Devlin, what?”