by Gayle Eden
“Yes.” Deme rubbed his hands down his thighs and took a bracing breath in and out. He would never play a fool with a man like Patrick. There was not any point in it. He had half expected a meeting when he had heard voices earlier. He had waited for it.
Deme did not know what she had told her father, but her upset alone, and likely, their own voices had carried somewhat in the heat of passions.
“Your stretch at sobriety and family affection this week has apparently hit a snag tonight...”
“Apparently.”
Patrick held his stare. “Did you run out of distractions in the local village? No wenches to tumble. Perhaps lost your taste for them and was in need of a distraction?” That was delivered as was meant to, with steel.
Deme came to his feet but stayed where he was. “I attempted to seduce your daughter. It had nothing to do with drink or otherwise. She’s an attractive woman, and we are both of age.”
A nerve ticked in Mulhern’s jaw. “And if you had your way, what then? You are to be the Duke of Wimberly someday. Your title and place as Marquis, your holdings are impressive, without that. “
Deme said nothing.
Mulhern supplied, “I have been trying to get my daughter to leave and begin her own life for some time. I have resented this obligation she has to look out for you, the putting herself at risk more times than I am likely aware of because of your rakish life. My daughter has everything she needs to live comfortably. She is a better woman in all ways than most that are titled. She is intelligent and vastly more judicious than you.”
“Are you trying to get yourself let go.”
“I don’t care what you do, my lord.” Patrick straightened. “I go with the Duke. But if you wish to explain how we came to have this conversation, by all means, do so.”
The coachman waited a heartbeat then went on, “Do you think a man of my position cares any less for his daughter, than your father does his? I care more.” Mulhern’s voice thickened. “You have no idea how much she means to me.”
“Whatever my behavior tonight,” Deme supplied, “It was not some intentional disrespect or lack of regard. I apologize, Mulhern.”
Deme did not ever recall feeling more like an ass. He discerned that the man assumed he regarded Haven’s station as inferior, that she would be nothing more than a cheap tumble. Yes, he said that often enough, he let her think so when she walked out. However, that was not why he lost his head with her, and not why desired her.
Thus, to Mulhern he confessed in unmistakably honest inflections— “We have always struck sparks with each other. Haven was the only one who never catered to me, nor spared me a tongue-lashing. We have agreed we do not particularly like each other. But I kissed her, Patrick. The response—I have not felt before. Frankly, the world itself could have gone to hell. I would have, to have done more.” He lifted his hand and let it drop. “She had the good sense to end it.”
He saw the tension in the coachman’s face, and offered, “Because I know what you have pointed out, and I know what I have been, I played the role I am best at afterwards—and wounded her.”
Mulhern muttered and rubbed the back of his neck. When he dropped his hand, he told Deme, “Someday, my lord, when you have laid your demons to rest, I will tell you why it matters to me that Haven have the life I dreamed of for her.”
He had turned to leave when Deme said, quietly “She’s right. I’m not good enough for her.”
Patrick paused. “She said that?”
“Yes.”
Patrick turned and regarded him, “Far be it from me to lecture you, your Lordship, but there are women whom we touch or kiss we never remember. Then there those whom we touch or kiss and it carries us out of body and soul. When a man burns for that woman, truly falls in passionate love, he cannot sleep, cannot breathe, without her. He will do anything, dare anything, to show it, prove it. You can desire many women, but love has no cure. It is something blind and fearless.”
He closed his eyes and opened them as if bringing himself from some other place. Gruffly he finished, “Haven was created in such a moment, and that makes her existence precious to me. She is all I have left of it. Nothing in this life will ever duplicate it. If you have never felt it, you scoff and you mock it. If you do not believe in it, then you never find your soul mate—like his grace, like Lord Montgomery, as I once did. I will have nothing less for Haven. I care not if she ever is a man’s bride. Brides are not always there by choice. I understand passion and desire. Being a lover is more than servicing one or the other, it is a selfish choice, but it is because of what each gives—to the other. What we’re helpless to feeling.”
With his usual women, Deme could fill in that he no more desire or emotion with them than he did taking a piss. They were nameless, faceless—and, Patrick did not want his daughter treated as such.
Deme had never in his life had to face a father or the guardian of someone he had been intimate with. It was a discomforting experience, to say the least. However, it also seemed apt that the first time he did—it would be Mulhern’s.
What he said to Patrick in reply was, “I have no vice, sin, or flaw that Haven has not witnessed. She has no illusions about me. She’s never ignored or excused them, nor allowed me to make them other than they are. There was only one person who did likewise, and that is Lord Montgomery.
Up until tonight, I would have said Haven Mulhern and I dislike each other intensely. She, for good reason, and I, because she never gives a bloody damn about who I am and refuses to fit any category I mentally put her in. She has always been there to save me from myself, true. Every time I try to answer why, I know it is not the right one. Haven does only what Haven wants to do.”
“And what about tonight?” Patrick asked softly.
Deme looked away and shoved a hand thorough his hair. “My initial reason for kissing her was the usual. After I had, after I realized I was far from detached, I forgot—anything else.”
Feeling Patrick’s gaze on his profile, Deme finally turned his head to meet it.
The man sighed and then murmured, “Come to the apartments after six this evening. I believe Haven is going to visits with Lady Lisette then. Be discreet. What I have to say, I haven’t yet shared with Haven.” Patrick sighed again. “I suppose it is time.”
When he had gone, and the door shut, Deme murmured, “Bloody hell. And stared at it before he found his coat and hat and left.
Outside of the coach house, it was a deep gray fall morning, surreal and heavy with fog. He needed the walk to the manor house to clear his head. He was bloody well good at making things worse, was he not? Only this time, Deme did not intend to leave it as it was. Sitting there those hours after she left, he knew he could not dance his way out of this. For the first time in his life, he had felt…alive.
Later, entering the house by the library doors, then going up to his chambers, He divested his coat and hat in his sitting room, where a fire was fresh laid. He continued to the bedchamber and watched a foggy dawn manifest into day, while he sat in the window seat and smoked.
His valet entered and ran his bath sometime later.
Deme told him, “When his grace is awake and has his breakfast, will you tell him I would beg a word with him before noon?”
The valet looked at him and bowed. “Yes, my lord.”
Deme nodded and turned to stare sightlessly out the window, finally hearing the valet run his bath. When the man left, he prepared a pan, shaved and then saw to bathing and dressing.
He’d requested only coffee, and spent the morning hours unlike he had ever done, sitting, looking at nothing—seeing his life from the time he had finished university. At some point, he remembered that misty field at dawn. He had discovered Selene’s trickery on the ride back to her estate. No tears, no regret or mourning, but a lust, a crazed kind of victory in her eyes—that turned his blood cold. Later still discovering he was not the first, she had tried to engage to rid herself of William. She had died, two years ago he had heard. Lived her
life with a string of lovers. He did not care. He did not feel anything but relief. All the acts, she had performed for him; convincing him William was no worse than an animal, made him sick.
“The Duke will see you now.”
Deme glanced over, having not heard Mossley’s tread.
He stood and walked past the man, then went into the hall and down spiraled stairs. Servants were preparing for the dozen or so guests. They curtseyed or greeted him as he passed them on his way to the study.
He knocked, and his grace bade him enter.
“Is ought amiss?” His father looked him over, turning from the French doors with his coffee and cigar. Deme never sought audience with him. He was rarely in fit condition to talk to.
Deme shook his head and took a chair. He waved his father to join him. “There’s something I wish to discuss.”
The Duke joined him after leaving the smoke to rest on an iron tray outside, and placing his coffee on the desk.
Deme studied the green carpeting over polished wood floors, choosing his words carefully. “I think I know why you offered to hand Wimberly over to me so soon.” He raised his gaze to his fathers. “But there are still the twins, and Jude, the brothers when they return. This has always been home to them. It is very much that, because of you and the Duchess. I beg you remain, as this is your home, and if you wish to spend some time at Blakely do so. You can give me stewardship over the lesser holdings.”
Those blue eyes on him keenly, his grace murmured, “It will be yours someday, Wimberly.”
“Then let us wait until someday.” Deme got to his feet and walked over to the spot his father had been. “This is where we gather, where the memories for the siblings are. You and Mama love it here.”
“What is wrong, my son?”
Deme released a terse breath and braced a hand on the door opening, watching a rabbit slip out of the side garden and along the cobbled walk.
“I went into the village last night.”
“I know.”
“How?”
The Duke grunted dryly. “Does it matter?”
“No.”
The leather chair squeaked and Duke came over to stand beside him.
They were shoulder to shoulder for some time before his grace offered, “After your mother has her party and the boys have left, we’ll discuss what you wish to oversee. It will be a relief to me. You always had more of a head for keeping books and keeping track of what needs done than I.”
“Thank you. I haven’t been of much use in awhile.”
Though it was said with self-mocking humor, the Duke pat him on the shoulder, a gesture he had not done since Deme was a lad. After dropping his hand, he cleared his throat and offered, “I never wanted the perfect heir Demetrius. That would have made me daft. There are none of us perfect. I just want a happy one. Wimberly’s aren’t restrained and serene; we learn more from our mistakes than we do from advice.”
Staring at him, Deme asked, “How did you come to hire Patrick. Why he was here six years before Haven joined him?”
If the Duke thought that an odd change of subject, he didn’t show it.
“I met him in Ireland. I was wagering on a race.”
Deme felt his nape prickle. “And?”
“And I am not sure that Mulhern has told his daughter everything, thus it is not my place to break a confidence.”
“It will go no further.”
The Duke went to sit behind the desk. He absently scratched his jaw. “Patrick was employed by the aristocracy. A young man of rank, who had three sisters in his charge. One of those ladies gave birth to Haven.”
“She is Patrick’s?”
“Yes. It is a complicated tale. But the brother duped him. He was something of a wastrel. The ancestral estates were in trouble. He got wind of the affection between Mulhern and his sister. He told Patrick if he would turn over the purses and prizes he won, to get the estate out of debt, he could consent for Patrick to wed his sister. Patrick did so, but over time learned that the brother had already promised her to a gentry fellow whom he also owed gambling debts to.”
Deme guessed, “He had not paid off debts with the money Patrick gave him?”
“No. He gambled it away as fast as it was put in his hands. Patrick however, did not discover the worst until he went to see her brother and tell him his woman was with child. Thinking themselves soon to wed, they had been lovers. Her brother was enraged, but apparently hid it well enough.
He strung Patrick along and kept her hidden while the child grew in her. Patrick by now realized how desperate the situation was for the both of them. He somehow got wind that the Lord had instructed the servants to secret the child to an orphanage—and that he had those plans to wed her to the other man. Patrick quickly made other arrangements—a vicar and his wife, he confided in were paid to keep the child. There was an unpleasant scene between them all, Patrick, was devastated, and the Lady, too young to defy her brother, and too frightened I would expect, could do nothing. Whilst Patrick was making arrangements to carry her off with him—her brother had her wed to the other man.”
Deme cursed softly.
Wimberly sat back. “Yes. I take it he tried to contact her but was told by one of her sisters that it would cause her trouble. There was a letter from her, at some point, imploring him to keep the child safe. To place neither of them in jeopardy by revealing their relationship. She was under her husband’s rule. Her brother would make her sisters suffer. There was a possibility Patrick would be charged with some crime.”
“Good God.”
“In any event, I met him at one of those races, a high stakes one. It was his impressive skill at the whip that made me offer him a position. Others were doing so. He turned me down several times. I invited him to dine at an Inn with me. Let us just say—I could tell he was a man on the edge of some desperation. I am surprised he could focus well enough win those races. With some prodding, the whole tale came out.”
“But he could have brought her—Haven—with him.”
“He was devastated, Deme. Having nothing to show for years of hard work and training too. He wanted the Aunt to tell her mother where she was—should she ever desire to see her. He sent money. However, in time, I urged him to send for her so that she might have proper schooling. That is what he did.”
“Haven knows none of this?”
“No. She knew nothing about her mother.”
“The woman never came to see her then?”
The Duke met his gaze. “One of the sisters told him she died and that is all he had told Haven.”
“Why do you say it like that?”
“The Lady was wed into a family of some power and influence. She knew the risk to Patrick, a coachman, let alone to herself. Would it not be wise to let him think so? Perhaps the only way she could deal with it was to put him and the child behind her.”
Deme lowered his body into one of the chairs. “Mama knows, doesn’t she?”
“Yes.”
After a bit, the Duke joined him. “I trust you will not reveal to Patrick either what I have shared.”
“Of course not.” However, he thought he could spare the man the whole telling of it.
His father reached and pat his knee. “We are none of us wise when we are young and in love, Deme. Just look at your mother and myself. We were mad for each other, and yet we hurt each other deeply. My pride hurt because she resented being made to wed me. She was young and had been stifled growing up. I became an arrogant ass, and took a mistress.
She left me and we divorced. The both of us made every pretense of moving on, but put us in the same ballroom and were like two sparks igniting. We cheated on our lovers with each other.”
He laughed and shook his head. “Finally I understood her and she me, and we ceased fighting what we knew was destiny.”
“You argue as much as you love,” Deme said aridly.
“We’re passionate people. Of course we argue.”
Deme stood to le
ave. “Whatever I do, that may seem—out of the ordinary in the next few weeks, will you trust me?”
“Yes.” It came without hesitation.
Deme nodded, then promising the Duke before he would, he went in search of his younger brothers, spending the day with them hunting, listening to them tease each other over all the ladies they would be attracting when they donned their dashing uniforms.
On the way home, they walked ahead, Aiden and James. Jude strode beside him, rifle over his shoulder and offered, “I have told Mama I have no intention of taking some position as a vicar. I am aware ‘tis done by younger sons, but I am not suited for it.”
Deme pulled from the distraction he had been in on and off, awaiting six o’clock. “There is no great hurry to decide, little John, you are only six and ten.”
That brother grinned at him. “I know. However, I have decided not to wait until I am twenty-one to do so. I am going to study law.”
“Impressive choice.”
Jude laughed somewhat abashed. “I have a letter from father to present to Lord Harrison. He is a barrister. He often takes in young men with promise. I will be leaving at months end—for Cambridge.”
“I wish you every fortune, brother.”
Jude nodded. “I shall doubtless need it.”
Deme offered, and he could tell it surprised his brother, “When you complete your exams, I’ll see you have a well-placed set of offices and impressive list of clients—including your family.” He chuckled softly. “I’m sure your retainer will be earned with the Wimberly’s.”
“Oh, I say, that’s generous of you.”
“Not at all.” Deme winked at him. “The best asset of a lawyer is discretion. Someone who knows and understands this family will someday have to weed out the complexities of our parent’s relationship, as it pertains to the offspring and their inheritances. I envy no one that.”
Chapter Four
Haven finished helping the lads brush down the mounts, preparing for the guests to arrive, while thinking of her brief lunch with Lisette, who was nearly as comical as she was dramatic over the imminent arrival of Viscount, Elisha Roulle.