Chapter 23
Clara gasped and spun around to face the dim room. Her imagination was playing tricks on her, surely; her great longing to have Quincy with her creating him out of thin air.
But no, there he was, seated in a chair in the deepest shadows. As she stared, stunned, he rose and came toward her.
He had removed his coat, waistcoat, and cravat, and had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. A small smile played about his chiseled lips, his dark eyes fastened on her, more emotions than she could name filling their depths.
But there was a caution about him, too. As if he feared she would bolt at the slightest trigger. He stopped several feet from her. “Clara.”
His voice was low and deep and utterly wonderful. She ached to close her eyes and let it rumble through her. But she wouldn’t. There was still no hope for them, no chance for a future. Only now he must see it, too. Something that should not have brought her as much pain as it did.
She drew in an unsteady breath, fighting for composure though all she wanted to do was crumple to the floor and cry. “Where have you been?” she asked, her quiet voice nevertheless loud in the stillness of the room. She clasped her hands tightly before her to keep from reaching out for him.
“Swallowhill.”
The single word startled her. “Swallowhill?” At his nod she asked, “All day?”
“No.” A sad smile flitted about his lips, there and gone with the same swiftness as the birds the house had been named for. “I had…things to see to. In town.”
She nodded, though she hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. They stared at each other for a time, a horrible awkwardness between them. They had become so close over the past weeks, first as friends, then as partners. Then as lovers.
That magical time, however, seemed ages past. A great gulf separated them now, one she could never hope to bridge.
Even so, the whispered words spilled from her lips. “You were missed.”
“Was I?” The question was so earnest, so full of longing, it finally snapped her carefully controlled emotions.
“I know what you must think of me,” she rasped. “But I will not apologize for my past. I know I made horrible decisions that impacted not only my own life but those of the people I loved. And the repercussions will follow me all my days. I’m sure you see now why a marriage between us would have never worked. A woman with my background, with the threat of ruin hanging over my head, could never be a duchess—”
He stepped forward and pulled her into his arms. Though she knew better, much better, she went willingly, clinging to him, aware that this was where she had longed to be all along.
“You were dealt a devastating hand in life,” he said, his voice rumbling under her ear. “My heart breaks for what you’ve gone through. If I could call out the man who did it to you I would, and gladly. But know, here and now, that that time in your life does not define you. It has helped shape you, yes. But it is not who you are. You are not ruined, or broken, or a scandal. You are strong, and loving, and kind. I have never known a more wonderful woman in my life.”
She did not realize she was crying until her tears began to soak the fine lawn of his shirt. She pressed her face into his chest, not wanting him to see how his words affected her—and how it was beginning to make her hope for something that could never be.
But he stepped back, crooking one finger to tilt her face up. And the love in his eyes stole her breath.
“You did not allow me to tell you before, but I will tell you now. I love you, Clara.” He smiled tenderly as she sucked in a sharp breath, shock and wonder all coalescing in her breast. “I love you so much it was as if I had lost half of myself when I thought there was no chance of a future for us. I imagined sailing away from England, leaving you behind, and felt my heart would break in two, never to be mended no matter how far I sailed, how fast I ran. You are what makes me whole.”
She blinked furiously to clear the tears clouding her vision, refusing to lose sight of his beloved face for a moment.
He took her hand in his, his thumb stroking over her knuckles. “I have not swerved from the desire to marry you, Clara. If anything, this last day has made me realize I could never find happiness with anyone but you. My life would be joyless without you in it.”
She stared at him, stunned, hope beginning to rise up though she refused to allow it to take purchase. “But my past,” she said, wiping at her cheeks with her free hand. “You’ve been away from England too long; you don’t know the scandal that could erupt. If it comes out, it would ruin you. You’re a duke, Quincy.”
“A title I never wanted, I assure you.”
“That doesn’t matter. It’s not something you can escape. And because your status is so high, the fall will be that much greater. Everything you do will be scrutinized. The truth will come out eventually. And when it does, they’ll scorn you behind your back, ruin your business dealings. They will be relentless.”
“If you think I care about all that, you haven’t been paying attention,” he drawled.
“You say that now,” she snapped, her patience beginning to unravel at his blind optimism. “But in a few years, when the glow of new love has faded, you will sing a different tune.”
“Oh, well, as to that, my ability to hold a note is appalling, and so you may have no fears on that score.”
The man was maddening; why could he not see reason? “Quincy—” she fairly growled.
But he held up his free hand. “But I’m not asking you to marry me.”
“Er…good,” she managed, painfully aware that as her frustration faded a yawning hopelessness was quickly taking its place. Finally, he saw reason. It was what she had been working toward. Yet she had not realized just how horrible this moment would be.
Once again, however, she had underestimated him.
“At least, not just yet.” He grinned. “I have two very important things to take care of before I drop to my knee, you see. The first, of course, being my obvious lack of a ring. But when I visited the jewelers in town I looked at their wares—not a one of their pieces right—and I thought to myself, there is no way she will understand how much she means to me with a simple ring. Every man gives a woman a ring, after all. So I spent the better part of the day racking my brain, trying to come up with something that would show you the magnitude of my devotion.”
He reached behind him and pulled something from the band of his breeches. When his hand reappeared, it was holding a legal-looking document.
She stared at the paper uncomprehendingly for a long moment. Yet he remained patient, the paper not so much as trembling in his steady grip.
Finally, she took it. And gasped when she read its contents.
Her eyes flew to his. The hope she’d been so furiously holding at bay broke through her defenses when she saw the certainty and love shining in his face. “Swallowhill is mine?”
“It is,” he murmured.
“I don’t understand.”
“My love, surely you must see,” he said tenderly, “you are worth more to me than anything in this world.”
Her heart, which had been patiently waiting for her head to catch up to it, surged with a joyful beat. Even so, she shook her head, unable to make sense of it all. “But the sale…Lord Fletcher…”
“Was going to demolish it,” he said quietly.
Her breath stalled, the idea of that beloved place being reduced to rubble a shock to her senses.
He nodded grimly. “And I could not see it torn down, knowing how much you loved it and what it was to you.” He smiled again, not a trace of doubt in his eyes. “So it’s yours, to do with as you wish. Even should you—” His voice faltered. And though he quickly brought it under control, the vulnerability was plain to see.
“Even should you refuse me when I finally ask you,” he tried again, more subdued than before, “it will remain yours.”
She gaped at him, stunned. “But your dreams to travel the world…” she whispered. “
Selling Swallowhill was your one chance to save the dukedom and still have the funds for your journeys. I cannot ask you to give that up.”
“You didn’t ask me, my love. I do it, willingly and without even a moment’s regret.” He smiled, making no effort to hide the sheen of tears glistening in his eyes. “All I want is your happiness, Clara. And if that means I have to release you, giving you the means to be free the rest of your days, so be it.”
As she continued to stare at him, unable to speak for the joy and fear battling within her, his expression fell. “Now for the second matter that must be dealt with before I can ask you to marry me. And it is by far the more painful of the two.”
The sudden grim seriousness in his expression sent a chill through her. He released her hand and made his way to the hearth, looking down into the low fire. She could just make out the glow of the blaze highlighting the tic in his jaw and the tight lines at the corner of his eye.
Biting her lip, suddenly nervous, she held the deed tight and waited.
* * *
Quincy could barely hear the faint crackling of the fire for the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears. Why was he nervous? This was Clara. There was no one in this world he trusted more than her. She would never judge him for the circumstances of his birth.
Yet he couldn’t shake this creeping fear in him that she might look at him differently. And in a flash he understood why she had been so reluctant to tell him of her own past. Though how much worse it must have been for her, how much strength it must have taken to lay her entire history at the feet of the people she loved.
Once again, he was struck by just how brave this woman was that he’d fallen in love with.
Drawing in a deep breath, he turned to face her. Her eyes were wide in her pale face, her teeth digging into her full bottom lip. He tried for a smile but couldn’t quite manage one. “I’ve learned who Miss Willa Brandon was.”
She blinked in surprise. No doubt she hadn’t quite expected that. “And?” she prompted.
He drew in a deep breath before saying, in a rush, “She was my mother.”
“Oh.” The word escaped her on an exhale. Eyes wide with shock, she stumbled back to a chair and sank down in it. “Goodness. Then the cradle in the bedroom at Swallowhill…?”
“Was mine,” he verified grimly, ignoring the pain in his chest as he recalled the beauty of the piece. As he watched the shifting emotions on her face, however, the question that had come to him at Swallowhill took shape again in his mind: Why had it still been in her bedroom?
Surely, she hadn’t loved him.
“How did you find out?” Clara asked.
He shook his head, banishing his conflicting thoughts for Miss Brandon. He had no wish to think well of her.
“The duchess told me.” His mouth twisted as he approached her and sank to his haunches, taking up her hand in his. “She admitted that I was born out of wedlock, the product of my father’s affair with Miss Brandon, and that he forced the duchess to raise me as her own.”
Unshed tears shone in her eyes. “Oh, Quincy,” she whispered, cupping his cheek in her palm.
The betrayal of a man he had revered still fresh and painful, he closed his eyes and cradled her hand to his face. “If you were to marry me, you would for all intents and purposes be marrying a bastard. I had to make certain before I asked you that I was as honest and open with you as you’ve been with me.”
He expected all manner of reactions, from assurances to tears to denouncing him completely. What he did not expect was for her to scoff, “As if I would care about that.”
His eyes flew open to find her looking at him with equal parts frustration and affection.
“You silly man,” she continued. “I loved my son, who would have been a bastard had he lived, with everything in me. Do you honestly believe I could love you less for it?”
Love. Hope began to bloom in his chest. Before it could take hold, however, she frowned.
“But this makes no sense. From what you’ve told me of your father, it doesn’t seem in character with him at all.”
It was exactly what had been simmering in his gut throughout that horrible day, making the betrayal so much more potent. “There was no benefit to the duchess in lying to me. And that woman never did anything that wasn’t of benefit to her.”
“Your unhappiness would be reward enough,” she muttered acidly. “I swear, that woman is the devil incarnate.”
He smiled, an unexpected lightness filling him as he pressed his lips to her palm.
“There must be something of your father’s that tells the truth of the matter,” she muttered, her outrage and frustration clear in her voice. “He loved you too well to leave you in the dark forever.”
“I doubt it,” he said, reaching out to tuck a stray curl behind her ear, anxious now to put this whole mess behind them and renew his offer of marriage. “My brothers either destroyed or sold off almost everything else. I was lucky they didn’t know of the secret compartment in my father’s desk, else I’d not even have my father’s travel book. But I’m done with the past, Clara. I would focus on the possibility of a future together.”
She hardly seemed to hear him, though her eyes went wide with dawning excitement. “The travel book. Of course. There was more in that compartment than the book. The bundle was there as well, with the deed, a dance card, a brooch. And—”
“The stack of letters,” he breathed, finally catching up to her wonderfully agile mind.
“Please tell me you kept them.”
He jumped to his feet, pulling her up with him. “I did,” he said, grinning. “Not only that, but I had the wherewithal to bring the whole damn lot with me.”
The smile she gave him was as bright as the sun. “Let’s get them.”
Excitement pumping through his veins, they slipped into the hall and hurried to his room. He wasted no time, lighting a fire in the hearth and heading for his trunk in the corner. The letters. How in hell had he never looked at the letters? He had given all the pieces in that bundle a cursory glance, of course—and it was only now he realized that the dance card and brooch with its lock of jet-black hair were quite possibly mementos of Miss Brandon. If that were the case, wasn’t it possible the letters were, as well?
Of course, there was every chance they could have nothing to do with Miss Brandon—his father’s correspondence with a friend or his parents, for instance. He shouldn’t get his hopes up, not when it didn’t matter a bit what the truth was.
But as he dropped to the floor and lifted the lid, he knew it did matter. The moment the duchess had revealed the truth it had destroyed something in him, that trust he’d had in his father. If there was even a chance he could understand why that man had kept something so important from him, he would take it.
They were easy to find, the neat bundle tied with ribbon sitting on the top with his father’s book. He untied the packet, then lifted the letters out, surprised at how his fingers shook. As one he and Clara moved to the bed and sat down on its edge. Still he stared at the letters. What if they verified his worst fears, that his father had not been the man he’d loved and respected? What if they completely destroyed every good memory he’d ever had of him?
Clara’s hand, gentle and calming, touched his back. He remembered that time at Dane House, when her touch had been the only thing tethering him to earth. How had he not known then and there that he loved her?
With her strength guiding him, he untied the ribbon and opened the first letter.
His father’s familiar bold scrawl hit him like a runaway carriage, knocking the breath from him. It didn’t take long, however, to see the letter was not to him at all. No, it was to Miss Willa Brandon, and from before his marriage to the duchess. It was a long, rambling letter of flowery prose. But one line stood out from the rest.
I cannot wait to see you again, to hold you in my arms. Soon we shall be married; it seems I’ve waited for this day my whole life.
Quincy stared, stun
ned. His father had been engaged to Miss Brandon?
“Oh, Quincy,” Clara said, reading over his shoulder. “He loved her very much.”
He had. It was in every word, every line, nothing but the deepest regard. “Why didn’t he marry her then?” he asked, his voice a hoarse thing. “Why marry the woman who would make his life such hell?”
She rubbed his back. “Mayhap the letters will explain why.”
He nodded, then took a deep breath and reached for the next letter in the stack. When Clara made to rise, however, he grabbed her hand.
“And where do you think you’re going?”
“To give you privacy.” She gave him a sad smile. “I’ve a feeling the story won’t be an easy one to learn.”
“All the more reason to have you with me when I do,” he murmured as he pulled her back down beside him. “Besides, I’ll tell you everything anyway; you may as well save me a step by being here for the learning to begin with.”
Smiling tenderly at him, she curled up against his side. Once he was certain she wasn’t going anywhere, he took up the letter again. And together they began to read.
The story quickly took shape, a heartbreaking history in the carefully penned words: how they’d loved one another since childhood, had planned to marry. Then he was found in another woman’s bed. Though he was certain he’d been drugged, Willa broke off their engagement.
There was a glaring lack of correspondence in the years that followed, but Quincy could piece together what occurred, his father’s subsequent marriage to the duchess producing sons but no affection, where every day he grew more miserable.
Until the letters picked up again years later, when one night of passion forever altered their lives. And though she wanted that child with everything in her, though she loved it desperately, she made the duke promise to take it and raise it as his legitimate child, so it wouldn’t have to live with the stigma of bastard and all the hardships that entailed for the rest of its life.
Someday My Duke Will Come Page 27