by Liz Tyner
Simpson needed to stay in the room. She needed to keep him there, for her own well-being. The granite in the duke’s eyes told her he would not back down and she could not lose her strength.
‘It’s said you have been about town, seeing that no man near you has a parched throat, and you’ve been more affable than people are used to seeing.’
‘I see no reason to hide from anyone. My life is my own. To live as I—’ Then his breath swooshed on the last word, echoing it in her ears. ‘As I wish.’
‘Your cravat is a sight,’ she said.
‘Well, dash my wig,’ he said, words light. ‘And I have been wearing it in public all day.’
Silence dragged.
‘Miss…’ Simpson said tentatively. ‘Might I pass by you?’
‘Not until the matter of your employment is settled.’
‘Simpson.’ The duke’s voice was a commanding boom. ‘You will return in the morning to take up where we left off.’
The man took a tentative step towards Bellona.
She left her hand at the door.
‘Bellona—’ Rhys spoke low, voice curling about her ‘—must I toss him out of the window?’
Predatory eyes snared her, but she wasn’t afraid. Well, not in the mortal sense, anyway.
*
Rhys made sure he truly looked at her. He needed to see past the hair, the memory of her body and the opinions of other people.
Her fingers slid from the wall and Simpson snaked out through the door before she had fully stepped aside.
‘So you are here to tell me all that I have done wrong. You do not have to. I am well aware. More so than you, I suspect.’ Rhys put the chair against the desk, but did not release the wood.
‘You have enraged my father.’
On that he had not been blinded by any foolishness of his heart. On that one thing he knew he was absolutely right. ‘Surely you cannot have concern for that man who did not even give you his true last name, but one he simply pulled from the air.’
‘I have no care for him,’ she said. ‘But his wife has been as kind to me as any mana would. I care for her. She suffers with him. It is the way of the world.’
‘She’s strong. She will survive.’ He gave the chair an extra shove.
‘If he shoots you, as it is said he has threatened, you might not.’
One side of his lips went up, a smirk. ‘It is not in his best interest to be near me. If I die merely from choking on a bone, he will hang. If he does try to do me in and I live, he will be hanged. I have seen to that already.’
‘You have convinced people to speak ill of his paintings.’
‘I have viewed a considerable amount of them in the past few days as I visited most homes in London where I knew the owners had his drivel displayed. I could not help but notice the subtle flaws in his work, which of course, I asked about before I viewed them. I only spoke the truth. Had he not had the funds of his wife as his patron, he would not have been able to survive on what his paintings earn and he is certainly not worth notice as an artist. Not only my opinion, but the men I talked with.’
‘It is in the scandal sheets that the Duke of R. mused about whether this artist painted with his toe or his elbow and suggested he be shown what a brush looks like.’
His lashes flicked down and then up. ‘That is actually a compliment compared to what I truly think. They would not even improve the look of a dust bin.’ He looked at her.
‘Not all of them are that bad.’
‘Enough are. Most are. Someone should have taken pity on him and broken his paintbrushes long ago.’
‘You are trying to do so now.’
‘Yes. The man had left you alone for years. He should have continued to do so.’
‘You brought even more attention to the situation.’
‘If I did not stand against him, I could not have lived with myself.’
His gaze locked on her so hard she might have become afraid, except something deeper behind his eyes showed a private agony. ‘I would not have injured you for the world and yet I live with, every day, how I caused your name to be sullied.’ He looked at the ring on his finger. The one passed from duke to duke.
He changed the direction of his gaze. ‘What does the crest on my carriage look like?’
She shrugged.
‘Tell me about the servants?’
Her eyes tightened. ‘Why do you change what we are talking of?’
‘Just tell me about the servants.’
‘Fenton, I do not like at all. He broke the scullery maid’s heart. Thompson makes sure to keep him in hand, though. He thinks of all the women on the staff as his daughters.’
‘And the maids. What are their names?’
‘Julia. Honour. Susan. Eliza, although she prefers to be called—’
‘Enough.’ He raised his hand.
‘Yes. I know their names. I saw them daily at your house. How could I not?’
‘That is just it. How could you not? I dare say you have no thought of the art in the house which could fund a small country.’
‘I do have some notion of the paintings on your walls,’ she admitted. ‘I have never imagined paintings could be so beautiful. Before I left the duchess, I walked through the house to view the art and that took her grief from my mind.’ She lowered her chin for a moment before looking back at him. ‘Days after I refused you, I realised I had turned away a chance to live with those works.’ She shook her head as if she could not believe it.
His response was half-chuckle, half-snort. ‘The art tempted you to say yes more than I did.’
She didn’t answer.
To speak took more strength than he could immediately garner. Words choked inside him in a way they’d never constricted before. Then everything vanished from his mind except for what mattered most. ‘I love you.’
Chapter Twenty-One
He’d not expected the deep intake of breath and the way her lids dropped causing her narrowed eyes to spear him.
He wondered if perhaps he’d been right to let his thoughts be directed by the opinions of others. He could not see what Bellona thought or meant or wanted.
‘You say that. But you have not shown it. You have made things so much worse.’ Quiet words from soft lips, but with fervour attached.
The words. He had to roll them around in his head to make certain he heard what she was saying.
He struggled to sort things in his mind and then he spoke again. ‘I believe that my art collection is one of the best in a private residence anywhere in the world.’ He watched her face. ‘In case you are wondering.’
‘Stubble it, Your Grace.’
‘Yes, sweetness.’
She moved within arm’s grasp and he could not help it. He moved enough to brush back the hair that had fallen to her temple.
The puff from her lips censured him, but she didn’t retreat.
‘You are trying to destroy my father and his family,’ she said. ‘You have no right.’
‘I have every right.’ She’d taken all his resistance to her and reduced him to the rank of a schoolboy. But then, she’d truly done that days ago. ‘The man—he may not have meant to, but he could have caused your death. He left you on that island to fend for yourself.’
‘You had no cause to interfere. I told you not to hurt him.’
‘His arms and legs are all attached, as well as his head. I would say he is unhurt.’
‘How my father treats me is my concern. I will deal with him, but how can I do that now when you have struck out at him and reduced him?’
‘And just what were you going to do—thank him for nearly causing your death by deserting you on Melos with no food? Forcing you to use whatever means you might find to survive.’
Rhys was taken aback that she was not more grateful to him, but he didn’t care. He cared that she was standing in his house and thought enough of her father’s wife to be concerned.
‘You are not my protector. You have no right to my l
ife because we kissed.’
‘We did more than just kiss, Bellona.’
‘And the women before me—did you jump to their aid in this way, too?’
‘They did not have such problems as you, but I did not abandon them without a thought. Perhaps the first I did not stand by when I was very young and that cured me of the inability to do so again. I cannot hold a woman near my heart and then forget she exists the next day.’
‘That is a poor excuse.’
‘Really, sweet? I feel you owe me a bit of understanding. We shared something together I have never shared with anyone else.’
She raised her brows.
He lifted his palm, the cut towards her. ‘A very painful bloodletting. I should think you’d have some tolerance for me for that reason alone.’
‘You know that was not intended.’
‘Just as my actions towards your father are not intended to bear you any ill will.’
She shook her head. ‘You have meddled.’
‘Meddle? I did not meddle. The man, he needed to be punished. Any man who can cause such harm to a woman should suffer.’ He stared at her. ‘And you are here now—why? To what purpose? I cannot undo anything that has already happened.’ He held his palm where he could see it. He gave a dry chuckle. ‘This memento. It will never go away.’ He raised his eyes. ‘I suspect the true mark you have left on me is not on my palm.’
‘That does not give you the right to denigrate my father.’
‘I let him off lightly.’
‘You destroyed him.’
‘He still can sit at a fine table and drink fine wine. I feel no pity for him.’
‘You do not even tell yourself the truth.’
He turned from her, shaking his head, and then faced her again. ‘If someone strikes at me, Bellona, they can expect me to strike back. It is the nature of the world. It is how one survives.’
‘Revenge. That is what you did.’
Her words rasped against the inside of his skin. ‘I make the heritage I will pass on to my children. With that in mind you can understand why it is so important I uphold the beliefs I hold close to me.’
He had upheld them. Most of them. Until his world had become fodder for the tongues of the ton. But he could trace his madness back one step further than that. When a woman had put an arrow tip to his stomach. ‘I had thought to make amends to you by holding your father responsible for his actions,’ he said.
She merely shook her head. ‘You took away his belief in what he loves most.’
He whispered, ‘What he loves most should be—you.’ He walked forward. He grasped her arms. ‘We have both abandoned you, Bellona. He and I.’
‘No. I only thought I needed him. I did not. My life is better without him. I did not need his love. I did not. I did not need his presence in my childhood. I only needed food. The funds he did give us came from coin his wife had given him, though I did not know it at the time. When I had nothing, she agreed to give me a dowry, which I now have. She has been my friend even though she could view me with distaste. I do not want her hurt. And you have added to her disgrace. The woman who gave me all she could and asked for nothing. She has treated me with the same kindness as my own mana.’
Just like the chimes of the clock sounded too loud in his ears, Rhys heard the pounding of regret in his body.
He loved the woman who had taken away every part of him he believed in and put a mirror in front of his soul.
‘I did not tell you all the truth either. My father could hurt me even more and I did not want him to decide to tell you everything.’ She stood in front of him and when she moved, the shoulder of her dress drooped. She pulled it back into place. ‘My father came to Melos to paint my mother,’ she said. ‘He had heard tales of her beauty and of the island’s. My mother had no funds and had been forced to sell her body so when my father decided to keep her she insisted he marry her. He did not mind the fact that he was already married. As far as he was concerned it was just words.’
Unthinkable.
The old duke would not even have welcomed Bellona as a guest in the house once he discovered her origins were so tainted. Her mother, selling her body, and her father a bigamist.
The tousled goddess stood in front of him and, like the shattered statue recovered from her homeland by the French, she was indeed more marred than only a dent on the bridge of her nose. But also perfect in a way he’d never seen.
‘I don’t care about your mother, your father or your grandmother.’ Rhys reached out, his forefinger looped under a lock of her hair which barely remained constrained. He slipped the brown strands free. They fell to her shoulders. ‘I wish I could be perfect for you. I’m not. Who your father married, or what your mother did to survive, does not matter to me.’
‘Rhys, your mother told me how angry you were when a servant did not wear the proper livery once.’
‘I was very young when that happened. I was trying to… I don’t know what I was trying to do, but I was not acting as I should. That was not the correct way to handle it. I was in error. As I have been many times.’
He held out his left hand. ‘Forgive me?’
She didn’t step forward right away, but when her body swayed in his direction he moved to her.
‘It is not idle words,’ he said. ‘I do not do that. It is not who I am. It is not what I believe in.’
He rested his forehead against hers. ‘I am sorting out who am I to be. What I am to think. All I believed about myself has been a lie. I thought I could forgive myself anything. I was the second son. A second son did not have the responsibility of the first. I am still the second son by birth. I will always be, and yet I am the duke. The thing I wanted most of all, but knew I could not have. Knew I was not worthy of. If I married the perfect duchess, she would hide my flaws. Instead I found the woman who would show me my weakness. You hold it to my face, Bellona.’
‘I do not. I would not do such a thing.’
He moved back. His eyebrows rose.
‘I could be wrong on that,’ she muttered. ‘Before you met me, you imagined yourself too grand.’
‘Yes. I did want to be grand. Every day I thought of my father and how he would act, or Geoff, and what he would do, and then I did as if they directed me. Mostly. Until you. I could not keep you from my thoughts.’
‘What of the woman you courted?’
‘She has not even missed me this past year nor I her. But, if I married a woman such as her, without my heart involved, it would be the same as your father did when he wed Lady Hawkins. He married the woman who could give him funds and increase his status, but he could not forget the island woman. I am like the man on the other island. The one in Defoe’s book.’
‘Crusoe.’
He shook his head. ‘No. The one who lived to serve him. I can’t be rescued without you, Bellona. I need you every moment of my day.’
‘You do not think me good enough for society.’
‘Bellona, it is not you that is not good enough. It is me. It was fine for me to be in a woman’s bed if the doors remained closed. I felt no guilt at all. But the minute the door opened and others could see me for who I was—then it was different. I didn’t ask for marriage to protect you. You were closer than I to that truth. “Ah, the duke is caught with a woman, but of course His Grace married her. Noble man.”’ His words were a sneer. ‘“Sacrificed himself to protect a woman.”’
‘It is no surprise to me. I told you near the same.’
‘You may have told me, but I didn’t listen.’
She curled into his chest. ‘Put that as another flaw of yours. Along with not listening. But you are very appealing to the eyes…’
‘You could not say, Oh, Rhys, you are perfect just as you are.’ He couldn’t help pushing her.
‘I do not lie.’
He circled his arms around her, putting a soft kiss on her cool lips before moving back. ‘You are here. Why not stay? As my wife?’
Eyes, darker than th
e darkest stone flickering in the bottom of a pool, looked up at him.
‘How do I know you are different now than you were only a fortnight ago?’
He shook his head, letting her slip from his arms, but taking her hands in his. ‘Perhaps I am not. Perhaps I cannot truly change. But now instead of using the eyes of my father and brother and mother to look at the world, I wish to use your eyes. I wish to see people the way you see them. Even how you see me.’
‘I will think about it.’
‘Take the time you need,’ he said. ‘I am not going anywhere.’
*
Quite without asking, she moved into his house with the same amount of fuss a mouse made when taking up residence. She found her own room and changed it as she wished. A chamber with the best light which now smelled of linseed oil and paints. She said she wanted a painting of her homeland and wanted to create it herself. He’d instantly sent for a tutor and she’d not said one word against the man.
No one could see evidence of her anywhere else about the house and he did not think she went out often, but contented herself in the room.
She did not come to him in the night. Not once. So finally he went to her. He could not help himself.
*
Rhys looked in her chamber. All her paints were scattered about and the canvas was there, but he could not find her and the hour was late.
He puffed a breath out through his nose, knowing it could not be a good thing for her to be gone. His jaw tightened.
Rhys returned to his bedchamber and summoned his valet.
‘Your Grace?’ the servant asked when he walked in through the doorway.
Rhys realised he’d been standing with his hand still on the pull. ‘Miss Cherroll, is she about?’ He released the rope.
The valet’s long face became even longer. His words were spoken as he breathed out. ‘I believe you are the only resident of the house, Your Grace. Miss Cherroll received a message and had to rush away.’
‘Where did she go?’
‘I believe Lord Hawkins has taken ill and she was called to his bedside. It is not certain if he will recover. If you are to request a carriage, I am to instruct you that her father’s wife does not want attention called to the matter and it has been suggested that you not follow.’